May, 1623, a commission was issued authorizing Sir William Jones, a
justice of the common pleas, Sir Nicholas Fortescue, Sir Francis Goston,
Sir Richard Sutton, Sir William Pitt, Sir Henry Bourchier, and Sir Henry
Spilman,[170:C] to inquire into the affairs of the colony. By an order
of the privy council the records of the company were seized, and the
deputy treasurer, Nicholas Ferrar, imprisoned, and on the arrival of a
ship from Virginia, her packets were seized and laid before the privy
council.

Nicholas Ferrar, Jr., was born in London in 1592, educated at Cambridge,
where he was noted for his talents, acquirements, and piety.[171:A]
Upon leaving the university he made the tour of Europe, winning the
esteem of the learned, passing through many adventures and perils with
Christian heroism, and maintaining everywhere an unsullied character.
Upon his return to England, in 1618, he was appointed king's counsel for
the Virginia Plantation. In the year 1622 he was chosen deputy treasurer
of the Virginia Company, (which office his brother John also filled for
some years,) and so remained till its dissolution. In the House of
Commons he distinguished himself by his opposition to the political
corruption of that day, and abandoned public life when little upwards of
thirty years of age, "in obedience to a religious fancy he had long
entertained," and formed of his family and relations a sort of little
half-popish convent, in which he passed the remainder of his
life.[171:B]

Carlyle[171:C] thus describes this singular place of retirement:
"Crossing Huntingdonshire in his way northward, his majesty[171:D] had
visited the establishment of Nicholas Ferrar, at Little Gidding, on the
western border of that county. A surprising establishment now in full
flower, wherein above fourscore persons, including domestics, with
Ferrar and his brother, and aged mother at the head of them, had devoted
themselves to a kind of Protestant monachism, and were getting much
talked of in those times. They followed celibacy and merely religious
duties; employed themselves in binding of prayer-books, embroidering of
hassocks, in almsgiving also, and what charitable work was possible in
that desert region; above all, they kept up, night and day, a continual
repetition of the English liturgy, being divided into relays and
watches, one watch relieving another, as on shipboard, and never
allowing at any hour the sacred fire to go out."

In October, 16