author of ‘The Triumph of Cupid,’ a masque, produced by Ferrers. In a letter to Cawarden, describing the requirements of his office, Ferrers wrote that he stood in need of ‘a divine, a philosopher, an astronomer, a poet, a phisician, a potecarie, a master of requests, a civilian, a disard, a clown, two gentlemen ushers, besides juglers, tumblers, fools, friars, and such other’ (Loseley MSS. 31–5). Ferrers's extant letters to Cawarden show that he was busily engaged in preparing masques till February, when the first signs of the king's fatal illness put an end to the festivities. At the following Christmas of 1553 Queen Mary retained the services of Ferrers as lord of misrule, and rich raiment was provided for him and his attendants. There can be little doubt that Ferrers himself wrote masques for these entertainments, but none of his own contributions have survived.
Although a protestant, Ferrers was ready to take service under Queen Mary. He assisted in repressing Wyatt's rebellion, and was ordered a reward of 100l. (cf. Underhill, Autobiography in Narratives of the Reformation, pp. 163–6; Chron. of Queen Jane, p. 187). He represented Brackley in the parliaments of 1554 and 1555, and was once fined for absenting himself from the house without leave. Under Elizabeth Ferrers took little open part in politics. He served the office of escheator for the counties of Essex and Hertford in 1567, and was elected M.P. for St. Albans in 1571. But beyond being mentioned as the member of a committee to consider a proposed subsidy, his name does not appear in the ‘Journals.’ There is, however, reason to believe that outside parliament Ferrers was intriguing in behalf of Mary Queen of Scots. He was on friendly terms with Mary's envoy, the Bishop of Ross, and Ross believed that Ferrers was concerned in the authorship of a Latin unpublished work advocating Queen Mary's claim to succeed Elizabeth. The bishop positively declared that throughout the parliament of 1571 Ferrers supplied him with much political information (Murdin, State Papers, 20, 30, 43, 46, 51).
Ferrers died in January 1578–9, and was buried at Flamstead 11 Jan. Administration of his effects was granted by the prerogative court of Canterbury 18 May 1579. He had a wife Jane, by whom he had a son, Julius Ferrers of Markgate, who was buried at Flamstead 30 Sept. 1596.
As early as 1534 Ferrers published ‘The Boke of Magna Carta with divers other Statutes … translated into Englyshe,’ London (by R. Redman). The same publisher reissued the book without date about 1541, and Thomas Petyt produced a new edition in 1542. According to Stow, Ferrers ‘collected the whole history of Queen Mary as the same is set down under the name of Richard Grafton’ (Stow, 1631, p. 632). Grafton denied the statement, but Stow insisted on its truth. At the request of his friend, Thomas Phaer, Ferrers wrote the epitaph on Phaer's tomb in Kilgerran Church, Pembrokeshire (1560) (Shakespeare Soc. Papers, iv. 1–5). But his chief claim to literary distinction lies in the fact that he shared with Baldwin the honour of having invented the series of historical poems entitled ‘Mirror for Magistrates.’ To the earliest volume, issued by Baldwin in 1559, Ferrers contributed the opening poem, on the fall of Robert Tresilian, and two others, dealing respectively with the murder of Thomas of Woodstock and the death of Richard II. Baldwin, in his preface, writes that Ferrers suggested the whole design after studying Lydgate's ‘Fall of Princes.’ In the next volume, issued under Baldwin's editorship in 1563, Baldwin states that Ferrers's official engagements prevented his continuance of the work, and that he had handed over his materials to himself. Ferrers's sole contribution to the 1563 volume is the ‘Tragedye of Edmund, Duke of Somerset.’ The edition of 1578, which combines the contents of the earlier volumes, was, it has been suggested, edited by Ferrers. There first appeared in this edition, besides Ferrers's older contributions, two additional poems by him treating of the punishment of Eleanor Cobham, duchess of Gloucester, and the death of her husband, Duke Humphrey. In George Gascoigne's account of Leicester's entertainment of the queen at Kenilworth in 1575 (‘The Princely Pleasures at the Courte at Kenelworth’) verses by Ferrers welcoming Elizabeth are placed in the mouth of ‘the Ladie of the Lake.’
That Ferrers was highly esteemed in his own time is undoubted. But his reputation has somewhat suffered through a mistake of Puttenham and Meres, who, writing of him at the close of the sixteenth century, wrongly designated him Edward Ferrers or Ferris. ‘But the principal man,’ writes Puttenham, in his ‘Arte of English Poesie,’ 1589 (ed. Arber, pp. 74–5), ‘in this profession [i.e. poetry] at the same time [i.e. Edward VI's reign] was Master Edward Ferrys, a man of no less mirth and felicity that way [than Sternhold and Heywood], but of much more magnificence in his metre, and therefore wrote for the most part to the stage in tragedy and sometimes in comedy or interlude, wherewith he gave the king so much good recreation as he had thereby many good rewards.’ Again, Puttenham writes, p. 77: ‘For tragedy the lord of
