Little Gidding

“Four Quartets” by T S Eliot – “Little Gidding”

“If you came this way,

Taking any route,

starting from anywhere,

At any time or at any season,

It would always be the same:

you would have to put off

Sense and notion.

You are not here to verify,

Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity

Or carry report.

You are here to kneel

Where prayer has been valid.

 And prayer is more

Than an order of words,

the conscious occupation

Of the praying mind,

or the sound of the voice praying.

And what the dead had no speech for,

when living,

They can tell you, being dead: the communication

Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

Here, the intersection of the timeless moment

Is England and nowhere.

Never and always.”

 

The poet T S Eliot probably visited Little Gidding only once – in May 1936. He had been asked to look at the text of a play about the visit of King Charles I to Little Gidding. His visit eventually led him to focus the concluding poem of his Four Quartets on Little Gidding.

What is so special about Little Gidding?

Who was Nicholas Ferrar? (pictured left)

Born in London in 1592 into a family who were London-based merchants, Nicholas Ferrar was educated at Clare, Cambridge and elected a Fellow there in 1610.

The family set up the Virginia Company in the Americas, and Nicholas himself was much involved with this, as he was also in Court and Parliamentary life. The Virginia Company was suppressed under King James, so Nicholas, determined himself to leave London and live in retirement in the country, and as a devout Christian, to devote himself to a life of prayer.

His mother, Mary, was able to purchase the Manor of Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire as part of a deal to rescue her son John from debt. Her daughter, Susanna Collett and husband John were living at Bourne (Cambridgeshire), having fled London during an outbreak of the plague. So in 1625, the whole family entered into the estate at Little Gidding, finding the church used as a barn, and the manor house in need of repair.

Their first action was to enter the church for prayer, and to give instructions that the church must be cleaned and restored before any attention was paid to the house. The household numbered about 30 persons, from babies to the elderly Mary. A school was established, bringing in local children as well as family; an almshouse for local elderly and infirm widows; and a dispensary for the benefit of the locality. In 1626 Nicholas was ordained Deacon by Archbishop Laud at Westminster Abbey: but he refused later to proceed to ordination to the Priesthood.

 The major work however was the establishment of a regular round of prayer, using the forms of the Book of Common Prayer as encouraged by Archbishop Laud in the face of a growing Puritan movement. These acts of worship were led by Nicholas. On Sundays, the Vicar of Great Gidding would come to conduct a second service of Matins or Holy Communion; there was no Rector of Little Gidding at the time. In the afternoon the family walked over the fields to Steeple Gidding church for Evensong. The afternoon was spent learning and reciting the psalms, including instruction of local children.

Later, Nicholas began a round of daily recitation of the psalms, continuing day and night, and an hourly reading from the gospels during the day, led by different members of the family.

 

During the autumn of 1637 Nicholas became ill, and  died on 4th December, the day after Advent Sunday, at 1am - the hour he had always risen to begin his prayers. He was buried in the table tomb outside the church, leaving space for his elder brother John to be buried before him, closer to the church door. This anniversary is now commemorated as the Feast of Nicholas Ferrar on 4th December.

King Charles sought refuge at Little Gidding during the Civil War on the night of March 2nd 1646, and was led to safety by John Ferrar to nearby Coppingford Lodge. The Puritan troops raided Little Gidding three months later, scattered the community, ransacked and looted the house and despoiled the church. It was referred to it as the “Arminian Nunnery”, accused of promoting the return of "Romish practices" into England. Nicholas's manuscripts were burned, but the family returned, and continued there as before until the deaths of John Ferrar and Susanna Collett in 1657.

God of peace, make us worthy of your perfect love

that, with your servant Nicholas Ferrar and his household,

we may rule ourselves after your Word

and serve you with our whole heart.

"When I am liberated by silence,

when I am no longer involved

in the measurement of life, but in the living of it,

I can discover a form of prayer in which

there is effectively no distraction.

My whole life becomes a prayer.

My whole silence is full of prayer.

The world of silence in which I am immersed

contributes to my prayer."

Thomas Merton

 One of Nicholas Ferrar’s friends was the renowned priest and poet George Herbert.

The two probably met as students at Cambridge University and remained lifelong friends, mostly if not entirely by correspondence. On his deathbed Herbert sent his poems to Nicholas who ensured their publication.

George Herbert and Nicholas Ferrar were almost exact contemporaries. Herbert was born on 3 April 1593, just a year after Ferrar, and died on 1 March 1633, four years before his friend. Herbert was born into an aristocratic family in Montgomery in Wales, close to the English border. Educated at Westminster School, and then at Trinity College, Cambridge, he became the university’s Orator, responsible for writing and declaiming Latin verse to celebrate university occasions and the visits of important people. He remained orator until 1627.

After the death of King James I in 1625, Herbert abandoned his hope of a position at court or in parliament, and turned to the Church. He was ordained deacon in 1626 and made prebendary of Leighton Bromswold, which lies some four miles south of Little Gidding. Although the prebend was a source of income, it involved no particular responsibility for Leighton Bromswold. When, however, he discovered that the church there was in a state of considerable disrepair, Herbert set about raising funds from his wealthy friends for a complete restoration of the building.

Herbert was ordained priest in 1629 and his relative, the Earl of Pembroke, suggested to King Charles I that he present him to the living of Bemerton, just outside Salisbury. Never a strong figure physically, Herbert died only a few years later, on 1 March 1633. On his deathbed he dispatched the manuscripts of a great body of his English poetry to Little Gidding, telling Nicholas to publish the poems if he thought they might “turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul”, but otherwise to burn them. Ferrar immediately arranged for the printing and publication of the poems at Cambridge, and they have been in print ever since.