George Ferrers (c. 1500 – 1579) was a courtier and writer. In an incident which arose in 1542 while he was a Member of Parliament for Plymouth in the Parliament of England, he played a key role in the development of parliamentary privilege.
As a writer, he is best remembered for his contributions to The Mirror for Magistrates. He apparently wrote plays for court performance, and was particularly praised as a writer of tragedies, but these were never published and are now lost.
Life
George Ferrers was the eldest son of Thomas Ferrers of St Albans and his wife, Alice, the daughter of John Cockworthy of Cockworthy, Devon. He is said to have graduated as a bachelor of canon law at the University of Cambridge before being admitted to Lincoln's Inn on 22 November 1534. There is no evidence that he followed a legal career, although he was a frequent litigant, and was praised by John Leland for his oratory at the bar.
According to Bindoff and Woudjuysen, Ferrers's literary interests were initially legal and antiquarian. It was apparently Ferrers who in 1533 edited and translated The Great Boke of Statutes which spanned the period from the first year of Edward III to the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Henry VIII. His translation of Magna Carta and other statutes was published in 1534. He may also have been the George Ferras who supplied Leland with information about the poet John Gower.
By 1538 Ferrers had entered the service of Henry VIII's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. After Cromwell's fall, Ferrers entered the King's service, and was present at the reception of the King's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. From at least 1542 to 1547 he was a page of the chamber, and in 1544 attended the King in France. When Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547, he left Ferrers a small bequest in his will.
Parliamentary career and the "Ferrers Case" of 1543
Ferrers sat as a member of parliament for Plymouth in 1542, 1545 and 1553, for Cirencester in 1547, for Barnstaple in April 1554, Brackley in November 1554 and 1555 and for St Albans in 1571.
The most notable episode in Ferrers's political career has become known as 'Ferrers Case'. In March 1542 Ferrers was arrested for a debt of '200 marks or thereabouts' for which he had stood surety for one White of Salisbury on a loan from one Weldon, and put in the Counter, a debtors' prison in Bread Street. The arrest had been effected while Ferrers was on his way to the House of Commons, and Ferrers' fellow members ordered the Serjeant-at-Arms to obtain Ferrers' release. According to Holinshed:
there ensued a fray within the Counter gates between Ferrers and the officers, not without hurt of either part, so that the serjeant was driven to defend himself with his mace of arms, and had the crown thereof broken off by bearing off a stroke, and his man struck down.
The two sheriffs of London arrived, but when the Serjeant demanded Ferrers' release, the sheriffs, according to Holinshed, treated the request "contemptuously, with many proud words".
Weldon, the creditor who had instigated the arrest, and the two sheriffs and others were then summoned before the Commons on 28 March 1542 to answer charges of breach of parliamentary privilege, and were committed to the Tower for two days. The matter was referred to the Privy Council, and the King claimed privilege for his servants' attendance upon the business of parliament, stating that:
We be informed by our judges that we at no time stand so highly in our estate royal as in the time of Parliament, wherein we as head and you as members are conjoined and knit together into one body politic, so that whatsoever offence or injury during that time is offered to the meanest members of the House is to be judged as done against our person and the whole court of Parliament.
The incident thus established the immunity of members of the Commons from civil arrest while the House was in session.