Baroness Ferrers of Chartley

The title Baron Ferrers of Chartley was created on 6 February 1299 for John de Ferrers, son of Robert de Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby. The daughter of the 6th Baron Ferrers of Chartley, Anne, married Walter Devereux who was summoned to parliament as Lord Ferrers in her right. Their descendants became Earls of Essex and so the peerage was also forfeited from 1601 to 1604. After the restoration to the title, the 12th Baron died and the peerage fell into abeyance in 1646. The abeyance was terminated in 1677 in favour of Robert Shirley. In 1711 he was created the 1st Earl Ferrers. On the death of his granddaughter, the wife of the 5th Earl of Northampton, the peerage fell into abeyance again. When only one of the three daughters of the 14th Baroness Ferrers of Chartley remained, the abeyance of the barony terminated for this daughter, who was the wife of the 1st Marquess Townshend. The barony remained still merged with the marquessate until the death of the 3rd Marquess, when it again fell into abeyance between the marquess's two sisters and their heirs.

"Ferrer" is French and means "to bind with iron" or " to shoe a horse" (cf. farrier).Ferrières-Saint-Hilaire in Normandy, the caput of the de Ferrers family, was an important centre for ironwork. Although some say the Ferrers coat of arms shows six black horseshoes on a silver background, A. C. Fox-Davies notes, in his book A Complete Guide to Heraldry, that these were the arms of their ancestal relatives, the Marshals, and except for William de Ferrers, 5th Earl of Derby, who bore 8 sable horseshoes on an argent border surrounding the family arms, no other Ferrers bore them on their arms. The Ferrers traditional arms are vairy, or and gules.

The family are descended from Henri de Ferrieres (Henry de Ferrers - d.1100 at Tutbury Priory), 1st Earl of Ferrières, Lord of Longueville, Normandy, who fought at the Battle of Hastings. Henry was accompanied to England by three other families who were the de Ferrers underlords in France: the Curzons (Notre Dame-de-Courson), the Baskervilles (Boscherville) and the Levetts (Livet-en-Ouche).

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