George Ferrers

Magna Carta
Magna Carta, Cotton MS. Augustus II. 106, property of the British Library

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.

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.