Robert Ferrar

c.1500-1555. Bishop of St. David's, Wales. Reportedly a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge, he joined the Augustinians. Influenced by Lutheran literature, he was compelled to recant in 1528. Records are conflicting, but he became bishop of St. David's in 1548, an appointment savagely resisted by a “greedy and turbulent chapter” who opposed him on legal technicalities and absurd charges. Nevertheless, he was imprisoned and on the accession of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary was transferred to a London jail where John Bradford and other Protestants renewed his Reformation principles. Deprived of his bishopric in 1554, Ferrar was arraigned before his successor at St. David's, found guilty of heresy, and burnt at Carmarthen. He told a spectator that “if he saw him once to stir in the pains of his burning he should then give no credit to his doctrine.”