A biography of Nicholas Ferrar (1593-1637) and his family with a focus on his background, his education and experiences that shaped that ministry as well as the circumstances that brought the family to the village of Little Gidding in Cambridgeshire. Avoiding the hagiographic tone adopted by Ferrar's biographers, Joyce Ransome shows how the search for community was central to his life and has therefore become the unifying theme around which she has constructed his biography. br><br Indeed, Ferrar transformed his mercantile family into a religious and educational community, a voluntary society that he hoped would preach to contemporaries by their example. While that hope was at best only partially fulfilled in his lifetime, those who had known him at Little Gidding were able later to form networks that adapted that piety and voluntarism to create societies acceptable within the church. These men led the way to voluntary Anglicanism that characterized a 'Church of England' in transition from a national to an established but essentially voluntary institution.<CR><CR> For its fresh prospective on the unique Little Gidding that Ferrar created, this book will appeal to both an academic and general audience of readers interested in early modern history, church history, English literature, theology, family history (historical sociology) and gender studies.