William Ferrers, 3rd Baron Ferrers of Groby
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William Ferrers, 3rd Baron Ferrers of Groby (1333–1371) was a Leicestershire-based nobleman in fourteenth-century England who took part in some of the major campaigns of the first part of the Hundred Years' War. The eldest of two sons to Henry Ferrers, 2nd Baron Ferrers of Groby (d. 1343), and Isabel de Verdun, daughter of Theobald de Verdun, 2nd Baron Verdun, William was ten years old when he succeeded his father to the Barony.[2]
William Ferrers was born at the family caput of Newbold Verdon, Leicestershire, on 28 February 1333, and received baptism the same day. Two years after his father's death, an allowance of £50 was remitted by the king and council for his care (later, in 1349, converted into a grant of the manors of Stoke on Tern, Wootton and Hethe).[3] As he was still a minor, custody of his patrimony was shared between King Edward III's queen, Philippa, and his son, Edward. William Ferrers grew up as the bubonic plague was ravaging the country, and like everywhere else, this had a severely deleterious effect on the Ferrers family's finances. Almost entire villages were being wiped out (for example, that of Hethe, one of the Ferrerses' manors, lost 21 out of its 27 villeins) which meant whole crops were being lost and the value of those manors collapsed.[2]
