The key to his character is well given in what Hooper said of him in a letter to Bullinger, that he was " too fearful about what might happen to him."
He had voted against the act of November 1549 for a reform of the canon law, and on a later occasion his nonconformity brought him into conflict with the Council; he was also the only bishop who satisfied Hooper's test of sacramental orthodoxy.
It was perhaps the most wanton of all Mary's acts of persecution; Ferrar had been no such protagonist of the Reformation as Cranmer, Ridley, Hooper and Latimer; he had had nothing to do with Northumberland's or Wyatt's conspiracy.
About 1549 Cranmer sent him to the Tower of London, and while there "he was borrowed out of prison" to take part in seven public disputations against Hooper, Jewel and others.
Neither is there any doubt that he sat in judgment on Bishop Hooper, and on several other preachers whom he condemned, not exactly to the flames, but to be degraded from the priesthood.