His sudden death led to suspicions of poisoning amid fears of Catholic plots to overthrow Elizabeth.

He was subsequently summoned to Parliament in his father's Barony of Strange (of Knokyn) and became known as "Ferdinando, Lord Straunge".

He was the patron of many writers, including Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare.

The Jesuit writer Robert Parsons expressed frustration, stating that "diverse men" were not satisfied "with the course of this lord hitherto".

[1] Nevertheless, Elizabeth's chief minister Lord Burghley received several reports that "Papists" were attempting to build support for Ferdinando, whom they might agree unanimously to make king, as one of his informants stated.

[1] Ferdinando was considered "of an exalted genius as well as birth", and during the absence of his father on State business he ably discharged the duties of the Lieutenancies of Lancashire and Cheshire.

In 1610, a collection of English poems entitled Belvedere; or the Garden of the Muses was published which included work which may be by Ferdinando, but without his name being attached to it, and the identification remains to a large extent a matter of conjecture.

English rebels who had fled overseas sent a man named Richard Hesketh to urge Ferdinando that he had a claim to the crown of England by right of his descent from Mary, Queen Dowager of France, the second surviving daughter of Henry VII and a younger sister of Henry VIII.

Ferdinando held two private meetings with Hesketh and then took him to London for further discussions with his mother, who had earlier been excluded from the Queen's court for allegedly plotting against Elizabeth.

He fell sick at Knowsley Hall but travelled to Lathom House where he took bezoar stone and allegedly, powdered unicorn's horn as medicine.