Q: What Happened to Bill Ferny and the Ruffians?
ANSWER: Bill Ferny joined Saruman’s ruffians, who attacked Bree and eventually seized control of the Shire. After Frodo and his companions returned to the Shire at the end of the War of the Ring the Hobbits threw off the ruffians’ control, defeating their largest force at the Battle of Bywater, the last battle of the War of the Ring.
The ruffians were rounded up and shown to the borders of the Shire. After that, there is no further word about them. J.R.R. Tolkien seems to have given no further thought to their fate.
With the return of the Rangers to western Eriador, and the eventual re-establishment of royal authority and the city of Annúminas by Aragorn, it seems unlikely the ruffians would have been able to remain close to either the Shire or Bree.
If you’re writing fan fiction or planning a role-playing campaign, I think it is plausible to suggest that most of the ruffians would have tried to find their way to Dunland. They were probably Dunlendings in origin or, if half-orcs, had Dunlending blood. But even in Dunland many of them may not have been welcome.
According to The Peoples of Middle-earth, volume 12 of The History of Middle-earth, in which Christopher Tolkien published much material his father had prepared for the appendices to The Lord of the Rings (but some of which could not be included due to space considerations), Eomer’s kingdom was enlarged to include Dunland in the Fourth Age.
Hence, if Bill Ferny and the ruffians did try to make Dunland their new home they would have been watched over by the Rohirrim, unable to stir up much new trouble. Their choice would have been fairly simple: either to settle down and become law-abiding citizens or to live in outlawry for the rest of their lives.
Tolkien rarely mentions or describes the lives of outlaws in his stories. The most detailed accounts are provided in the story of Hurin and his children. Both Turin and his father were able to “recondition” some of the outlaws they encountered, for they had started out as honorable men who were driven from their homeland (Dor-lomin in Hithlum) by Morgoth’s forces. And these men acknowledged Turin and Hurin as their rightful lords.
In the case of Bill Ferny and the ruffians, however, circumstances were more mean and bitter. They had no rightful lord to follow and their work for Saruman had put them on the wrong side of the war. Only Aragorn’s general amnesty (mentioned obliquely in “The Steward and the King”, where Aragorn pardons his vanquished enemies and free Sauron’s slaves) might have afforded the ruffians any opportunity to reconcile their lives with the changing tide of politics in Middle-earth.
It would be fair to imagine some of the ruffians trying to return to a peaceful life, including even Bill Ferny. They might have remained mean and bitter men, or some might have aspired to become good men. On the other hand, those who had the most Orcish appearance may not have been welcomed even in Dunland, and it may be better to imagine them ultimately being driven into the wild, either to try and live on their own or to try and join the Orcs.
Tolkien never wrote anything about how half-Orcs might have been viewed or treated by Orcs, although in the Fourth Age the Orcs were in general decline anyway.
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