Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gerard, Gilbert (d.1593)
GERARD, Sir GILBERT (d. 1593), judge, was the eldest son of James Gerard of Ince, Lancashire, by Margaret, daughter of John Holcroft of Holcroft in the same county. After residing for some time at Cambridge he was admitted a member of Gray's Inn in 1537, where he was called to the bar in 1539. He became an ‘ancient’ of the inn in 1547, was elected reader in the autumn of 1554, and treasurer, jointly with Nicholas Bacon, on 16 May 1556. He was returned to parliament for Wigan in 1553, for Steyning, Sussex, in the following year, and again for Wigan in 1555. He was summoned to take the degree of serjeant-at-law by writ issued 27 Oct. 1558, and returnable in the Easter term following, which therefore abated by Queen Mary's death. Elizabeth preferred to make Gerard her attorney-general, which she did on 22 Jan. 1558–9. He thus never took the degree of serjeant-at-law. Dugdale states, on the authority of ‘credible tradition,’ that in the time of Queen Mary, ‘upon the Lady Elizabeth being questioned at the council table,’ Gerard ‘was permitted to plead on her behalf, and performed his part so well that he suffered imprisonment for the same in the Tower during the remaining term’ of the reign. What truth there may be in this statement is not clear. That Gerard had rendered some important service to Elizabeth is made probable by the fact that she appointed him attorney-general immediately on her accession, but it is also clear that he was not then in prison (Ormerod, Cheshire, ed. Helsby, iii. 893; Wotton, Baronetage; Gregson, Portfolio of Fragments, Lancashire (Harland), p. 237; Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 141; Douthwaite, Gray's Inn, p. 53; Dugdale, Orig. pp. 91, 295, 298; Lists of Members of Parliament, Official Return of). He was employed in Ireland in 1560 to reform the procedure of the court of exchequer, and to this end drew up certain ‘orders and articles for the better collecting the queen's rents, revenues, and debts,’ to which the lord-lieutenant (the Earl of Suffolk) affixed the seal on 2 Sept. (Sloane MS. 4767, f. 22). In 1561 he was made counsel to the university of Cambridge, and in May 1563 commissioner for the sale of crown lands. In 1565 he went the home circuit, and on 23 July was entertained with Sir John Southcote and other judges at a magnificent banquet given by Archbishop Parker at the palace, Canterbury. On 12 June 1566 he was appointed one of the special commission for hearing causes ‘infra virgam hospitii,’ i.e. within the bounds of the palace or other place where the sovereign might for the time be residing. He seems to have been a member of the ecclesiastical commission in 1567, when he materially assisted Archbishop Parker in introducing certain reforms into Merton College, Oxford. During a great part of 1570 he was actively engaged in trying participators in the northern rebellion, as one of a special commission constituted for that purpose, with the Earl of Sussex at its head, and which sat principally at York and Durham. In January 1571 he received a letter of thanks from the senate of the university of Cambridge for his services in connection with the passing of the statute 13 Eliz. c. 29, confirming the charters and privileges of the university and for services rendered in connection with other statutes. He appears in a deed (printed in ‘Trevelyan Papers,’ Camden Soc., ii. 74–83) of 23 Oct. 1571 as trustee for the queen of certain manors in Chelsea and elsewhere mortgaged to her by the Earl of Wiltshire to secure 35,000l. He probably drew the interrogatories administered to the Duke of Norfolk concerning his intrigues with the Bishop of Ross and Ridolfi on 13, 18, and 31 Oct. 1571, on each of which occasions he was present at the examination and signed the depositions (Murdin, State Papers, pp. 158–63; Hist. MSS. Comm. Cal. Cecil MSS., 1883, pp. 535, 544), and he ably seconded the queen's serjeant, Nicholas Barham [q. v.], in the prosecution of the duke on the charge of conspiring to depose the queen, which followed on 16 Jan. 1571–2. His argument is reported at considerable length in Cobbett's ‘State Trials,’ i. 1000–11. He also in the following February took part in the prosecution of Robert Higford or Hickford, the duke's secretary, for the offence of adhering to and comforting the queen's enemies (ib. p. 1042), and on 5 May he was occupied at the Tower with Sir Ralph Sadler and other commissioners in taking the examination of Thomas Bishop, another of the duke's dependents. The same day he sent to Burghley the depositions of the Bishop of Ross, taken on interrogatories prepared by himself two days before with remarks on the obstinacy of the bishop. He also drew the interrogatories for the examination of the Earl of Northumberland in the following June. A curious case submitted to him the same year by Fleetwood, recorder of London, is preserved in Strype's ‘ Annals’ (fol.) ii. pt. i. 240, pt. ii. App. bk. i. No. xxv. One Blosse (alias Mantel) had asserted that Edward VI was still alive, and that Elizabeth had about 1564 married the Earl of Leicester and had four children by him. Blosse was accordingly charged with treason before Fleetwood, who reserved the case in order that Gerard might advise whether it fell within the statutes of treason. Gerard held that it did not, and the man was released. In 1573 Gerard was a member of three commissions: (1) a commission of gaol delivery for the Marshalsea, (2) a commission of inquiry as to the ownership of certain ships and Spanish goods on which an embargo had been laid (both in the month of April), and (3) in October a commission of oyer and terminer for Middlesex (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547–80, pp. 225, 433, 443; Addenda, 1566–79, pp. 251, 261, 267, 270, 305–6, 400; Scotland, 1509–1603, p. 911; Strype, Parker (fol.), i. 190, 253; Rymer, Fœdera, ed. Sanderson, xv. 660, 718, 720, 725). In 1576 the Irish lord deputy, Sydney, requested the privy council to send Gerard to Ireland to advise him on various legal questions. It does not appear whether he was sent or not. He was a member of the ecclesiastical commission of this year. On 23 Feb. 1579 he took the examination of the Irish rebel, Richard Oge Burke, second earl of Clanricarde, at Durham House, Strand. On 5 July following he received the honour of knighthood at Greenwich. On 30 May 1581 he was appointed master of the rolls, when he received a letter of congratulation from the senate of the university of Cambridge. He was a member of the commission which tried on 16 Dec. 1583 John Somervyle, on 25 Feb. 1584–5 John Parry, and on 7 Feb. 1585–6 William Shelley, for the offence of conspiring the queen's death, and on 23 June 1585 he was one of the judges who assembled in the Star-chamber to take the inquest on the death of the Earl of Northumberland, who had committed suicide in the Tower three days before. At this time he represented Lancaster in parliament, having been returned on 16 Nov. 1584. He was a member of the tribunal that on 28 March 1587 tried Secretary William Davison for misprision and contempt in laying the death-warrant of the Queen of Scots before the council, and of that which on 18 April 1589 tried the Earl of Arundel, who was charged with having for some years carried on treasonable intrigues with Roman catholics on the continent. A letter from Gerard to Mr. Auditor Thompson, dated 2 July 1589, begging one of his fee bucks to give to his friend, Mr. John Lancaster of Gray's Inn, on occasion of his reading, is preserved in Harl. MS. 6994, f. 184. On 26 July 1591, at the Sessions House, Newgate, Gerard tried three fanatics, Hackett, Copinger, and Arthington, for the crime of libelling the queen and defacing the royal arms. Their defence was that they were moved to this conduct by the Holy Spirit. It did not, however, save them from conviction. On the death of Sir Christopher Hatton, 20 Nov. 1591, Gerard was appointed chief commissioner of the great seal, in which capacity he acted until 28 May 1592, when Sir John Puckering became lord keeper. The last state trial in which he appears to have taken part was that of Sir John Perrot, who was arraigned on 27 April 1592 on the charge of having, when lord deputy of Ireland in 1587, imagined the death of the queen (Cal. State Papers, Ireland, 1574–85, pp. 92, 161; Strype, Grindal (fol.), 208; Ann. (fol.), iv. 71; Metcalfe, Book of Knights; Dugdale, Chron. Ser. 97; Fourth Rep. Dep.-Keeper Public Records, App. ii. 272, 275; Cobbett, State Trials, i. 1095, 1114, 1229, 1251, 1315; Lists of Members of Parliament, Official Return of; Hardy, Catalogue of Lord Chancellors, &c., 67). Gerard died on 4 Feb. 1592–3, and was buried in the parish church of Ashley, Staffordshire. His principal seat was at Bromley in the same county, which he purchased from his kinsman, Sir Thomas Gerard of Etwall, Derbyshire, and where he built a house, described by Dugdale as a ‘stately quadrangular fabric of stone.’ The house is no longer standing, but an engraving of it is preserved in Plot's ‘Staffordshire,’ p. 102. Gerard married Anne, daughter of William Ratcliffe of Wilmersley, Lancashire, by whom he had two sons and four daughters. His eldest son, Thomas, was created Baron Gerard of Gerard's Bromley on 21 July 1603. From Gerard's second son, Ratcliffe, descended Charles Gerard [q. v.], created on 8 Nov. 1645 Baron Gerard of Brandon, and on 23 July 1679 Earl of Macclesfield.
[Dugdale's Baronage, ii. 417–18; Courthope's Historic Peerage; Foss's Lives of the Judges; Erdeswick's Staffordshire, ed. Harwood, p. 99.]Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.134
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 220 | ii | 11 | Gerard, Sir Gilbert: for 8 Oct. read 8 Nov. |
| 12 | for 21 July read 23 July |