GERARD, Charles (c. 1659-1701)

Viscount Brandon, 1679-89

Charles Gerard was born in Paris in the late 1650s during the exile of his royalist father. He followed his father in pursuing a military career and, perhaps assisted by his early years in France and his French mother’s connections, served as a volunteer in the French army under the prince of Condé in the early 1670s. Officially an alien owing to his birth on French soil, he was naturalized by an act of Parliament in April 1677. HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, 80, 83-4. He was later commissioned, while still probably underage, lieutenant colonel and then colonel of his father’s cavalry brigade in 1678-9. Father and son shared a quarrelsome, violent and ruthless character, and the younger man first became notorious for his drunken murder of a footboy in St James’s Park in May 1676, for which act he was eventually granted a royal pardon. Verney ms mic. M636/29, Sir R. to E. Verney, 22 May and 5 June 1676; M636/30, J. to Sir R. Verney 17 Nov. 1676. He was up to his violent ways again by December 1677 when he was wounded when acting as a second to Thomas Butler, earl of Ossory [I] (and Baron Butler of Moore Park in the English peerage), in a duel. Ibid. M636/31, J. to Sir R. Verney, 6 Dec. 1677. He again followed his father by turning his back on the court, which had favoured the Gerards for so long, and becoming a member of the opposition in 1679-81. In the Commons, as the Member for Lancashire, where the family had its origins and owned the estate of Halsall, he consistently voted against the wishes and interests of the court. In a bid to win back Gerard of Brandon’s support, Charles II in July 1679 raised him in the peerage, creating him Viscount Brandon and earl of Macclesfield. From this point Macclesfield’s eldest son, Charles Gerard, took the courtesy title of Viscount Brandon, under which name he became well known over the following years.

Throughout the early 1680s Brandon placed himself deeper into trouble with his activities against James Stuart, duke of York. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 232. He and his father and brother Fitton Gerard, later 3rd earl of Macclesfield, were among the most enthusiastic acolytes of James Scott, duke of Monmouth, and played host to him when he visited Chester in the summer of 1682. CSP Dom. 1682, pp. 383, 387, 390. Even more damaging was Brandon’s shadowy involvement in the conspiracies of 1682-3; in early July 1683 he was imprisoned under suspicion of treason. He entered a writ of habeas corpus in late October 1683, was released on bail in late November and was finally discharged owing to lack of evidence in February 1684. CSP Dom. Jan.-June 1683, p. 385; July-Sept. 1683, p. 35; Morrice, ii. 394, 412, 451. He went to Flanders in the spring of 1684 for the Spanish campaign and while there maintained his dangerous contacts with the exiled Monmouth. Verney ms mic. M636/38, J. to Sir R. Verney, 30 Mar. 1684; HMC Drumlanrig, i. 205. Brandon was suspected of having made preparations for involvement in the duke’s failed uprising in the summer of 1685 and James II’s ministers were able to convince the Whig, Ford Grey, 3rd Baron Grey of Warke, ignominiously captured in flight after the battle of Sedgemoor, to testify against Brandon. Grey of Warke commented in his written confession that ‘I never saw a man so zealous for a rebellion, that kept his word and engagements no better, than my Lord Brandon’. F. Grey, Secret History of the Rye House Plot, 65, 67. Brandon was found guilty of treason on 26 Nov. 1685, which amounted to attainder, and sentenced to death two days later. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 58, 59, 65, 66; Add. 72481, ff. 78-79. James II granted him a reprieve and his date of execution was constantly postponed until in January 1687 the king ordered his release from captivity (on bail of £30,000) and pardoned him on 4 August. CSP Dom. 1685, pp. 399, 400; 1686-7, pp. 341, 342; 1687-9, pp. 43, 47; Add. 72481, f. 81. With the king’s support, Brandon tried to reverse his attainder by bringing in a writ of error in November 1687, but years later it was noted that this writ of error was phrased in such a way – making mention of Brandon’s supposed crimes against James II when in fact he had been charged with treason against Charles II – that could render it, and the attainder’s reversal, invalid. CSP Dom. 1687-9, pp. 43, 105. In January 1688 James II further granted Brandon control of the estate of his father Macclesfield. Macclesfield had been outlawed in late 1685 for his own support of Monmouth and his flight from the country. Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 43, ff. 21-22.

Such generosity on the part of James II was hardly altruistic, as the king used his control over Brandon’s life as a way of winning him over to furthering the royal policy in Brandon’s territorial base of Lancashire and Cheshire. Brandon, in gratitude, became a willing and energetic servant of James in the north-west, being one of the few Nonconformists placed on the Lancashire commission of the peace in April 1688, and serving as a trusted deputy lieutenant of the king’s choice for the lord lieutenant of the county, Caryll Molyneux, 3rd Viscount Molyneux [I]. Glassey, JPs, 275; CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 122. In this role Brandon worked hard to win the support of the region’s many Dissenters for the king’s Declaration of Indulgence and plans to repeal the Test Acts. In October, with the threat of a Dutch invasion, the king commissioned him colonel of the cavalry brigade which Brandon had briefly commanded in 1679. Dalton, Army Lists, i. 256; ii. 177, 178. Brandon appeared in arms for James II in the winter of 1688, one of the small band of army officers who remained loyal to him throughout, until the king himself formally disbanded his army and fled the country. Add. 28053, ff. 378-9; CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 377. Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, years later admitted that ‘I must do justice to that lord’s memory, that he never swerved from his duty, not even at the prince of Orange’s landing, although his father came over with the prince, and in the army with him’. Ailesbury went on to recount how in early 1689 John Churchill, earl (later duke) of Marlborough, wished to disband Brandon’s regiment because of the lack of zeal to the prince shown by his failure to defect with his troops (as Marlborough himself had so notoriously done). This so angered the solidly Williamite Macclesfield that he exclaimed to Marlborough, ‘My Lord, if my son had done such a base action, after having had his life given him so graciously, I would have been the first that would have shot him in the head.’ Ailesbury Mems. 132-3.

A Williamite in Lancashire, 1689-94

Such loyalty to James II did have the potential to damage Brandon’s future under the new regime, but he was able quickly to repair relations with William of Orange, and was rewarded remarkably well for someone who had been in arms against the invader until the last moment. He was returned for Lancashire in the Convention and William preferred to see him as the leader of that county than his rival, the head of the long-established Lancashire family of Stanley, William George Richard Stanley, 9th earl of Derby. Derby, as lord lieutenant of Lancashire and Cheshire, had fruitlessly dithered during November 1688, although he had never declared himself positively for James II as Brandon had done. Nevertheless, after William III had bestowed the lieutenancy of Cheshire on his enthusiastic supporter Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer (later earl of Warrington), Derby refused to serve in only one of his traditionally quasi-hereditary counties and William instead made Brandon lord lieutenant and later custos rotulorum of Lancashire in his place. One of the few Lancashire justices of the peace of James II’s reign to maintain his place on the magistrates’ bench under William, in his role as custos he tried to gain control over nominations to the Lancashire commission of the peace, formally in the hands of the Tory chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Robert Bertie, Baron Willoughby of Eresby (later duke of Ancaster). Glassey, 277-81, 284n7. Brandon also benefited at the expense of another ancient and prominent Lancashire family then in disgrace, the Catholic Molyneux, whose head, the 3rd Viscount Molyneux [I], had been James II’s lord lieutenant of Lancashire. Brandon was granted many of the quasi-hereditary offices in the gift of the duchy of Lancaster that this long-established but Catholic family had enjoyed – butler of Lancashire, constable of Liverpool Castle and steward of the hundreds of Blackburn, Tottington and Clitheroe. CSP Dom. 1689-90, p. 335; Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. Somerville 125, 138. Brandon was returned to Parliament for Lancashire in 1690 and through his many local and national offices he became the leading political force in that county. In March 1691 he was further awarded the vice admiralty of Lancashire and Cheshire, another local office William III removed from the control of the ineffectual Derby.

His government of Lancashire was controversial and increasingly partisan. Still under suspicion for his former loyalty to James II, he used the threat of a Jacobite invasion from Ireland as an opportunity to prove his loyalty to the new regime by a strenuous prosecution of the county’s many Catholics. CSP Dom. 1689-90, pp. 150, 158, 163, 165-6, 171, 177; 1690-1, pp. 17, 19, 45, 64, 296, 502. The Tory gentry of Lancashire, most especially the clerk of the peace Roger Kenyon^‡, though, could not forget Brandon’s chequered past – his disreputable youth, his close association with the opposition in 1678-83 and his even closer connection to the catholicizing religious policies of James II. They were angered at his appointment as lord lieutenant and continued to look towards the deposed Derby, ineffective as he was, for political leadership. HMC Kenyon, 212-13, 233-5. Brandon therefore increasingly turned to the Whigs and the county’s many Dissenters for his political base and proved himself energetic, inventive and unscrupulous in promoting the Whig cause in the county.

He was certainly at pains to assure William III of his loyalty and to solicit more favour from the court, as in a letter to the king of 1691:

I do not know how I was misrepresented to you at your first coming, but am sure you could not think ill of me for being faithful to a king to whom I owed my life. … But true to my trust, my principles and inclinations were always on your side, and when King James was gone away I am sure no man came to you with more sincere intentions to serve you. … My great ambition is to serve you in the army, because I think I can there do you the most service, and I hope you will place me in the post you consider the most suitable. CSP Dom. 1691-2, pp. 64-65.

But these ambitions were not met until after he had come to the attention of Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, who in June 1693 strongly urged Hans Willem Bentinck, earl of Portland, as part of his campaign to persuade Portland and the king to turn to the Whigs, to fulfil Brandon’s military ambitions by giving him a regiment of horse and to make him a major general. Sunderland explained to Portland why he felt this step was so important in a series of letters in that summer of 1693:

I could say a great deal in his behalf to show this to be reasonable and particularly the chief part, his being a major general, but I will say only this, that without excepting any man, none can do more good or hurt, than he, and if the king takes him into his service, he will be well served by him. … [then, in a later letter] I am very glad that you hope well for Brandon. I am and was at the first sensible of the difficulty and would not have proposed what I did if anything else would have done which I am sure nothing will, though he does not know that he has ever been thought of by the king, you or me. I cannot work without him, therefore pray finish the matter. He has roared out the king’s praises for what he has done this year in Flanders when others would not allow him the least. UNL, PwA 1217, 1222.

Sunderland no doubt valued Brandon’s influence in the Commons, for in an analysis of government supporters drawn up sometime in the autumn of 1692, it was noted that Brandon ‘is a leader of some Lancashire and Cheshire members.’ Browning, Danby, iii. 183. Brandon exhibited the political energy and ruthlessness which made him indispensable to Sunderland in his attempts to establish an electoral interest in the borough of Clitheroe through aggressively promoting the candidacy of his younger brother Fitton Gerard at a bitterly contested by-election in November 1693. Brandon ‘labour[ed] hard’ for his brother and tried to intimidate the electors into voting for him by sending a militia company, led by his close associate the Dissenter Hugh Willoughby, 11th (CP 12th) Baron Willoughby of Parham, into the town to treat the electors lavishly, ostensibly ‘in compliment to the ale houses at Clitheroe.’ Later Gerard and his associates surreptitiously entered the unlocked moot hall and secretly ‘elected’ a returning officer favourable to the Gerard interest. This led to a double return, protracted hearings of the case before the committee of elections, a new by-election called for the new year, another double return and finally the Commons’ decision in April 1694, after months of proceedings on this case, that Gerard had been duly elected. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 324-5.

2nd earl of Macclesfield and the Whigs, 1694-8

By the time of this decision Brandon had become 2nd earl of Macclesfield upon his father’s death on 7 Jan. 1694. The new earl first sat in the House on 24 Jan. 1694 and proceeded to sit in a further 41 meetings during the remainder of the 1693-4 session, where he was appointed to six committees. His chief deputy lieutenant Willoughby of Parham entrusted his proxy to him on 12 Feb. for the remainder of the session. On 17 Feb. 1694 Macclesfield voted to uphold chancery’s dismissal of the bill of Ralph Montagu, earl (later duke) of Montagu, claiming the estates of the deceased Christopher Monck, 2nd duke of Albemarle, against John Granville, earl of Bath. He was named to a committee on 3 Apr. to draw up the Lords’ objections to a clause in the bill to pay the debts of the late John Stawell, 2nd Baron Stawell, and two days later he was made a manager of the conference.

Macclesfield benefited from the honours and grants the court bestowed on its Whig supporters at the end of this session. Following Sunderland’s wishes, Macclesfield was granted his own cavalry regiment on 16 Feb. 1694 and in April he was further promoted to be a major general in the army. Dalton, iii. 2, 354, 397. His new regiment participated in the disastrous attack on Brest in June 1694. The officers in Macclesfield’s regiment reveal something of the company he kept. Goodwin Wharton^‡, the mentally unhinged younger brother of the Junto Whig, Thomas Wharton, later marquess of Wharton, was his lieutenant colonel while Edward Rich, 6th earl of Warwick, who was tried by the House years later for the murder of Captain Richard Coote, also appears to have gone as a volunteer with Macclesfield. A captain in the regiment was the young Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, already infamous for his involvement in the murder of William Mountfort, for which he had been acquitted by the House in February 1693. Ibid. iii. 354. Mohun was already Macclesfield’s nephew by marriage, having married, and then quickly separated from, his niece Charlotte Orby in 1691. Macclesfield, separated from his own wife by this time, must have found the violent and impetuous Mohun a kindred spirit and the two became fast friends, with consequences whose full import would not be felt for many years.

The earldom and the swing to the Whigs in national politics, engineered by his patron Sunderland, also gave Macclesfield an opportunity to strengthen his and his party’s interest in Lancashire. One of his gambits, the prosecution of suspected Jacobites in the ‘Lancashire Plot’ in the summer of 1694, eventually backfired on him. There had been rumours of Jacobite plotting among the many Catholics in Lancashire and Cheshire since 1689, when Macclesfield had first taken advantage of them to show his loyalty to the new regime. He had been made a commissioner to investigate lands or debts conveyed for ‘Popish or superstitious uses’ in 1693, and in the summer of 1694 he pursued a number of local Tories, Anglicans as well as Catholics, who had been accused of treason by a group of disreputable informers. CTB, 1693-6, p. 89. The partisan zeal with which he hounded these suspects made the Lancashire plot a national sensation and his long-standing opponent Roger Kenyon went out of his way to demonstrate that the informers were perjuring themselves. Jacobite Trials at Manchester in 1694 (Chetham Soc. xxviii); HMC Kenyon, 291-370. The case collapsed with the acquittal of the suspects in October 1694 but it had done much to increase partisan strife in the north-west.

Macclesfield came to 70 per cent of the meetings of the session of 1694-5 and was nominated to 21 committees, including that of 28 Dec. 1694 to draw up an address of condolence to the king for the death of Queen Mary. He had Willoughby of Parham’s proxy from 4 Jan. 1695, and on 29 Apr. 1695 produced a letter on his behalf in the House waiving his privilege in a pending legal suit with Lady Margaret Standish. HMC Kenyon, 379; HMC Lords, n.s. i. 573. Throughout January and February 1695 the House considered the prosecution of the reputed Jacobites in Lancashire the previous summer, which would probably have been discomfiting to Macclesfield, but his role in these proceedings is unknown and on 16 and 18 Feb. 1695 the House resolved both that there had been sufficient grounds for the prosecution of the suspected Jacobites and that the judges acting in the trial had done their duty, ‘according to law.’

The reverberations of the Lancashire plot proceedings were still felt in the Lancashire and Cheshire elections of November 1695, when Macclesfield tried to exact revenge on those who had thwarted him. He worked to defeat the sitting member for Preston, Christopher Greenfield^‡, who had represented the accused in the trials and had also tainted himself in the earl’s eyes by opposing attempts by Nonconformists to register Anglican chapels as Dissenting meeting houses. For Cheshire he encouraged Sir Willoughby Aston to stand against the sitting member Sir Robert Cotton^‡, as ‘he was much troubled to find him [Cotton], an altered man’. He had ‘voted ill in the House, particularly discountenancing the proceedings against Mr. [Peter] Legh of Lyme and the other prisoners in the Plot’ and had opposed legislation to bar counsel who refused to take the oaths from pleading before the House. When Aston demurred and defended Cotton, Macclesfield turned to bluster, assuring Aston that if he did not agree to stand the Whigs would find someone else to defeat Cotton. Liverpool RO, 920/MD, p. 174 (Aston Diary, 4 Oct. 1695). Elsewhere Macclesfield resorted to threats and strong-arm tactics, as in Wigan where reportedly he told the corporation that if they did not return his candidate Alexander Rigby^‡ ‘there should be two troops of horse quartered upon them’. Despite the strong Whig presence at polling day, including Willoughby of Parham, Rigby came third in the poll. Macclesfield was also involved in both a by-election and the general election at Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire, which one of the candidates, Richard More^‡ saw as his town as the manor had come to Macclesfield with his marriage in 1683 to Anna Mason. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 59-60, 338-9, 343, 497.

In the House Macclesfield came to 83 per cent of the first session of the new Parliament and he was named to 26 committees. Willoughby of Parham once more registered his proxy with Macclesfield on 19 Dec. 1695, and to this was joined on 30 Mar. 1696 the proxy of Macclesfield’s fellow Whig military commander Meinhard Schomberg, 3rd duke of Schomberg. On 17 Jan. 1696 he entered his protest against the resolution that the counsel for Sir Richard Verney, could be heard at the bar regarding his petition for a writ of summons as Baron Willoughby de Broke, as he had previously submitted an identical petition which had already been decided upon. Macclesfield signed the Association on 27 Feb. 1696 and on 14 Apr. was placed on a committee to draw up reasons to be presented in conference justifying the Lords’ amendments to the bill against trade with France. In the 1696-7 session he was present for 79 per cent of the sittings, was named to only five committees (including the drafting committee for the response to the king’s speech), and held the proxy of Willoughby of Parham from 10 Jan. 1697 for the entire session and that of Charles Bodville Robartes, 2nd earl of Radnor from 19 Jan. 1697. Radnor’s proxy having been vacated by his return on 22 Feb. 1697, Macclesfield reached his full complement of two proxies again by holding that of Thomas Lennard, earl of Sussex, from 8 Mar. to 7 Apr. 1697. He voted for the attainder of Sir John Fenwick^‡ on 23 Dec. 1696 and then joined a small band of about a dozen Whigs, including Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford and George Booth, 2nd earl of Warrington, in defending Charles Mordaunt, earl of Monmouth (later 3rd earl of Peterborough), from the charge of having supplied Fenwick with papers detailing strategies to be taken in his defence. Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i.174; HMC Buccleuch, ii.439-40.

The period 1696-7 saw Macclesfield at the height of his local power and influence, supported as he was by the resurgent Whigs in national politics. He was given new powers, being in March 1696 made lord lieutenant of all the six counties of north Wales, following the resignation of Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury. Macclesfield’s father, the first earl, had previously served as lord lieutenant for all 12 counties of Wales and the marcher counties of Herefordshire and Monmouthshire, and during these years Brandon had acted as an energetic and partisan deputy lieutenant throughout this large area, a role which he continued as lord lieutenant, even though his responsibility was reduced to the northern counties of the principality. TNA, SP 44/165; CSP Dom. 1689-90, p. 268; Add. 70014, f. 312; Add. 70015, f. 150. He continued with his vigorous electioneering in Lancashire itself and in February 1697 he skilfully played the factions in dispute over a new charter for the corporation of Lancaster off against each other in order to ensure the return of his brother Fitton in a by-election for that borough. His power would only have been increased by the appointment in May that year of a like-minded Whig chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, the 2nd earl of Stamford, to replace the Tory Willoughby of Eresby. Glassey, 279-85.

Divorce and family rift, 1698-1701

It was Macclesfield’s tumultuous domestic life which quickly became of greatest interest in the House in the session of 1697-8 when the sordid details of his fractured marriage were publicly aired in the hearings surrounding his divorce bill in February and March 1698. The bill and its proceedings were the sensation of this session, both for its revelations of salacious aristocratic life and for the important constitutional precedent it set. Parliament granted Macclesfield a divorce with the right to remarry without his first receiving a decree of separation a mensa et thoro from an ecclesiastical court. To some, such as the Tory Theophilus Hastings, 7th earl of Huntingdon, this was ‘against the ecclesiastical laws and canons of the Western church. … If I were in the House I should be against the bill’. A contemporary newsletter writer also thought that ‘the bill will not easily pass.’ Bodl. ms Eng. Hist. B 2, 102; CSP Dom. 1698, p. 8.

Macclesfield’s union with Anne Mason had long been troubled. They had married in 1683 largely so that he and his father could procure the large portion of £2,000 cash and lands worth approximately £10,000 p.a. provided by her father Sir Richard Mason^‡. The marriage had quickly broken down, as Anne took a strong dislike to her husband and his family – she later accused her father-in-law of expelling her from his London townhouse of Gerard House and of not fulfilling his side of the marriage settlement. The feeling was reciprocated on the Gerards’ side. HMC Lords, ii. 206. In 1685 Macclesfield separated from her and ejected her from his house, resolving ‘to ease both you and myself of so unpleasing a conversation … I am resolved to give you the satisfaction you have often asked, in parting with me’. Ibid. n.s. iii. 66-67. During these years of separation Anne gave birth to two children, a girl in 1695, who soon died, and a boy in 1697. All contemporaries, and later historians, are agreed that the father was Macclesfield’s Cheshire neighbour and fellow army officer Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers, especially as Anne decided to have her first child christened ‘Anne Savage.’ Macclesfield now saw the possibility of the Gerard estate, especially the valuable and much fought-over lands of Gawsworth in Cheshire, going to this bastard ‘heir’. As early as July 1697 he was making plans not only for a divorce from his wife but for an advantageous remarriage, even proposing a match with Portland’s 14-year-old daughter, 24 years his junior. UNL, PwA 159. In December 1697 he moved to obtain a decree of separation in the Court of Arches. The proceedings of this court moved slowly as the countess fought back and her counsel employed delaying tactics. Impatiently, Macclesfield introduced a bill for his divorce, with a right to remarry, in the House on 15 Jan. 1698. The countess quickly counter-attacked here as well and petitioned to be heard in her defence. Her counsel relied on the argument that the case had to be settled in the ecclesiastical courts first: ‘We say no bill of this nature had any effect till it had had the proper methods in other courts. We say it is in the nature of the Legislature to be an aid to other courts and not to take it from them.’ The House agreed to hear witnesses in the case even though it was pending in the Court of Arches. From 21 Jan. to 18 Feb. the House, and the populace outside Parliament, were caught up in hearing testimony from both sides on the cruelty and infidelity in this marriage. On some days the hearing of witnesses in this case was the only business done in the House. The House heard copious testimony from the earl’s witnesses, a range of maidservants, lodging house keepers, midwives, wet nurses and parish priests who told in detail about the clandestine visits of a ‘tall gentleman’ to Anne, of her surreptitious birth of Anne Savage in rented rooms in Chelsea and of the registration of the infant’s birth and its death only a few weeks later. More witnesses testified to the birth of the second, male child, as well and of Macclesfield’s growing concern over the conduct of his wife. For her part the countess produced witnesses from as far away as Breconshire to attest to her bad treatment at the hands of Macclesfield and his father, especially the moment when her father-in-law turned her out of Gerard House, which was contrasted to her applications to the king for mercy towards her husband when Brandon (as he then was) was sentenced to death. After a month of testimony the bill was voted to be read a second time and committed to the consideration of a committee of the whole on 24 Feb. and was debated from 26 Feb. to 2 March. At this point it faced further opposition from Macclesfield’s own brother, Fitton, who thought that the clause annulling the original marriage settlement, and returning to Anne Mason all the lands she had brought with her to the marriage, affected his rights and his reversion to his brother’s lands, but he was quickly persuaded to withdraw his petition. The bill was reported with amendments on 2 Mar. and it was passed by the House the next day. Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, and William Savile, 2nd marquess of Halifax, both entered a protest against the bill ‘because we conceive this is the first bill of this nature that hath passed, where there was not a divorce first obtained in the spiritual court; which we look upon as an ill precedent’. The bill quickly went through the Commons and received the royal assent on 2 Apr. 1698. By its terms both parties to the marriage had the right to remarry, Anne regained the lands she had brought with her to the marriage and her two children were declared illegitimate and thus ineligible to inherit the Gerard properties. HMC Lords, n.s. iii. 57-68.

After his divorce bill was settled, Macclesfield could turn his attention to other matters in the House. On 15 Mar. 1698, the day when his bill was brought back up from the Commons, he voted against committing the bill to punish Charles Duncombe^‡, a surprising vote considering that this was largely a Junto Whig measure. But there appears to have been some connection between Macclesfield and Duncombe, as the earl later stood surety for Duncombe for £5,000 to ensure his appearance in King’s Bench. Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 44, f. 101. Although Macclesfield himself was absent for much of April 1698 following the royal assent to his bill, two Whig colleagues both assigned their proxies to him in that month, Willoughby of Parham on 6 Apr. and Warrington on 20 Apr., both for the remainder of the session. He would have been able to use them when he returned in May to resume regular attendance in the House (he attended almost two-thirds of all sittings of this session). On 20 June he was named a manager for a conference on the bill of Peter Mews, bishop of Winchester, for the Alverstoke waterworks.

The repercussions of the divorce lasted into the general election of summer 1698. One of the clauses of the divorce act compelled Macclesfield to return to Anne the properties she had brought with her to the marriage, a condition which had been ‘put upon my lord, which he would not consent to till his best friends told him that otherwise they would not pass the bill’. CSP Dom. 1698, p. 144. Despite this provision Macclesfield was still able to wield influence in the election at Bishop’s Castle, part of his ex-wife’s portion, during the elections of late 1698. He had as a client his ex-wife’s cousin Charles Mason^‡, who was already assured of a seat for the borough through his own interest there, and together they sponsored the candidacy of Macclesfield’s distant kinsman, Sir Gilbert Gerard^‡. Opposing Gerard was Anne Mason’s brother-in-law, Sir William Brownlow^‡, who had been sympathetic to her for many years. The electoral contest quickly took on the appearance of a family feud between different parts of the Mason family. In the event, Gerard lost at the poll and both Mason and Brownlow were returned. Macclesfield was furious and hurled accusations that Jacobites had infiltrated the polls. James Vernon^‡ tried to be patient with the earl’s outbursts and explained to Shrewsbury, ‘ My Lord Macclesfield generally acts passionately, and therefore what he says in heat and anger ought to be examined over again; and the best of it is, after having vented himself, he will come back to a better temper.’ Gerard petitioned against Brownlow’s victory but the Commons found both parties guilty of bribery and declared the election void. Macclesfield also tried to impose his interest in several elections in Lancashire, and he was reported to have ‘carried down others into Lancashire besides his brother Fitton, that he might stick them into some of the boroughs’. Fitton, despite their recent falling out over the divorce, was his principal candidate and he managed to have him elected for a knight of the shire, though ‘with great difficulty’ and, as James Vernon reported, if Gerard had been opposed at the poll ‘it might have gone bad with him’. The Gerard interest was slowly weakening in Lancashire, and Macclesfield did not have the success in the boroughs in this election that he had had previously. Only one of his candidates was returned at Lancaster, none for Wigan and he appears to have withdrawn himself from active involvement in most of the other borough elections.

Macclesfield attended 70 per cent of the meetings of the first session of the 1698 Parliament and was named to 30 committees. He most likely held the proxy of Willoughby of Parham (who continued to stay away from the House) and others during this and subsequent sessions, but this cannot be certain owing to the absence of the proxy registers for 1698-1701. He was personally concerned with the disbandment bill of January 1699, as his regiment of horse was scheduled to be one of the first disbanded, and in early February he made a motion in the House that all the Huguenot officers serving in William III’s army should be naturalized gratis as a mark of thanks for their service, but it was not seconded. Bodl. Carte 228, ff. 266, 279-80. He was appointed a manager on 1 Mar. 1699 for the conference on the bill to prevent the distilling of corn and on 7 Mar. was placed on the large committee considering the trial of his former military colleague Warwick. In the following session he was present at a little over half of the sittings and was nominated to 21 committees. He told in the division on whether to reverse the decree in the cause of Beisely v. Stratford on 22 Dec. 1699 and on 23 Feb. 1700 voted to prevent further discussion on the bill to continue the old East India Company as a corporation and dissented from its passage. HMC Lords, n.s. iii. 414. He was a manager for the House in a series of three contentious conferences held 9-10 Apr. 1700 on the Commons’ supply bill with its controversial tack for the resumption of William III’s Irish grants. As a court Whig he probably followed the direction of William’s ministers and acceded to the supply bill, despite its offensive tack, at the last minute; certainly his name does not appear on the protest of 10 Apr. against the House’s withdrawing its objections to the bill.

Local decline and brief international prominence, 1701

The decline in his local interest in Lancashire continued apace in the election of early 1701 following the surprise dissolution of 19 Dec. 1700. In Lancashire, as elsewhere, the Tories and the country interest steadily regained ground against court Whigs. Macclesfield again supported Charles Mason and Sir Gilbert Gerard at Bishop’s Castle, with the same result – Gerard was defeated while Mason was returned, although his election was later declared void owing to bribery. In Lancashire Macclesfield and his brother struggled furiously to preserve Gerard’s hold of the county seat, even enlisting the aid of James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], husband to their niece Elizabeth. Gerard was defeated for the county, coming third in the poll. One of Macclesfield’s Whig candidates was returned again for Lancaster but otherwise he was not as visible in this election as in previous ones while other candidates in the boroughs strengthened their own local interests independent of the earl. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 320, 328, 343, 497-8.

Macclesfield was more involved in the proceedings of the Parliament of 1701, of which he attended 84 per cent of the sittings and was placed on ten committees, including the drafting committee to respond to the king’s speech. He was a manager for two conferences on the Partition Treaties held on 2 and 10 Apr. 1701, but he was also concerned with his personal affairs in this Parliament, as when he complained on 6 Mar. of a breach of privilege following the arrest of one of his servants. He introduced on 17 May 1701 a private bill to allow him to settle lands in his late father’s estate, which had constituted part of his original marriage settlement with Anne Mason, in preparation for his impending second marriage. There had been rumours from at least July 1700 that Macclesfield was preparing to marry Laetitia, the daughter and heiress of William Harbord^‡, who reportedly could bring with her a portion of £16,000. This supposition appears to be confirmed by his bequest to her in his will of a diamond necklace in the shape of a heart. CSP Dom. 1700-1, p. 89. The bill was committed but quickly ran foul once more of his brother, who petitioned on 2 June that the bill would deprive him of land settled on him by his father in 1671. Arguments were heard in the committee considering the bill, chaired by either Mohun or Stamford. The earl’s counsel argued that despite Gerard’s claim in his petition, Macclesfield had informed his brother well in advance of his intentions in the bill and the earl’s secretary attested that he had once heard the earl say that ‘he would do anything for him [Fitton], and he told Mr. Gerard so’. Macclesfield’s counsel also produced a paper purporting to be Gerard’s written consent to the bill, although Gerard’s counsel objected that this paper was not signed nor was it on stamped paper. Perhaps in exasperation at these obstacles, Macclesfield declared before the committee on 3 June 1701 that he would proceed no further with the bill. The committee, nevertheless, made an order to report to the House their suspicions that Gerard had known about the bill previous to its introduction in the House, despite his protestations, but this report does not appear to have been made and there were no further proceedings on the bill. HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 371-2. In any case at this point in the session the House’s attention was almost wholly occupied with the impeachment proceedings against John Somers, Baron Somers, and the other Junto lords. Macclesfield, who had earlier on 16 Apr. 1701 been placed on the large committee for the address requesting the king not to dismiss his Junto ministers, was opposed to the impeachments and voted for the acquittal of both Somers and Edward Russell, earl of Orford, on 17 and 23 June respectively.

Parliament was prorogued the day following Orford’s acquittal and during the summer Macclesfield headed an embassy to Hanover to present Sophia, the dowager electress of Hanover, with a copy of the Act of Settlement which made her heir to the throne of England and to invest George, the elector of Hanover, and future George I of England, with the garter. Contemporaries at home were shocked at the composition of the embassy assigned with such an important mission, for it consisted of Macclesfield, who had almost been executed for treason in 1685 and was an infamous divorcé, his friend Mohun, twice acquitted of murder by his peers in the House and with an unsavoury reputation as a rake and seducer, and Macclesfield’s client Charles Mason, involved in some dubious election results in Bishop’s Castle. Nevertheless, the embassy was welcomed at Hanover with all signs of honour, and both George and his mother entertained Macclesfield and his entourage lavishly. J. Toland, Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover (1705), 13-14, 58-65.

Macclesfield returned to London on 30 Oct. 1701, flushed with success, ready to climb still higher in William III’s court and in Whig circles and anticipating a lucrative marriage with Laetitia Harbord. Yet almost immediately upon returning the earl came down with a fever which quickly worsened and he died on 5 Nov. 1701, less than a week after his return. He was buried nine days later in Westminster Abbey, his executor Mohun making the arrangements. Macclesfield’s will caused consternation among his family and surprise among the public. He left his two surviving sisters and his nieces and nephews various small bequests of money and jewellery and allowed his brother Fitton to live on the estate of Gawsworth, but the remainder of his estate, and Gawsworth after Gerard’s death, was to go to his friend and nephew Mohun, with the further instructions that ‘in what relates to the public he will take the advice of the earl of Orford and Lord Somers’. Macclesfield’s bequest to Mohun was to have ramifications for the next several decades since, after the earldom of Macclesfield in that line of the Gerards became extinct with the death of Fitton Gerard in December 1702, Mohun had to conduct protracted legal disputes with members of Macclesfield’s remaining kin, particularly his sister Lady Charlotte Orby (mother of Mohun’s first wife) and his nephew, Hamilton, to maintain control of the estate. The dispute between Mohun and Hamilton came to a head when the two rivals fought a duel in November 1712, during which both were mortally wounded. This tragedy did not end the legal wrangling between Mohun’s heirs and the remaining Gerards over Gawsworth, which lasted well into the reign of George I.