GERARD, Sir Gilbert (1587-1670), of Flambards, Harrow-on-the-Hill, Mdx.

Background and early career

Gerard belonged to a cadet branch of a family that had settled at Ashton-in-Makerfield, near Wigan, by the mid-fourteenth century. Members of the family had been returned to Parliament for Lancashire, or its boroughs, on a regular basis since the 1380s. Gerard’s grandfather – the younger brother of the Elizabethan master of the rolls and duchy of Lancaster official Sir Gilbert Gerard† – had sat for Preston and Wigan in the mid-sixteenth century, and Gerard’s father had represented Wigan in 1584, 1586 and 1593.57HP Commons 1386-1421; HP Commons 1422-1504; HP Commons 1509-58; HP Commons 1558-1603; VCH Lancs. iv. 102, 143. It was his grandfather who had established the family in Middlesex, purchasing property in and around Harrow in the mid-sixteenth century and making the manor house of Flambards his principal residence.58VCH Mdx. iv. 209-10.

Gerard’s father secured him as his successor in the office of clerk of the duchy of Lancaster in 1608 but bequeathed him only a third of his estate in 1609 – although Gerard would inherit lands that his father had settled upon Gerard’s uncle when the latter died in the mid-1630s.59PROB11/114, ff. 314-315v; PROB11/173, f. 264. Gerard’s estate was also augmented as a result of his marriage in about 1614 to a daughter of the godly Essex knight Sir Francis Barrington†, whereby he obtained the Buckinghamshire manor of Aston Clinton.60VCH Bucks. ii. 313. Alliance with the Barringtons both reflected and widened his circle of friends among the kingdom’s leading puritan gentry, bringing him into the orbit of the godly Essex grandee Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick and his network, which included Sir Richard Everard*, Sir William Masham*, John Hampden* and Oliver St John*.61Barrington Lttrs. passim; Holmes, Eastern Assoc. 29; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 417. By 1630, at the latest, Gerard’s range of puritan contacts extended as far northwards as Yorkshire and the Barringtons’ kinsman Sir John Bourchier*.62C54/2858/7. The trustees he appointed in his will (later revoked), and confirmed by deed of settlement in September 1640, were Everard, Hampden, Masham and Gerard’s son-in-law Carew Mildmay*, and two of the three signatories to the indenture were St John and Oliver Cromwell*.63Bucks. RO, D-X1/72.

Gerard was first returned for Parliament in 1614, when he represented Wigan. By 1621, however, his electoral interest in Middlesex was strong enough to secure his return as a knight of the shire for the county. He stood for Middlesex again in the elections to the 1624 Parliament, taking the first place and defeating, among others, one of the duke of Buckingham’s clients Sir John Hippisley*. Gerard was also returned for Newtown on the Isle of Wight, a borough controlled by the Barringtons, but he opted to sit for Middlesex.64HP Commons 1604-29. In the 1625 elections for Middlesex, Gerard and Sir John Franklin* defeated the court candidate and privy councillor (Sir) John Suckling†. Moreover, speaking in the House, Gerard was critical of the king’s support for the royal chaplain and ‘Arminian’ cleric Richard Mountague. More than most Members, it seems, Gerard was keen to have Mountague punished for his controversial publications. He made his own religious sympathies plain that year, when he permitted the chamber that his father had built in Gray’s Inn to be used to accommodate the godly divine Richard Sibbes during his stints as the Inn’s salaried preacher.65PBG Inn, i. 268. Like John Pym* and other leading puritans, Gerard was a great admirer of Sibbes’s sermons.66Barrington Lttrs. 202; W.R. Prest, Inns of Ct. 1590-1640 (1972), 207. Returned for Middlesex again in the elections to the 1626 Parliament, he emerged as a leading critic of Buckingham, who revenged himself upon Gerard and other offending Commons-men by having them removed from their respective county benches.67HP Commons 1604-29; R. Cust, Forced Loan (Oxford, 1987), 189. For reasons that are now unclear, Gerard did not stand for re-election in 1628.

Gerard was one of the founding members of the Providence Island Company – a colonising venture, established in 1629-30, that brought together many of the nation’s foremost godly figures, including the earls of Holland and Warwick, Viscount Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, Pym, St John, Gerard’s brother-in-law Sir Thomas Barrington*, Sir Benjamin Rudyerd*, Henry Darley* and John Gurdon*.68CO124/1, p. 2; CO124/2, p. 1; CSP Col. 1574-1660, p. 123. Although Gerard was apparently keen to extricate himself from the company by early 1632, the contention that his participation in its proceedings merely reflected his friendship with Warwick, Pym and other members of their circle rather than ‘any strong interests or convictions of his own’ is misleading.69CO124/2, p. 53; CSP Col. 1574-1660, p. 141; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 361-2. The desire of Gerard and his godly friends to promote English colonisation across the Atlantic was very largely inspired by the same conviction that prompted their opposition (of which there is plenty of evidence in Gerard’s case) to what they perceived as the crown’s arbitrary policies at home – that is, the spiritual and political imperative to uphold the Protestant cause in the great apocalyptic struggle against the popish Antichrist. Having decided, or been obliged, to remain a Providence Island adventurer, Gerard helped to raise money for the company, permitted it to hold meetings in his chambers in Gray’s Inn and served as its deputy governor in 1634-5.70CO124/2, pp. 59, 116, 116-9; CSP Col. 1574-1660, pp. 178, 206; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Gilbert Gerard’. By early 1636, he had ceased to attend the company’s meetings. But his commitment to English colonial interests remained strong enough to prompt his involvement in setting up the Long Parliament’s Committee for Foreign Plantations* in 1643 – a body headed by Warwick with a remit to preserve England’s transatlantic interests against the ‘outrageous malice of papists’.71Supra, ‘Committee for Foreign Plantations’.

Gerard might have devoted more time and money to the Providence Island Company but for his bitter and protracted feud during the 1630s with the lord of the manor of Harrow, George Pitt. The two men’s antipathy towards each other, which spilled over from legal wrangling into armed trespass and similar acts of intimidation and reprisal, may well have been exacerbated by religious differences, for while Gerard was a puritan it seems that Pitt was attached to Laudian devotional practices.72LMA, ACC/0076/0783, 0788, 0793, 0816; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Gilbert Gerard’. An even greater – though possibly related – drain on Gerard’s finances than his quarrel with Pitt was the £3,000 or more that he spent during the 1620s and 1630s ‘re-edifying and beautifying’ Flambards.73LMA, ACC/0076/0791. Allegedly ‘much in debt’ before the civil war, he was obliged to borrow £2,000 by statute staple in April 1640.74LC4/202, f. 171v; [C. Walker*], Hist. of Independency (1648), 168 (E.463.19).

Gerard’s defiance of authority during the personal rule of Charles I was not confined to the colonial and manorial spheres, for even before Hampden contested the legality of Ship Money in 1637, Gerard was one of a group of puritan gentry who refused to pay the levy and suffered removal from the commission of peace as a result.75CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 155; LMA, ACC/0076/0782; J.T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry (1984), 195-6, 211; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Gilbert Gerard’. On the other hand, there is no evidence that he was among those Providence Island grandees – Warwick, Saye, Brooke and Pym, for example – who conspired with the Covenanters in 1639-40 to bring down the personal rule.

Parliamentary career, 1640-1

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Gerard and Franklin were returned for Middlesex, where Gerard’s noted opposition to ‘unparliamentary’ taxation ensured him the dominant electoral interest.76Supra, ‘Middlesex’. The crown suspected, probably with good reason, that his evasions when it came to paying military charges during the second bishops’ war of 1640 reflected principled opposition to royal policies and that he had encouraged a similar spirit of non-compliance among his tenants and the Middlesex taxpayers generally.77SP16/457/28, f. 76; CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 164-5; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 134, 136. He was appointed to four committees in the Short Parliament and presented a petition to the House from Middlesex on 17 April, demanding an end to Ship Money and military charges and calling for annual Parliaments.78CJ ii. 4a, 8a, 12b, 18b; Aston’s Diary, 11; Procs. Short Parl. 157; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 108. Having apprised the House on 29 April concerning the case of a privy council official who had released 15 Jesuits in his custody without proper authority, Gerard was ordered to deliver this information to a committee set up to itemise the kingdom’s grievances.79CJ ii. 16a; Aston’s Diary, 85. In the momentous debate on 4 May in response to the crown’s request for supply, he supported the demands of Hampden and St John that the House should first vote Ship Money illegal. Indeed, Gerard was among those Commons-men who helped to scupper the crown’s offer to barter Ship Money for 12 subsidies by demanding that military charges be added to the list of grievances that must first be addressed before any vote of supply.80Aston’s Diary, 129; Procs. Short Parl. 194; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 120. His high-profile opposition to military charges apparently played well with the Middlesex voters in the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, when he and Franklin were returned for the county again, apparently without a contest.81Supra, ‘Middlesex’.

With a tally of well over 400 committee appointments between November 1640 and Pride’s Purge, and many contributions to debate, Gerard was one of the most active Commons-men in the Long Parliament. Yet although he enjoyed a long and distinguished parliamentary career, he has not figured nearly as prominently in the histories of the period as his close political allies Pym and (until 1644) St John. His failure to command the attention that his standing and connections in the House would seem to deserve was also apparent at the time. He rarely chaired committees and was never entrusted with drafting important declarations or legislation. Similarly, he was appointed to relatively few conference-management or reporting teams and seldom served as a teller. After nominations to committees, his most common form of assignment in the House was as a messenger to the Lords, for which the selection criteria owed as much to social status as political talent. The discernible distance between Gerard and the centre of political action at Westminster is all the more striking given his intimacy with Warwick, Pym, St John and other members of the parliamentary leadership, or ‘the junto’ as it was known. Either he was not privy to their counsels or preferred a less prominent role than did the majority of Providence Island grandees. Edward Hyde*, the future earl of Clarendon, placed Gerard with George Lord Digby*, Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and William Strode I* in the category of those Commons-men who in 1640-1 ‘observed and pursued the dictates and directions’ of the grandees ‘according to the parts which were assigned to them, upon emergent occasions’.82Clarendon, Hist. i. 250.

During the opening session of the Long Parliament – that is, until the autumn 1641 recess – Gerard was named to approximately 92 committees and two conference-management teams, appointed a messenger to the Lords on four occasions and served as a teller in one division.83CJ ii. 74a, 125a, 134a, 189b, 203b, 232b; LJ iv. 146a, 233a, 291a. A significant proportion of these committee appointments confirm his support for reforming the perceived abuses of the personal rule, punishing their authors and strengthening the power of Parliament relative to that of the crown. Thus he was named to committees for regulating the lieutenancy, to prepare charges against Archbishop William Laud and other promoters of the ‘great design of the subversion of the laws of the realm and of religion’, and to consider legislation for holding Parliaments annually and preventing the clergy from exercising temporal office.84CJ ii. 44b, 50b, 52a, 53b, 60a, 75a, 79b, 82a, 91a, 92a, 94b, 99a, 101a, 114a, 128b, 129a, 157a, 165b, 166b, 181b, 197b, 200a. On the floor of the House, he moved to expedite legislation against the new Canons issued by Convocation.85Procs. LP iv. 394. It is likely that he was a prime mover in the Commons’ prosecution in November 1640 of the sheriff of Middlesex, Sir Henry Spiller†, who had investigated Gerard and other tax-refusers that summer. Spiller was accused by Gerard of, among other things, declaring that ‘it is a witless thing to petition the king for a Parliament; it will not blow the Scottish rebels away’.86CJ ii. 33b; Procs. LP i. 147, 230, 234, 241, 553.

Gerard figured particularly prominently in the House’s initiatives to counter the perceived threat of popish plotting. From the opening weeks of the Long Parliament he was regularly included on committees, or sent with other Members into London, for investigating and suppressing the perceived threat posed by ‘papists, priests and Jesuits’.87CJ ii. 24b, 34a, 74b, 113b, 118b, 119a, 134b, 143b, 144a, 147a, 158a, 197a, 208b, 221a; LJ iv. 385b; Procs. LP iv. 321, 340. On 23 November 1640, he moved that all priests and Jesuits ‘that might be taken about the town might be committed’ and that ‘the great and principal countenancers of recusants … might be attached [detained] and examined’.88Procs. LP i. 250, 255, 259. Alarmed, like most Parliament-men, by the king’s reprieve of the condemned Catholic priest John Goodman in January 1641, Gerard was appointed a committeeman and a messenger to the Lords in an effort to reverse this royal pardon and to effect ‘the expulsing of priests and Jesuits’.89CJ ii. 72a, 74a; LJ iv. 146a; Procs. LP ii. 288, 292. Having declared, on 28 January, that the courtier Sir Kenelm Digby was guilty of high treason in securing the conversion of a young Irish nobleman to Catholicism, Gerard was named to the committee set up that day to examine Digby on this and related charges.90CJ ii. 74b; D’Ewes (N), 295. When the issue of papists among the queen’s servants was raised in mid-March, Gerard insisted that observing the laws against recusants should take priority over any concessions associated with Charles’s 1625 marriage treaty.91Two Diaries of Long Parl. 21; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 267. On 15 May, he presented the Commons with a list of 1,750 convicted recusants in Middlesex, and later that month – partly as a result of lobbying by the MP and Middlesex magistrate Laurence Whitaker – the House restored him to the county bench, with instructions that he join his former colleagues in tendering the oaths of supremacy and allegiance to Middlesex’s recusants.92Supra, ‘Committee for Examinations’; CJ ii. 158a; Procs. LP iv. 402; C231/5, p. 449.

Gerard’s zeal against popery was matched by his enthusiasm for godly reform. Settling a preaching ministry and suppressing ‘superstition and idolatry’ were among his assignments in the House.93CJ ii. 54b, 84b, 165b. More revealing still is his selection with Sir Arthur Ingram on 18 November 1640 to thank the eminent puritan divines Cornelius Burges and Stephen Marshall for their sermons to the House the previous day.94CJ ii. 30b. The next day (19 Nov.), he supported motions by Denzil Holles, Sir John Wray and Sir Robert Harley that the communion table in St Margaret’s, Westminster – Parliament’s parish church – be removed from its Laudian, ‘altar-wise’ position in the chancel during services and instead placed centrally.95Procs. LP i. 190. Gerard was probably a leading member of the committee set up on 30 November to consider the petition of the godly minister George Walker, who had been imprisoned in 1638 as ‘a preacher of factious and mutinous doctrine … who had raised up more troubles and stirs then any other in the City’. Walker dedicated his 1641 treatise God Made Visible in His Workes to Gerard, Sir Thomas Barrington, Sir William Masham and Sir Martin Lumley* in acknowledgement of their ‘favour and respect’.96CJ ii. 40a; G. Walker, God Made Visible in His Workes (1641), epistle dedicatory; ‘George Walker’, Oxford DNB.

In the great root and branch debate on 8 February 1641, Gerard joined those Commons-men – mostly, but not exclusively, future parliamentarians – who urged that the more radical of the two petitions presented to Parliament on this issue, which called for the abolition of episcopacy, should be committed rather than laid aside.97Procs. LP ii. 392. A few weeks later, on 27 February, he seems to have aligned with a group of godly Members in defence of a pamphlet by one of the Scots commissioners calling for the abolition of episcopacy and the execution of the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†).98Two Diaries of Long Parl. 12; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 198, 270. Although not a figure of any great consequence in Anglo-Scottish relations during the early years of the Long Parliament, he was thought sufficiently well disposed towards the Covenanters to secure nomination to a bicameral committee established on 22 June 1641 – and headed by some of the junto peers – to liaise with the Scots for payment of the brotherly assistance.99CJ ii. 182b.

Gerard made several telling contributions to Parliament’s prosecution of Strafford and its dismantling of his political legacy. It was Gerard who, on 13 November 1640, presented a petition to the House for the release of his Providence Island associate, the godly Yorkshire gentleman Henry Darley, who had been imprisoned by Strafford on the well-founded suspicion that he had been conspiring with the Scottish Covenanters (Darley would be released granted later that month).100Supra, ‘Henry Darley’; Procs. LP i. 127, 132, 136. Regularly named to committees during the opening session concerning the English and Scottish armies encamped in northern England after the second bishops’ war, and for feeding and managing the financial machinery needed to maintain them (and the navy), Gerard personally pledged £1,500 towards securing a City loan for paying the soldiery.101CJ ii. 34a, 107a, 113a, 197b, 212b, 214a, 222a; Procs. LP i. 229. He was also included on successive bicameral commissions for disbursing the proceeds of the subsidies and assessment voted by Parliament in 1641-2 – a substantial proportion of which went towards maintaining and paying off the king’s army in the north.102SR v. 78, 101, 167. Gerard was among the active core of these commissioners – a group that was dominated by members of the junto or those aligned with them.103SP28/1C, ff. 6, 9, 12, 15, 19, 29, 32, 47, 62. On 5 February 1641, he was added to the committee for preparing charges against Strafford – specifically with reference to his military proceedings in northern England in defiance of the Scots – and on 6 March, he was included on a committee of both Houses to consider matters relating to the earl’s trial.104Supra, ‘Sir Thomas Danbie’; CJ ii. 79b, 98a. When the final vote was taken in the Commons on 21 April on whether to pass the bill for Strafford’s attainder, it was Gerard and his brother-in-law Barrington who were majority tellers for the yeas (although through a clerical error in the Journal they are named as tellers for the noes).105CJ ii. 125a; Procs. LP iv. 41.

The tangled web of intrigue and controversy surrounding Strafford reached its climax late in April 1641 with a royal plot to spring the lord lieutenant from the Tower and spirit him away by ship. In response to this so-called ‘Tower plot’, Gerard joined Barrington and other Members closely associated with the junto in pushing on 3 May for the introduction of the Protestation. He advised the House to proceed swiftly in passing the new oath, for ‘if it should be known to the ill counsellors’ at court, he warned, ‘they would endeavour to dissolve us’.106Procs. LP iv. 181; CJ ii. 134a; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 290.

Gerard’s committee and other appointments that summer place him on the periphery of that relatively select group of Members which addressed the inter-related issues of disbanding the armies, investigating the army plots, framing the Ten Propositions and putting in place measures to govern the kingdom while the king was in Scotland and Parliament in recess.107CJ ii. 172b, 187b, 189b, 190b, 203b, 240a; LJ iv. 291a; Procs. LP v. 554. On 15 July, he reported from, and may have chaired, a committee set up three days earlier (12 July) to determine what parliamentary business should be expedited before the recess.108CJ ii. 207b, 212a. And in a debate on the punishment of the army plotters, on 24 July, he moved for a commission of oyer and terminer to try each one individually by indictment.109Procs. LP vi. 83. He was named in second place, after Pym, to the Recess Committee*.110CJ ii. 288b.

Gerard’s last notable contribution to the House’s proceedings before the recess had been to present a petition to the House on 6 September 1641 from the inhabitants of Stepney, London, requesting permission to employ preachers and lecturers at their own expense. Their first appointees would be a friend of the Barringtons, William Greenhill, and Jeremiah Burroughs, who was a protégé of the earl of Warwick. When the House wished to thank Obadiah Sedgwick and William Gouge – both clerical clients of Warwick – in May 1642 and to request further sermons from them, it would turn to Gerard and Barrington.111CJ ii. 281b, 587a; Procs. LP vi. 658; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 21, 28; ‘William Greenhill’, Oxford DNB.

Gerard and the junto, 1641-2

Gerard did not break ranks with the parliamentary leadership in the months after the Irish rebellion and the king’s flight from London – yet nor did he join Pym and his closest confederates at the centre of policy-making at Westminster. The claim that by December 1641 he was a member of the high-powered ‘committee of seven’, which included Pym and other junto-men, is groundless.112D’Ewes (C), 16. Between the re-assembling of Parliament in October 1641 (after the autumn recess) and the outbreak of civil war in August 1642, he was appointed to some 90 committees – on 15 occasions in first place.113CJ ii. 295a, 304b, 319a, 332b, 337b, 377b, 400a, 440a, 517a, 524a, 590a, 601a, 654b, 672b, 697a. Yet this last statistic, like his 14 appointments as a messenger to the Lords during the same period, is more a measure of his standing as Middlesex’s senior and most experienced Member than any deep involvement in concerting policy or drafting legislation.114CJ ii. 291a, 293b, 327a, 341a, 378b, 439b, 457a, 468a, 506b, 544b, 556b, 573b, 590a, 610a; LJ iv. 398b, 402a, 456a, 471b, 513a, 595b, 614a, 628a, 687b; v. 21a, 42a, 67a, 89a, 113b. In fact, he appears to have chaired only one committee in these months. On 7 February 1642, the House appointed him chairman of the committee for collecting poll money – Gerard now being a stickler against any form of tax evasion, particularly in Middlesex – although there is no evidence that he ever reported from this body.115CJ ii. 314a, 332b, 415a; D’Ewes (C), 131, 163, 236, 340; PJ i. 328, 371, 466, 473. His tally of only two tellerships and four appointments to conference-management teams during this period tells the same story: of a Commons-man operating at some remove from those primarily responsible for steering the House’s proceedings.116CJ ii. 294a, 510a, 609a, 611a, 680b.

It was as one of the junto’s ‘capable first lieutenants’ that Gerard presented a bill to the House on 21 October 1641 – two days after Parliament had re-assembled following the recess – for disqualifying all clergymen from exercising temporal office and thereby debarring the bishops from sitting in the Lords. 117D’Ewes (C), 21; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 410; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 417. He had not drafted the bill, so far as is known. But in the committee of the whole House to which it was referred, he was a majority teller with Sir John Clotworthy in favour of retaining a clause in the bill’s preamble that ‘the office of the ministry being of so great importance … it will take up the whole man’, leaving no time for secular employments.118D’Ewes (C), 25; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 410. On 23 October, he was appointed to carry the re-drafted bill up to the Lords.119CJ ii. 293b; LJ iv. 402a.

Godly reform, like the removal of the clergy from temporal office, remained among Gerard’s priorities at Westminster, and he would regularly present petitions and make motions during 1642 on behalf of puritan ministers and their parishioners.120CJ ii. 541b, 556b, 677b; LJ v. 42a; PJ ii. 194, 293; iii. 235. However, the great majority of his committee and other appointments during the last three months of 1641 concerned measures for securing the kingdom, and London and Middlesex in particular, against the threat of papists (Irish as well as English) and the machinations of the king’s ‘evil counsellors’. Whenever the need arose to examine Catholics and other suspected persons or to strengthen London’s defences, Gerard was often among the House’s nominees for the job. For his part, he was keen to use the Commons’ authority to add trusted men to the Middlesex trained bands and to bear down upon the county’s Catholics.121CJ ii. 290a, 291a, 294a, 295a, 303a, 304b, 310a, 319a, 321a, 324b, 327a, 337b, 340a, 356b, 357a; LJ iv. 398b, 456a; D’Ewes (C), 76, 79, 98. On 20 November, he presented the committee for removing recusants from public life with a list – probably compiled from his files as a Middlesex magistrate – of the ‘great papists in and about London’, on which were named several Catholic peers.122D’Ewes (C), 173, 174. In December, he assisted the junto in gathering evidence for possible impeachment proceedings against the king’s leading adviser John Digby, 1st earl of Bristol and for discrediting Charles’s new appointment as lieutenant of the Tower, Colonel Thomas Lunsford.123CJ ii. 358a; D’Ewes (C), 342, 343, 353; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 474-5, 479. Nevertheless, these instances of apparent close collaboration in the House between Gerard and the parliamentary leadership are rare. Furthermore, his appointments in relation to Irish and Anglo-Scottish affairs before the spring of 1642 were infrequent and generally of a non-executive nature and again suggest that he was not among the front rank of parliamentary managers and policy-makers.124CJ ii. 341a, 357a, 365a, 391b, 468b, 506b, 524b, 544b; LJ iv. 471b, 687b; v. 21a. In the heated debates over the Grand Remonstrance that November, he had apparently said nothing, except to move that a petition to the king justifying the Remonstrance be accompanied by a declaration congratulating him on his return from Scotland.125D’Ewes (C), 197.

Gerard’s association as a Commons-man and Middlesex magistrate with Parliament’s initiatives to secure London and the kingdom against its ‘popish’ enemies became even more pronounced following the king’s attempted arrest of the Five Members early in 1642 and his subsequent flight from London. Much of Gerard’s time at Westminster during the first half of 1642 was apparently taken up with security matters, whether it be framing declarations to urge the public ‘to defend their several counties from invasion by papists and other ill-affected persons’ or in identifying, interrogating and generally harassing Catholics and other perceived ‘malignants’.126CJ ii. 372a, 377b, 383b, 385a, 390b, 394a, 394b, 398b, 400a, 409a, 412b, 439b, 484b, 510a, 523b, 530a, 535b, 539b, 590a, 591a, 596a; LJ iv. 595b; v. 89a; PJ i. 188, 252. Perhaps his most important appointment in this respect was his addition, at Whitaker’s behest, to the newly-established Committee for Examinations* on 17 January.127Supra, ‘Committee for Examinations’; CJ ii. 385a. On the floor of the House, he made motions requesting (among other things) house searches for papist arms caches, the provision of ammunitions for the troops guarding Parliament, for additions to the committee for mulcting recusants, the despatch of warships to patrol the coast of Ireland, and the printing of a letter from Sir John Hotham* concerning the activities of a prominent Catholic near Hull, ‘that the world may see who they he that are against us’.128PJ i. 121, 207, 256; ii. 37, 239, 380. On 24 January, he ushered into the House a group of Middlesex gentlemen with a petition bemoaning the ‘evil counsels, crafty devices, desperate plots and apparent opposition from that malignant party to hinder the happy progress of this Parliament’ and requesting, by way of remedy, ‘that the popish lords and bishops, whose voting in the House of Peers is found to be a grand impediment thereto, may be removed thence, and the whole kingdom put into such a present posture of defence that we may be safe both from all practices of the malignant party at home and the endeavours of any ill-affected states abroad’.129PJ i. 144-5; LJ iv. 539. When one of these ‘popish lords’, James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond, had the temerity on 25 January to urge the Lords to adjourn for six months, Gerard joined those in Commons who denounced him as an enemy of the commonwealth.130PJ i. 202.

Gerard’s committee nominations and (usually brief) interventions in debate indicate that he was a dependable, rather than leading, combatant in Parliament’s ‘paper skirmishes’ with the king during the spring and summer of 1642. Similarly, his handful of appointments relating to the Militia Ordinance and the defence of Hull suggest that he was neither an architect nor prominent champion of these measures, although he undoubtedly approved of both.131CJ ii. 398b, 461a, 468a, 478b, 510a, 550b, 562a, 573b, 577a, 591a, 609a, 635b, 638b, 653b, 671b; LJ iv. 628a; v. 67a, 89a. He may have assumed a slightly larger role in Anglo-Scottish relations with his appointment to the Commons’ 3 May commission for paying the brotherly assistance to the Scots, and to a committee set up on 2 June to consider the policy of a commission for conserving the peace between the two kingdoms.132CJ ii. 555b, 601a. But he featured more prominently in Irish affairs at Westminster – particularly following his addition on 12 May to the committee for Irish Adventurers, of which he was an active member.133CJ ii. 569b; PJ ii. 394. The previous month (Apr.), he had pledged £2,000 as an Irish Adventurer, although his actual investment would total only £600.134Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 565; Bottigheimer, Eng. Money, Irish Land, 182; J.R. MacCormack, ‘The Irish Adventurers and the English civil war’, Irish Historical Studies, x. 48. The Commons employed him as a messenger on several occasions during the spring and summer of 1642 to present various Irish bills to the Lords and to urge their passage into law.135CJ ii. 506b, 544b; LJ iv. 687b; v. 21a, 113b. As one of that group of Commons-men to whom the House regularly turned in mid-1642 to raise money in the City, he was nominated with Richard Boyle, Viscount Dungarvan and Oliver Cromwell on 7 June to obtain an advance of £10,000 from the Irish Adventurers’ committee, secured against a loan from the Grocers’ Company of London. The next day (8 June), Gerard reported the successful outcome of these negotiations.136CJ ii. 570b, 605a, 610b, 612a, 623a; PJ iii. 41. On 14 July, he was named in first place to a committee to formulate propositions ‘for the good of Munster and the service of Ireland’.137CJ ii. 672b. His only tellership of 1642 was in a non-partisan division in July concerning Irish policy.138CJ ii. 680b.

Treasurer-at-war, 1642-3

Gerard’s evident concern to secure the kingdom against the machinations of the ‘popish party’ translated readily from mid-1642 into a determination to counter the royalists’ warlike preparations in the provinces, if necessary by force.139CJ ii. 590a, 591a, 609a 610a, 620a, 630a, 631a, 689b; LJ v. 89a, 113b, 145b; PJ iii. 34. To this end, he supported the creation of an army in June under the command of Warwick’s cousin Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and the financial expedients required to put it in the field.140CJ ii. 610b, 623a, 628b, 638b, 660b, 697a, 743a. He himself pledged to bring in four horses for Essex’s army and to maintain them at his own expense.141PJ iii. 467. Having been added to the committee on the propositions for supplying the army, he informed the House on 22 July that of the 416 horse pledged by Members only 61 had so far been listed.142CJ ii. 660b; PJ iii. 252. Three days later (25 July), he duly supplied Essex’s commissary with four horses, complete with riders, their armour and equipment, worth an estimated £100 – one of the largest such subscriptions made by any Commons-man.143SP28/131, pt. 3, f. 24v.

Gerard’s readiness to contemplate a military solution to the kingdom’s troubles, combined with his experience as one of Parliament’s and Middlesex’s financial overseers, prompted his nomination by the Commons on 28 July 1642 as treasurer to Essex’s newly-established army. Once the Lords had agreed to this resolution, on 30 July, the Commons ordered Bulstrode Whitelocke and Edmund Prideaux I to prepare the necessary ordinance.144CJ ii. 695a, 697b; LJ v. 249a. The requirements of this new office largely explain Gerard’s addition to Parliament’s recently created executive the Committee of Safety* (CS) on 9 August and perhaps also to the Committee of Navy and Customs* ten days later (19 Aug.).145Supra, ‘Committee of Safety’; CJ ii. 712a, 728a; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 439. Gerard’s appointment as treasurer had doubtless owed much to the strength of his connections with some of the CS’s leading members – and in particular, perhaps, the former Providence Island grandees Viscount Saye and Sele and John Pym.

By the terms of the 10 August 1642 ordinance appointing Gerard treasurer-at-war and of an order of both Houses passed a month later, he was authorised to disburse money for pay and equipment only on receipt of warrants issued by Essex, his nominees, or by any five members of the CS.146LJ v. 281b-282a, 346b; A. Graham, ‘Finance, localism and military representation in the army of the earl of Essex’, HJ lii. 885. Gerard employed the services of two deputies: Captain Francis Vernon and William Jessop*, who was the secretary of the Providence Island Company.147Infra, ‘William Jessop’; CJ ii. 711b. The vast majority of the warrants issued by the CS were probably handled by Jessop at Guildhall, London – which served as the treasury for the money and plate collected on the propositions for the maintenance of Essex’s army – while virtually all of those issued by the earl or his staff were directed to Vernon, Gerard’s deputy in the field.148CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 395; SP28/261-4, passim; SP28/299, ff. 836, 1003, 1061, 1082, 1273, 1304-5, 1353, 1358-61, 1366-75, 1378-9; T. Crawshaw, ‘Military finance and the earl of Essex’s infantry in 1642 – a reinterpretation’, HJ liii. 1039. Gerard’s day-to-day involvement in these financial operations may well have fallen short of constituting the ‘full-time job’ that one authority has claimed it did, and it certainly did not necessitate lengthy absences from the House.149L. Glow, ‘The cttee. of safety’, EHR lxxx. 302. Moreover, his place at the centre of Parliament’s war machine would have guaranteed that his salary of £2 a day was promptly and fully paid.150SP28/143, pt. 6, f. 21. If Clement Walker* can be credited, Gerard was also allowed three pennies in every pound received, as well as ‘gratuities’ that would amount by 1645 to the staggering – and almost certainly exaggerated – figure of £60,000.151[Walker], Hist. of Independency, 168. Gerard’s personal finances were certainly healthy enough by March 1643 for him to repay the £2,000 loan he had contracted by statute staple in April 1640 – Jessop acting as witness to the cancelling of the bond.152LC4/202, f. 171v.

Gerard’s appointment as treasurer-at-war boosted his parliamentary career as well as his income. Between September 1642 and March 1644, when he appears to have taken unofficial leave of absence, he was appointed a manager or reporter of nine conferences with the Lords and served as a teller in six divisions – figures that suggest he was moving closer to the centres of political management and party rivalry at Westminster.153CJ ii. 861b, 938b, 962b, 973a, 977a, 979a, 999a; iii. 31a, 119a, 126b, 133a, 178b, 249a, 378a. His tally of appointments as a messenger to the Lords during this period fell to eight, and he was nominated to 95 or so committees.154CJ ii. 877b, 948b, 980a; iii. 20a, 62b, 98a, 252a, 373a; LJ v. 476b, 622a, 672b; vi. 20a, 59a, 229b, 387a. He was named in first place to nine of these committees, and he reported from several more or was assigned responsibility for particular pieces of committee business.155CJ ii. 795b, 852b, 951a, 992a; iii. 181a, 240b, 250a, 277b, 283a, 286a, 312b, 341b, 344a, 414a. However, there is no evidence that he chaired any of these bodies. On 12 April 1643, the Commons referred the work of a committee for conferring with the City about the proposed excise tax specially to the care of Gerard and Michael Noble. But the chairman in this instance was apparently Noble.156Infra, ‘Michael Noble’; CJ iii. 41a. If the ordinances that Gerard reported in December 1643 and January 1644 for making void all legal offices held by royalists and for the defence of Middlesex were the work of committees – which he might be presumed to have chaired – rather than his own hand, they have left no clear trace in the Journals.157CJ iii. 351b, 367a; Add. 18779, f. 36; Harl. 165, f. 257v.

The setbacks of the Edgehill campaign in the autumn of 1642, far from convincing Gerard of the need to seek a soft peace with the king, appear to have strengthened his commitment to warlike measures. On 7 November, he was named to a nine-man committee dominated by army officers and fiery spirits for urging the earl of Warwick to list volunteers for a new army to defend London.158CJ ii. 838a. Two days later (9 Nov.), he was included on a parliamentary delegation to apprise the City of measures for mobilising Essex’s army and for assuring the citizens of Parliament’s readiness to seek an accommodation only on such terms as would secure the subjects’ liberties and the ‘power ... and purity of religion’.159CJ ii. 842a; Two Speeches Delivered by the Earl of Holland, and Mr. Io: Pym (1642, E.126.48). His name headed a committee set up on 16 November for empowering the London and Middlesex trained bands to defend Parliament and the City with the utmost force.160CJ ii. 852b. In contrast with the parliamentary diarist Sir Simonds D’Ewes, he had no sympathy with any gentleman who refused on principle to contribute to Parliament’s war chest.161Add. 18777, f. 27; Harl. 164, f. 14v. In addition, he was prepared to work with the ‘fiery spirits’ in identifying and coercing those Commons-men who had failed to honour their financial obligations towards Essex’s army.162Harl. 164, f. 287. When it was moved on 31 December that all Members ‘shall presently declare themselves what they will lend or give to the maintenance of the army’, Gerard offered to bring in £500 within the week – the largest subscription of any MP then present.163Add. 18777, f. 109v. A significant proportion of his appointments during the first 18 months of the war related to army administration and the improvement and management of parliamentary revenues.164CJ ii. 761a, 829a, 837a, 846a, 849a, 932b, 945b, 951a, 953b, 971a, 983a; iii. 21b, 30b, 41a, 53b, 65b, 139b, 140a, 181a, 207b. Given his immersion in the world of military finance and his commitment to the vigorous prosecution of the war, it is no surprise to find him associated with measures during 1643-4 for establishing a weekly assessment, sequestering the estates of delinquents (including royalist Commons-men). and introducing an excise tax.165CJ ii. 951a, 953b, 983a; iii. 21b, 41a, 62b, 181a, 309b, 322b, 350b, 360a, 391a; LJ vi. 20a; Harl. 165, f. 191v. Indeed, he was one of 12 Commons-men who comprised the original membership of the bicameral Committee for Sequestrations* established on 27 March 1643, although he attended few of its meetings.166Supra, ‘Committee for Sequestrations’; CJ iii. 21b; SP20/1, ff. 58v, 272, 280, 342, 362, 377.

Gerard and the war party, 1642-3

Gerard’s speeches and tellerships make clear his close alignment from late 1642 with Essex, Warwick, Pym and other war-party grandees. On 5 December, for example, he defended the lord general from accusations of irresolution levelled against him by the fiery spirits, insisting that Essex had acted on advice from the Committee of Safety.167Harl. 164, f. 243. Gerard was not a major figure on the CS – he presented very few of the its reports to the House and signed only a handful of its warrants – but membership of the committee almost certainly strengthened his political ties to Pym and his leading parliamentary collaborators.168CJ iii. 30b, 373b; Harl. 164, f. 355v; Add. 18777, f. 163; Glow, ‘Cttee. of safety’, 313. When some of the fiery spirits attempted in February 1643 to have the CS reduced to its early membership, calculating that this would strengthen its war-party contingent, Gerard was among the eight Commons’ members of the committee deemed worthy of retaining their place.169Supra, ‘Committee of Safety’; Add. 18777, f. 161v.

Gerard showed more interest in strengthening Parliament’s war machine than in seeking peace with the king. He was very probably acting in concert with the war-party grandees on 1 February 1643 – the day that a parliamentary delegation at Oxford presented peace proposals to the king – when he stood up in the Commons and

showed that there was no money left to pay ... [Essex’s] army and that the army would not stir till they had pay, and therefore unless money were speedily provided we must be undone. Neither would it serve the turn any longer to get money upon uncertain contributions, but he desired that we would reduce it into some certain monthly payments, and that therein we would follow the king’s example.170Harl. 164, f. 287.

Insofar as the war-party grandees were interested in genuine peace talks with the king – which was apparently very little – it was from a position of maximum military strength. Gerard’s speech on 1 February prompted the Commons to set up a committee, to which he was named in first place, for the introduction of an assessment to maintain Essex’s army – an important early step in Parliament’s wartime financial revolution.171CJ ii. 951a.

Although Gerard received several appointments in relation to drafting and presenting the Oxford peace propositions, he figured rather more prominently in initiatives obviously designed to heighten ill-feeling between Westminster and Oxford and thereby undermine the peace process.172CJ ii. 978b, 980a; iii. 20a; LJ v. 622a, 672b. He and the captain of the lord general’s lifeguard Sir Philip Stapilton were majority tellers on 11 February 1643 against entering treaty negotiations before both sides had disbanded their armies – a proposal that to D’Ewes and other Parliament-men genuinely committed to an accommodation seemed ‘preposterous’ and ‘to propose an impossibility against the making of peace’. The minority tellers were the peace-party grandees Holles and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire.173Infra, ‘Sir Philip Stapilton’; CJ ii. 962b. Three days later, on 14 February, Gerard presented a petition to the Commons from the parliamentarian prisoners at Oxford, complaining of their hard usage by the royalists – which petition was sent up to the Lords, where the peace interest enjoyed a majority, ‘that they may see how our prisoners are used at Oxford’.174Add. 18777, f. 155. He was subsequently named in first place to the committee for devising a fitting response to this petition.175CJ ii. 992a. On 25 February, he was a majority teller with the godly Commons-man Sir Walter Erle against allowing the royalist and courtier Sir Kenelm Digby to return to France. Again, the minority tellers were peace-party grandees – namely, Holles and Edmund Waller.176CJ ii. 979a. When the House received a copy of a royal proclamation (sent to Westminster by the puritan firebrand Sir Michael Livesay*) on 2 March, denouncing Parliament’s projected southern association as treasonous, Gerard seconded Pym in urging that ‘until this proclamation be recalled we cannot treat’ with the king at Oxford.177Add. 18777, f. 169v; Harl. 164, f. 310v. In response to the king’s demand for alterations to Parliament’s terms for the cessation accompanying the treaty – changes that were agreed to by the Lords – Gerard and another MP with close connections to the lord general, Sir Robert Harley, were tellers on 11 March against compliance with the Lords’ wishes, defeating the peace-party pairing of William Pierrepont and Sir John Holland.178CJ ii. 999a; Harl. 164, ff. 322v, 323v. It was Gerard who, two days later (13 Mar.), presented a petition to the House from a group of godly Londoners, demanding the removal of the Capuchin friars serving in the queen’s chapel in Somerset House – which represented the opening move in yet another war-party sponsored initiative to poison the negotiations at Oxford.179Infra, ‘Henry Marten’; Harl. 164, f. 326v.

Following the collapse of the Oxford treaty in April 1643, Gerard was named to several committees for vindicating Parliament’s conduct in the negotiations, while on the floor of the House he defended the lord general from complaints by peace-minded Members that his troops were guilty of oppressive financial exactions.180CJ iii. 50b, 58a; Harl. 164, f. 393v. Late in May, he supported calls by Pym and his war-party allies for impeaching the queen – an initiative that Edmund Waller denounced as ‘a rejection of all means of peace and a sentence to fight it out to the last man’.181Somer’s Tracts, iv. 500-1.

Gerard’s hard line on negotiating with the king probably derived, in part, from an unwillingness to compromise the cause of further reformation in religion for the sake of a swift negotiated conclusion to the war. In the summer of 1642, he had joined Warwick, Saye and Sele and 37 other godly Parliament-men in a letter to John Cotton and two other puritan divines in New England, requesting they return home to attend the Westminster Assembly and assist in the great work of church reform.182J. Winthrop, Hist. of New England ed. J. Savage (Boston, MA, 1853), ii. 91-2; T. Hutchinson, Hist. of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay ed. L. S. Mayo (Cambridge, MA, 1936), i. 100-1. His impeccable godly credentials were acknowledged at the very end of 1642 with his appointment to the Committee for Plundered Ministers*, of which he was an active member.183CJ ii. 909a, 938b; iii. 343a; iv. 106b; Add. 31116, p. 42. In his determination to settle a godly ministry in his own corner of Middlesex, he was willing to make overtures even to his old enemy George Pitt.184LMA, ACC/0076/0842. Equally revealing is his nomination to a committee that the Commons set up on 24 April 1643, headed by Sir Robert Harley, for demolishing ‘monuments of superstition or idolatry’ in Westminster abbey and other churches in the City.185CJ iii. 57b. Gerard’s presence on various Irish policy-making teams during 1643 and his evident sympathy for the plight of the queen of Bohemia and the elector palatine were doubtless informed by concern for the fate of Reformed religion and the Protestant cause across war-torn Europe.186CJ ii. 984a; iii. 31a, 92a, 127b, 142a; iv. 58a; SP16/539/127, f. 38.

Gerard seems to have shared the eagerness of Pym and other war-party grandees to play up the civil war as a British conflict in defence of Protestantism. Perhaps an early manifestation of this trend in Gerard’s thinking was his appointment to a committee on 10 April 1643 for considering a request from the City for the introduction of a Scottish-style oath of association.187CJ iii. 37b. The disclosure late in May of the Waller plot – a royalist conspiracy to deliver up London to the king – allowed the war-party grandees to push the two House several steps closer to a military alliance with the Scots: a stratagem in which Gerard was deeply complicit. The depth of his involvement in the war party’s counsels by this stage is vividly illustrated by his nomination on 31 May to a five-man ‘committee of safety’, headed by Pym, with a remit ‘to do whatever they think good to prevent the danger threatened to the safety of the kingdom and City’.188CJ iii. 110b; Mercurius Aulicus no. 23 (4-10 June 1643), 300-1 (E.55.14); W. Prynne*, A Breviate of the Life of William Laud (1644), 28. It was this so-called ‘committee of five’, with the addition of Francis Rous, that drew up the vow and covenant on 6 June, which Gerard took that same day. Modelled on the Scottish National Covenant, this new oath was deliberately intended ‘to distinguish the good and well-affected party from the bad and to unite the good party faster together among themselves’.189CJ iii. 117b. By exploiting the Waller plot, the war party – with the committee of five at the helm – was able during mid-1643 to bear down upon its enemies, tighten its grip on the City, and to advance policies for strengthening relations with the Covenanters, including the creation of the Westminster Assembly.190CJ iii. 119a, 126b, 132a, 133a, 145a, 167b, 185b; Harl. 164, ff. 210r-v, 401v.

Gerard worked closely with Pym and his allies in mid-1643 as they struggled to maintain the war effort in the face of royalist victories and in-fighting within the parliamentarian camp. His Commons appointments in July and August are consistent with the war-party grandees’ response to this crisis, which involved working to supply and reinforce the lord general’s army, while also backing calls from the militants at Westminster and in the City for new regional forces, independent of Essex’s command. On 2 August, Gerard was named to a ‘council of war’ that the committee of five had designed primarily to further the recruitment of the new cavalry force under Edward Montagu†, 2nd earl of Manchester. By devolving this task upon the council, Pym and his friends apparently hoped to preserve themselves against Essex’s resentment.191Supra, ‘Committee of Safety’; CJ iii. 171a-b, 177b, 178b, 183b, 187b, 191b; LJ vi. 148b-150b. To conciliate the lord general and encourage him to march to the relief of the besieged parliamentarian garrison at Gloucester the Commons appointed the committee of five and two additional Members on 16 August to ‘stir up the City’ to recruit and equip Essex’s army.192CJ iii. 207b. Gerard and St John were sent on a similar mission in September but on this occasion to Essex himself as well as the City – although Gerard was excused this task on account of his lameness.193CJ iii. 253b, 254a. He also supported Parliament’s efforts to put an army under Sir William Waller* into the field, pledging £100 for this purpose on 14 September.194Add. 18778, f. 27v; CJ iii. 241a. His healthy personal finances as treasurer-at-war and his collaboration with the war-party grandees made him – along with Pym and St John – the object of ‘rumours and aspersions’ that leading Parliament-men had sent money abroad in the event of defeat at home.195CJ iii. 196b.

Forging a Scottish alliance, 1643-4

But it was not the export of treasure that Pym and his allies were intent upon in 1643 but rather the import of Scottish troops. Gerard’s inclusion on the committee of five, as well as placing him among the front-rank of parliamentary politicians, involved him more fully in the war party’s strategy of forging a military alliance with the Scots to win the civil war. On 26 June, he had been appointed with his committee-of-five colleagues to organise a delegation to negotiate with the Covenanters, and he had been named with Pym and St John on 31 July to a seven-man committee for receiving propositions from the Scots and to draw up additional instructions for Parliament’s negotiating team.196CJ iii. 145a, 188b.

Gerard emerged in the autumn of 1643 as a leading proponent at Westminster of the Solemn League and Covenant, which he seems to have regarded, like other godly Commons-men, as a means of hitching Parliament’s fortunes to the Europe-wide struggle for the Protestant cause. On 12 September, he was named to a committee to send out agents to negotiate ‘a closer union with the princes and states of the Protestant religion’, and he allegedly collaborated with other members of the committee of five in drawing up a declaration to satisfy foreign nations of Parliament’s proceedings.197CJ iii. 237b; Mercurius Aulicus no. 38 (17-24 Sept. 1643), 523-4 (E.69.18). Later that same month, the CS dispatched the radical puritan minister Hugh Peters to the Dutch republic, with instructions signed by Saye, Pym, Gerard, Nathaniel Fiennes I and Anthony Nicoll to negotiate loans from ‘well-affected persons of the United Provinces’. Peters was to spread word of the Solemn League and Covenant and of Parliament’s efforts to reform church government in all three kingdoms ‘and of procuring a more near uniformity and conjunction with the Reformed churches in other parts’.198Bodl. Clarendon 22, f. 128; CCSP i. 244; CJ iii. 421. Appointed with Pym, St John and Sir John Clotworthy to a six-man bicameral committee on 9 September for meeting with the Scottish commissioners to discuss the terms of the Covenant, Gerard reported from this body on 21 September concerning the scriptural passages to accompany the oath and the arrangements for its subscription by the two Houses (as a member of this committee he would be entrusted in December with devising measures for tendering the Covenant to the general public).199CJ iii. 235a, 250a, 344a; Add. 18778, ff. 51v-52, 53. The next day (22 Sept.) he was a messenger to inform the Lords of the Commons’ intention to take the Covenant on 25 September in St Margaret’s church, Westminster.200CJ iii. 252a; LJ vi. 229b. Gerard’s name was third – after those of the Speaker and St John’s cousin, Sir Beauchamp St John – on John Rushworth’s* list of Commons-men taking the oath.201Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 480. In December, Gerard was among the ten prominent Commons-men who served as pall-bearers at the funeral of the Anglo-Scottish alliance’s principal architect, Pym.202Perfect Diurnall no. 21 (11-18 Dec. 1643), 165 (E.252.11).

In order to raise the £30,000 a month that Parliament had pledged to supply the Scottish army, Gerard and 13 other Commons-men were charged on 28 September 1643 with moving the lord mayor and Common Council of London about forming a committee to raise the necessary money.203CJ iii. 258a. From these deliberations emerged the Cmmittee for Scottish Affairs, which Gerard attended regularly until its re-foundation in the summer of 1644 as the Committee for Compounding*.204Supra, ‘Committee for Compounding’; CJ iii. 286a; SP23/1A, pp. 3, 4, 7, 9, 12, 14, 21, 22, 23; SP46/106, ff. 98-100, 134. In the stormy debate in the Commons on 22 December 1643 concerning whether to place Westminster’s and Edinburgh’s forces in Ireland under an English or Scottish commander-in-chief, Gerard sided with the war-party grandees St John and Vane II and with other pro-Scots Members – who included, on this issue, the peace-minded D’Ewes. After this debate, Gerard confided to D’Ewes that the latter had spoken ‘as well and as honestly again as I [D’Ewes] had done in the beginning of the Parliament’ – the implication being that the two men, though close friends according to D’Ewes, had taken divergent political paths since the beginning of the war.205Harl. 165, ff. 254-255v.

Gerard was able to reconcile working for a Scottish alliance with support for initiatives to succour or conciliate two of the Scots’ rivals for military funding – Essex and Waller. The jostling for resources between these interests was rendered all the more destabilising by Essex’s hostility to Scottish intervention on political as well as logistical grounds. That Gerard was well known and probably trusted by all three military camps may well explain his nomination to several high-powered committees in October 1643 for mediating between Essex and Waller and for supplying the lord general’s army.206CJ iii. 263a, 274a, 278b. His keenness, too, to mobilise the London and Middlesex militia forces in the service of Waller and other commanders was tempered by concern at the considerable military burden being borne by his own constituents in particular.207CJ iii. 277b, 303b, 309b, 323a, 349a, 367a, 373a, 385a; LJ vi. 387a. In November and December and again in February 1644, he drew the House’s attention to the evils of free quarter in and around London and how certain captains continued to draw full pay for companies or less than a dozen men.208Harl. 165, ff. 208, 232v; Harl. 166, f. 16v. Yet although some of Waller’s officers were among the principal offenders in this respect, Gerard remained on good terms with their commander personally. On 15 December, he and Sir Arthur Hesilrige were ordered to prepare a letter acknowledging Waller’s ‘great service’ in defending the southern association, and Gerard favoured measures in January and February 1644 for ensuring that Waller’s army was properly paid.209CJ iii. 341a, 360a; Harl. 166, f. 15. Evidently still aligned with the war-party grandees during the winter of 1643-4, he worked with them in disclosing the Brooke and Lovelace plots, the fall out from which served to embarrass the lord general in particular.210Infra, ‘Sir Henry Vane II’; CJ iii. 360b, 378a; Harl. 165, f. 250; Add. 31116, p. 221; A Secret Negotiation with Charles the First ed. B.M. Gardiner (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxxi), 13-17, 27.

Gerard’s expertise in military administration secured him a place on the 24 January 1644 committee to consider the condition, musters and pay of Parliament’s forces ‘and of bringing them to account, that the state may receive advantage by it’.211CJ iii. 375b. This was the first of a series of committees during 1644 that were designed to bring the overweening yet dilatory lord general more firmly under parliamentary control. Nevertheless, Gerard’s assignments in the CS and the Commons during late 1643 and early 1644 place him squarely among those Commons-men still anxious to maintain good relations with Essex and to ensure that his army was up to strength for the forthcoming campaign season.212CJ iii. 373b, 382b, 387a, 400a, 408b, 452b; LJ vi. 427b; Add. 18779, f. 68; Harl. 166, ff. 13, 18v; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 21, 22.

Friend of the Essexians, 1644-5

Gerard’s inclusion on Parliament’s new executive, the Committee of Both Kingdoms* (CBK), in February 1644 put him in an awkward position at Westminster.213CJ iii. 391b, 392b; LJ vi. 430a. The Scots strongly supported the committee’s establishment – and largely for this reason so did Gerard himself.214CJ iii. 382a, 382b; Harl. 166, f. 14v. Yet it quickly became clear that the CBK had been conceived as an instrument not only to manage the Anglo-Scottish war effort but also to curb the political ambitions of the lord general, to whom Gerard was honour- and duty-bound as treasurer-at-war.215Supra, ‘Committee of Both Kingdoms’. Gerard’s nomination to the committee had been almost inevitable, however. He was an ally of its architects among the war party, an enthusiast for a Scottish military alliance, and an experienced military administrator. But perhaps his most valuable attribute in the eyes of the CBK’s leading proponents was his likely reputation for loyalty to the lord general. His presence on the committee would help to undercut claims that the CBK’s displacement of the CS represented an attack upon Essex. This was certainly how D’Ewes interpreted the nomination of the peace-party grandee William Pierrepont and the noted Essexian Sir Philip Stapilton. Significantly, however, he did not include Gerard among these ‘decoys, to make the matter seem the better’.216Harl. 166, f. 7.

For the first few weeks after the CBK’s establishment in mid-February 1644, Gerard attended the committee regularly and made at least one report from Derby House to the Commons.217Harl. 166, f. 15; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 18-19, 21-2, 24-5, 32, 33. But from early March he seems to have disappeared from Westminster for almost a month, and he received only one committee appointment in the Commons between 26 February and 11 May.218CJ iii. 408b, 452b, 489a. In mid-April, he petitioned the House, requesting permission to resign his place as treasurer-at-war ‘in regard of his infirmity’ – a request that the Commons ignored.219CJ iii. 463b. Poor health may well explain, at least in part, his desire to stand down as treasurer and his apparent absence from the House for much of March and April. But this distancing of himself from parliamentary proceedings may also be evidence that he was struggling to reconcile loyalty to Essex with participation in the CBK, which was clearly dominated for much of its first year by the lord general’s enemies. If Gerard had indeed suffered some kind of political identity crisis, however, he had recovered from it sufficiently by early April to resume regular attendance at the CBK.220CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 86, 91. Moreover, following the expiry of the February CBK ordinance in May, he joined three of his former colleagues on the committee of five – Vane II, St John and John Glynne – in criticising attempts by the Essexians peers to frustrate the committee’s re-establishment.221Harl. 166, f. 61v.

Gerard’s level of political activity in the Commons during 1644 never seems to have matched the heights it had reached in the six months following his appointment to the committee of five in May 1643. Between May 1644 and January 1645, when his name all but disappears from the Journal for over a month, he was named to one conference-reporting team and served as teller in one division and twice as a messenger to the Lords.222CJ v. 551b, 577b, 747a, 665b; LJ vi. 615b, 652a. His tally of 22 committee appointments was equally unimpressive. He was named in first place to three of these committees, but again, there is no evidence that he chaired any of them.223CJ iii. 504b, 597a, 645b. This diminution in his Commons’ work-load was partly offset by his contribution as a member of the CBK, which occasionally covered business relating to the war in Ireland.224CJ iii. 560a, 701a. He attended the committee on a regular basis from April 1644 and made at least four reports from Derby House to the Commons between then and the beginning of 1645.225Supra, ‘Committee of Both Kingdoms’; CJ iii. 542a, 673a, 678a, 701a; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 181, 204, 296.

Much of Gerard’s activity at Westminster in the period between May 1644 and January 1645 followed a familiar pattern, being directed towards managing and improving Parliament’s military finances and, more specifically, the supply of Essex’s army.226CJ iii. 489a, 500b, 512b, 520b, 542a, 551b, 577b, 597a, 609a, 620b, 626a, 644b, 654a, 658b, 675a, 676a, 681b; LJ vi. 615b, 652a; Add. 31116, pp. 278, 362; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 181, 204, 208. On the other hand, it is noticeable that very few of his appointments now focused on the maintenance of the armies under the lord general’s English and Scottish competitors.227CSP Dom. 1644, p. 136. Admittedly, Gerard was named to the important committee established on 28 June to raise an army of 7,000 foot and 3,000 horse under Waller. But this body was also charged with considering the pay of Essex’s army and military financing in general.228Infra, ‘Robert Scawen’; CJ iii. 544b. That a rift was beginning to emerge between Gerard and his former war-party friends is suggested by the concern he expressed in the September 1644 ‘committee for accommodation’ that congregations ‘stand to the [Presbyterian] rule’. For whereas Saye, St John and Vane II accepted the establishment of a national Presbyterian ministry as a political necessity, they scandalised their Scottish allies that autumn by arguing for an Erastian church settlement that extended liberty of conscience to ‘orthodox’ Congregationalists.229Infra, ‘Sir Henry Vane II’; G. Gillespie, Notes of Debates and Procs. of the Assembly of Divines and other Commrs. at Westminster, ed. D. Meek (Edinburgh, 1846), 105; Y. Chung, ‘Parl. and the cttee. for accommodation 1644-6’, PH xxx. 295. Gerard made his Presbyterian sympathies plain on 1 October, when he was a teller with Sir Anthony Irby – his near neighbour in the Little Almonry, Westminster – in favour of retaining a clause in the ordinance for ordaining ministers, requiring congregations to ‘obey and submit’ to their ministers ‘as being over them in the Lord’. Gerard and Irby lost this division to St John and Vane II.230CJ iii. 647a; SP28/167, pt. 4; WCA, SMW/E/47/1580.

The rapprochement in the autumn of 1644 between Essex and the Scots would have eased the tension inherent in Gerard’s continuing enthusiasm for Scottish intervention and his loyalty to the lord general. His factional re-alignment at Westminster is clear from his readiness on 21 October to join Stapilton, Holles and Clotworthy – all prominent Essexians – in defending one of Essex’s senior officers Colonel John Dalbier against charges framed by the lord general’s opponents of political disaffection and treachery.231Harl. 166, f. 154; J. Adamson, ‘The triumph of oligarchy’, in Parliament at Work ed. C. Kyle, J. Peacey (Woodbridge, 2002), 119. This attack upon Essex’s officers constituted a preliminary skirmish in the campaign at Westminster during late 1644 and early 1645 – directed by Saye, St John and others on the CBK soon to be labelled ‘Independents’ – to remove Essex and his allies from command and to new model Parliament’s armies. Not surprisingly, given his identification by late 1644 as a ‘fierce Presbyterian’, Gerard was not closely associated at Derby House with this reform process.232Supra, ‘Committee of Both Kingdoms’; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 185, 205; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 153. More in keeping with his political sympathies was his appointment to committees on 27 December and 2 January 1645 for treating with the Scots commissioners concerning the management of the Newcastle coal trade and (with a number of his fellow Presbyterian Commons-men) to frame a narrative for the Edinburgh Parliament and the Kirk of progress at Westminster towards settling church government.233CJ iv. 3a, 7b; J.T. Cliffe, Puritans in Conflict (1988), 115-16.

Between early January and late July 1645, when he took a month’s leave of absence, Gerard was named to 16 committees and appointed a messenger to the Lords on two occasions.234CJ iv. 55a, 106b, 220a; LJ vii. 216b. He served as a teller only once during this period: on 8 May, when he and Holles represented the majority in the House in favour of rejecting an ordinance prepared by the Army Committee* (CA) and backed largely by Independents for executing martial law upon deserters.235CJ iv. 135a; Harl. 166, f. 207v. Gerard’s high-profile presence on the CBK belied his relatively marginal role in the major political and legislative campaigns of early 1645. He seems to have showed very little interest either in the CBK or the Commons in the preparations for, and oversight of, the Uxbridge treaty.236CJ iv. 55a; LJ vii. 216b; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 203. Similarly, the House made relatively little use of his experience in finance and logistics during the later stages of creating the New Model army.237CJ iv. 51a, 52a, 71b. His duties as treasurer-at-war probably explain his fleeting involvement in funding the New Model before the formation, late in March, of the Army Committee.238CJ iv. 91a, 91b. With the establishment of this new, bicameral body, served by eight treasurers-at-war, for supplying Sir Thomas Fairfax’s* forces, Gerard’s office became redundant.239CJ iv. 98b, 146a; LJ vii. 387b. His record as a military administrator was sufficiently respected to secure his appointment to the committee. But politically he did not fit the profile of most of his fellow committeemen, who were leading members of, or closely aligned with, the Independents. Yet despite the CA’s Independent bias in terms of membership and purpose, Gerard usually attended at least one of its meetings every month and signed its first surviving warrant, on 29 March.240Supra, ‘Committee for the Army’; SP28/28, f. 310.

Gerard’s record on the CA, and several of his committee appointments during the mid-1640s, suggests that he was more favourably inclined towards the New Model than were most Essexians, and on that basis alone it would be very difficult to place him among the Presbyterian grandees before 1647.241CJ iv. 164a, 192a, 299a, 738a. The one noticeable advantage the Presbyterians gained as a result of new modelling and the Self-Denying Ordinance was that of strengthening their presence on the CBK. Relieved of their military duties, Essex, Warwick and their allies – who now included the Scottish contingent at Derby House – were able to attend the CBK more regularly than they had done in 1644. Gerard’s healthy attendance record on the CBK during 1645 and his ten or so reports to the Commons from Derby House – a tally exceeded only by John Glynne – reflected this trend.242Supra, ‘Committee of Both Kingdoms’; CJ iv. 61a, 86b, 106b, 124b, 172a, 173b, 283a, 381b, 382a, 383b; Add. 18780, f. 37; Add. 31116, p. 400; Harl. 166, ff. 179v, 205v, 218v-219. It was probably through membership of the CBK that he became drawn into Parliament’s various designs in May and June for reducing Oxford, and he probably derived no little satisfaction on 13 June in reporting from Derby House concerning the unauthorised and, it was conceived, calamitous attempt of an Independent sub-committee of the CBK to secure Oxford’s surrender through royalist subversion.243CJ iv. 147a, 155b, 164a, 173b; Add. 18780, f. 37; Harl. 166, ff. 218v-219; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 443; M. Mahony, ‘The Savile affair and the politics of the Long Parl.’, PH, vii. 218-19.

Gerard and the Covenant-engaged interest, 1645-6

From the summer of 1645, Gerard assumed an important role in Parliament’s work to settle church government and the ministry and in its dealings with the Westminster Assembly and London’s Presbyterian clergy (although there is no evidence for the assertion that he was a member of the Commons’ committee on the assembly).244Mins. and Pprs. of the Westminster Assembly ed. C. Van Dixhoorn (Oxford, 2012), i. 142. Between August 1645 and early 1647 he was named to Commons 55 committees and served as a messenger to the Lords on eight occasions.245CJ iv. 342b, 389a, 390b, 477b, 478a, 479b, 519b, 529b; v. 24b; LJ viii. 74b, 216a, 221a, 280a, 291b, 621b. A significant number of his appointments addressed ecclesiastical issues or promoted measures associated with further reformation in religion.246CJ iv. 300b, 312a, 350b, 354b, 373a, 392b, 412a, 413b, 502a, 511a, 553b, 555b, 558b, 595b, 632a, 671b, 714b, 719b; v. 10b, 35a, 51b. Of the two committees he chaired during this period, the first, relating to Leicester, was of little account.247CJ iv. 256b, 477b. The second committee, however, set up on 1 July 1646, was charged with bringing in an ordinance for ‘regulating’ – that is, furthering godly reform at – the University of Oxford (on 22 November 1645, he had been named first to a committee for regulating the University of Cambridge).248CJ iv. 350b, 595b.

Gerard was named on 25 July 1645 to the first of several committees for settling Presbyterian church government – a policy he was keen to expedite.249CJ iv. 218a, 413b; Add. 18780, f. 84. At the conclusion of a heated debate on 29 August concerning excluding ‘scandalous and ignorant persons’ from receiving communion, Gerard was a minority teller with the godly William Strode I in favour of considering a report from the ‘grand committee concerning church government’ on ‘whether the presbytery should have a general power to debar whom they would [put] from the sacrament’.250CJ iv. 257a; Harl. 166, ff. 257v, 258. The Westminster’s Assembly proposals for investing presbyteries with this ‘unlimited’ power were defended by Gerard in the grand committee on 3 October, although D’Ewes dismissed his argument that ‘the presbytery was not to judge of the crime but of the scandal’ arising from it, as mere quibbling.251Harl. 166, f. 267v; Cliffe, Puritans in Conflict, 119. Five days later (8 Oct.), Gerard was named to a committee chaired by the leading Presbyterian MP Zouche Tate to bring in an ordinance for implementing the House’s resolutions on excluding the scandalous and ignorant from the sacrament.252CJ iv. 300b. Gerard would be an active member of the June 1646 bicameral commission to adjudge such offences – a body that, by early 1648, had assumed a role in settling Presbyterian classes in the provinces.253The Division of the County of Middlesex into Four Classicall Presbyteries (1648), 5; Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 392.

Gerard’s involvement from November 1645 in drawing up Parliament’s new peace terms, which would be presented to the king at Newcastle in July 1646, began with nomination to a committee on the tenth proposition for ‘confirming the settlement of reformation by Act of Parliament’.254CJ iv. 354b, 365a, 424b, 428a, 553b, 576a. His last appointment of 1645, on 31 December, was to request the Presbyterian divines Stephen Marshall and Richard Vines to preach the next fast sermons.255CJ iv. 392b. On 30 May 1646, he was sent on the same mission to another prominent member of the Westminster Assembly, William Spurstowe.256CJ iv. 558b. Gerard was among the avowedly Presbyterian members of a committee set up in December 1646 to examine the preacher and army chaplain William Dell for the unauthorized publication of a sermon he had delivered to Commons a few weeks earlier and for his criticism of a sermon delivered that afternoon by Christopher Love, who had preached strongly in favour of a Presbyterian reformation.257CJ v. 10b. On 31 December, Gerard was included on a committee for handling complaints about unordained preachers – a breed that he was undoubtedly keen to suppress.258CJ v. 35a.

Gerard’s endorsement of an authoritarian Presbyterian church settlement became enmeshed during 1646 with his role in liaising between the Scots and Parliament – a relationship rendered increasingly fraught by growing hostility at Westminster to continuing Scottish intervention in English affairs. Although he was party to much of Parliament’s increasingly fractious communications with the Scots commissioners, it is likely that he shared at least something of the latter’s frustration at Westminster’s reluctance to embrace a ‘covenanted uniformity’ between the two kingdoms, either in relation to church government or the contents of the Newcastle propositions.259CJ iv. 382a, 491a, 521b, 548b, 554b, 570b, 587a, 659a, 675a. Appointed to a committee of both Houses on 26 March to treat with the commissioners on these issues, he reported the next day (27 Mar.) a paper from the Kirk, complaining about ‘the long delay of the settling of true government of the church’ and of the license given to ‘heresies and sects ... and liberty of conscience’, while ‘unity and uniformity in religion’ was slighted.260CJ iv. 491a, 492b; OPH xiv. 336, 338. It was probably as a friend to the Scots that he was named to committees on 13 and 15 June for rendering the Newcastle propositions more agreeable to Scottish interests and to hear an address by Archibald Campbell*, marquess of Argyll aimed at repairing breaches in the Westminster-Edinburgh alliance.261CJ iv. 567a, 587a. Gerard’s likely support for London’s Covenant-engaged interest and its allies among the City’s Presbyterian ministry may well account for his nomination to three committees in July for suppressing their most vociferous opponents – namely, John Lilburne and his proto-Leveller friends.262CJ iv. 601b, 615b, 616a; E. Terry, Pseudeleutheria. Or Lawlesse liberty (1646), epistle dedicatory, 7, 13 (E.356.11). In response to Edinburgh’s complaints concerning anti-Scottish propaganda in the radical press, the Commons appointed Gerard and other committeemen on 14 August to bring in an ordinance for punishing the publishers of ‘scandalous pamphlets’ against the Scots and their army in northern England.263CJ iv. 644b. He was regularly employed by the House and the CBK during the second half of 1646 in helping to pay off and send home the Scottish army and to negotiate with the Scots for the surrender of the king.264CJ iv. 650b, 659a, 675a; v. 1b, 24b, 30a; LJ viii. 621b; Add. 31116, p. 592.

During 1646 Gerard figured much less prominently in Anglo-Irish affairs at Westminster, which were dominated by the Independents and their defiance of Scottish pretensions to a joint interest in the rule of Ireland.265CJ iv. 456a, 465b, 521a, 641b; Some Papers of the Commissioners of Scotland (1646), 16-23 (E.333.1). After his tellership on 19 January 1647 – his last such appointment as a Parliament-man – in what was apparently a non-partisan division (the opposing tellers were the Independent and Presbyterian grandees Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire and Sir William Lewis), Gerard took what seems to have been two months unofficial leave of absence from the House.266CJ v. 57b.

Between the Presbyterians and Independents, 1647-8

Both Gerard and his son Francis* assisted the Presbyterian grandees during the spring of 1647 in their assault upon the New Model army – a fact that would not be forgotten by Fairfax’s officers at the time of Pride’s Purge in December 1648.267Supra, ‘Francis Gerard’. Indeed, Gerard’s collaboration with the Presbyterian leadership in 1647 would prompt one of the army’s radical friends to refer to him as ‘our deadly enemy’.268Westminster Projects, no. 1 (1648), 7 (E.433.15); E. Vernon, P. Baker, ‘Introduction’ in The Agreements of the People ed. Vernon, Baker (Basingstoke, 2012), 22. Yet none of the convulsions at Westminster between the spring of 1647 and Pride’s Purge had any great impact on the shape of his parliamentary career, which remained reasonably constant in terms of his rate of appointment and the kind of duties he was assigned. In all, during this 18 month period, he was named to about 55 committees, served as a messenger to the Lords on six occasions and was named to two conference-management teams.269CJ v. 160a, 171b, 461a, 481b, 634b, 640a, 658a; vi. 54b; LJ ix. 170b; x. 34b, 383b, 406b.

Gerard was probably involved in Common’s initiatives during the spring and summer of 1647 for investigating political agitation in the soldiery and building up London’s militia forces as a military counterweight to the army.270CJ v. 127b, 132b, 207b. But it was as a member of the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs* [DHCIA], which had taken over from the CBK as Parliament’s principal executive, that he demonstrated his clearest commitment to Presbyterian designs against the army. Before the spring of 1647 the Independents had generally been in a majority on the DHCIA, and Gerard had rarely attended its meetings.271Supra, ‘Committees for Ireland’; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 727, 729. During April and May, however, when Presbyterians dominated the committee’s proceedings – at times, to the complete exclusion of their party rivals – Gerard attended on a regular basis and was therefore a leading participant in the drive to disband most of Fairfax’s army as cheaply as possible and to pack the remainder off to fight in Ireland.272Supra, ‘Committees for Ireland’; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 744, 746-7, 751-2; SP21/26, pp. 47-71; SP28/353, f. 28. He was present, for example, at the crucial meetings on 24 and 28 May when, as instructed by the Commons, the DHCIA determined the time and manner of disbanding those of Fairfax’s troops who refused to fight in Ireland. The committee earmarked all the most radical and troublesome regiments for early disbandment, beginning with Fairfax’s own.273CJ v. 176b-177a; SP21/26, pp. 62, 68; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 748-51. Not surprisingly, Gerard was included on Parliament’s bicameral commission of 28 May, headed by the Presbyterian grandee (and Gerard’s old friend) the earl of Warwick, to repair to Chelmsford, where a general rendezvous had been appointed to begin the disbandment process.274CJ v. 192b. An active member of this commission, Gerard was entrusted by the DHCIA with distributing 500 copies at Chelmsford of the Commons’ votes for disbanding the army.275Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLI, f. 55; Clarke Pprs. i. 105, 107; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 752.

Responding to the army’s seizure of the king early in June 1647 and to its decision a week or so later to march towards London, the Commons established the so-called ‘committee of safety’ on 11 June – a bicameral, Presbyterian-dominated body (to which Gerard was named) for joining with the City militia to bid defiance to Fairfax’s forces.276CJ v. 207b; Juxon Jnl. 159; M.P. Mahony, ‘The Presbyterian Party in the Long Parl. 2 July 1644-3 June 1647’ (Oxford Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1973), 429-32. Having avoided – perhaps only narrowly – inclusion in the army’s proscription of Holles and ten other Presbyterian grandees, Gerard and John Swynfen were ordered by the House on 29 June to write to Fairfax’s headquarters, requesting specific charges and firm evidence to support the demand for the Eleven Members’ suspension from the House.277CJ v. 227a. The next day (30 June), as part of an attempt by the Commons to encourage a spirit of compromise among the parliamentarian faithful, Gerard and nine other ardent supporters of a Presbyterian church settlement – some friendly towards the army, others less so – were appointed to nominate person of ‘moderation, piety and learning’ to draw up heads for an accommodation in religion.278CJ v. 228b. A report prepared that July by the Presbyterian-dominated Committee of Accounts*, certifying that Gerard was owed £8,953 as treasurer-at-war, was not presented to the House at that time – probably because it would have been seen, rightly, as a reward for his recent services to the Presbyterian cause.279CJ vi. 12b.

Gerard’s name was not mentioned in connection with the Presbyterian counter-revolution at Westminster on 26 July 1647, and it does not appear in the Journal during the fortnight that followed. On the other hand, he was apparently not among those Parliament-men who fled Parliament in late July to the protection of the army. During mid-August, after the army had marched in triumph into London, he was appointed to three committees for repealing the votes and legislation passed during the absence of the Speaker and the other fugitive Members.280CJ v. 271b, 278a, 279b. On 21 August, however, perhaps fearing an army purge of the Presbyterians in the House, he was granted leave of absence and would receive only one appointment in September – to a committee for removing grievances associated with tithes while retaining the tithe system itself.281CJ v. 281a, 302a.

Little can be deduced from Gerard’s appointments during late 1647 and early 1648, except, perhaps, a readiness on his part to address the army’s material needs and to suppress the threat of Leveller agitation among the soldiery.282CJ v. 360a, 363a, 376b, 400b, 414b, 434a. He contributed little, if anything, to drafting Parliament various peace proposals that autumn and winter – despite the fact that he evidently remained committed to a staunchly Presbyterian religious settlement.283CJ v. 336a, 378b, 427a; Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 392; Division of the County of Middlesex into…Presbyteries, 5. To celebrate Epiphany, early in 1648, he joined the Presbyterians Sir Benjamin Rudyerd and Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham, and the royalist Geoffrey Palmer*, as guests of Bulstrode Whitelocke, who referred to Gerard as his good friend.284Whitelocke, Diary, 203, 208.

Gerard’s appointment in March 1648 to the lucrative office of chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster – like that of William Ashhurst* as clerk of the crown for Lancashire in February – was part of the Independent grandees’ design to build bridges to leading Presbyterians in order to consolidate support at Westminster against the royalist-Hamiltonian axis and a sell-out peace with the king.285Supra, ‘William Ashhurst’; CJ v. 482a, 493a, 506b; LJ x. 118a, 126a; BL, Verney mss: Sir E. Verney to Sir R. Verney, 30 July 1648 (M636/9). The army radicals certainly regarded it as another act of treachery by the Independent grandees.286Westminster Projects no. 1 (1648), 7. For his part, Gerard was accused of putting his own profit and security before his ‘first love of Presbytery’ and therefore of attempting to keep himself ‘level betwixt both the factions’.287Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 26 (7-14 Mar. 1648), sig. B2 (E.432.3); no. 12 (13-20 June 1648), sig. M3 (E.448.17); no. 14 (27 June-4 July 1648), sig. O3 (E.450.27). In fact, his frequent attendance at the Derby House Committee*, the DHCIA and the Army Committee during 1648 was entirely consistent with a genuine desire to defend Parliament and the cause of a strict Presbyterian settlement against the conjoined threats of royalist revolt in England and Ireland, invasion by the Hamiltonian Scots and an unconditional treaty with the king.288Supra, ‘Derby House Committee’; ‘Committee for the Army’; SP21/26, pp. 113, 170; CJ v. 558b, 572b, 582a, 642a.

Gerard’s services were regularly enlisted by the House during the spring and summer of 1648 to settle and maintain the kingdom’s militia, to assure the City of Parliament’s sincerity in seeking a settlement with the king, and to investigate and punish royalist insurrectionists.289CJ v. 545a, 551a, 558a, 581a, 597a, 630a, 631b, 643b, 655b, 658a, 678a, 681b; LJ x. 406b. His selection by the Commons on 26 April to thank Stanley Gower for his sermon to the House that day is also significant, for Stanley was a preacher in the trenchantly Presbyterian London parish of St Martin, Ludgate, and a clerical protégé of the Covenant-engaged grandee Presbyterian MP Sir Robert Harley.290CJ v. 545b; ‘Stanley Gower’, Oxford DNB. On 27 June, Gerard was named to the bicameral treaty for consider the terms of the treaty with the king – a body whose membership reflected the informal alliance between the Independent grandees and ‘rigid’ Presbyterian Members against a sell-out peace.291CJ v. 614a. More significantly, he was included with Swynfen and other staunch Presbyterians to a conference-management team on 18 July for insisting – contrary to the Lords’ wishes – on the retention of the ‘three propositions’ that Charles must agree to before any personal treaty. These preconditions included the settlement of Presbyterianism for three years, which was the very minimum that the likes of Gerard, Swynfen and Harley would accept, and which they evidently hoped would form the basis for a permanent Presbyterian church settlement.292Infra, ‘John Swynfen’; CJ v. 640a. It was on Gerard’s ‘fiat’ as chancellor of the duchy that the administrative wheels were set in motion that August for appointing Swynfen to the office of steward and receiver of the honor of Leicester.293PRO30/26/21, p. 22. Gerard’s steadfastness in the parliamentarian cause during the second civil war was recognised on 9 September, when the Commons accepted the report that the Committee of Accounts had prepared in July 1647 of the money he was owed as treasurer-at-war.294CJ vi. 12a-14. But despite his concern to secure a Presbyterian church settlement, he was named to only one committee in relation to the treaty of Newport and generally made little impression on the proceedings of the House that autumn.295CJ vi. 30b, 75b, 83b, 88a.

Purge and political retirement, 1648-59

Gerard’s and his son Francis’s sins against the army in 1647 caught up with them at Pride’s Purge on 6 December 1648, when they were not only excluded from the House but were also among those 45 or so Members who suffered imprisonment.296Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 36/37 (5-12 Dec. 1648), sig. Ccc3v (E.476.2). Both men were released on 20 December, whereupon they quit national politics and would quickly forfeit or abandon their various offices. Gerard was replaced as chancellor of the duchy in 1649 by John Bradshawe*.297Supra, ‘Francis Gerard’; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1369. It is not clear whether Gerard’s support for the installation of the Presbyterian minister Henry Langley as vicar of Harrow in 1649 met with any success.298LMA, ACC/0076/0844; Calamy Revised, 314.

During the early 1650s, Gerard is known to have socialised with Sir Robert Pye I*, John Harington* and Rudyerd.299Harington’s Diary, 66, 71, 78, 85. He also retained contact with many of his former political colleagues as an active member during the 1650s of the Bedford Level Adventurers, in which he would have rubbed shoulders with St John, Jessop, Sir Edward Partheriche*, Sir John Potts*, John Russell*, John Thurloe*, John Trenchard* and Valentine Wauton*, among others.300Cambs. RO, R59.31.9.2, unfol.; TSP v. 475; S. Wells, Hist. of the Drainage of the Gt. Level (1830), i. 252, 259, 265. It is clear from his appointment in 1655 as one of the treasurers for the relief of the Piedmontese Protestants, and to similar government commissions during the mid-1650s, that he was well-regarded by the Cromwellian regime.301CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 182, 197; 1655-6, pp. 1, 218; A. and O. ii. 1122. Indeed, in 1657, he attended the lord protector himself, in the company of the earl of Warwick and William Pierrepont, to discuss the terms of the forthcoming marriage between Cromwell’s daughter Frances and Warwick’s grandson and heir Robert Rich.302Henry Cromwell Corresp. 288. Like Warwick and Pierrepont, Gerard was summoned to the Cromwellian Other House in 1658 but, like them, declined to attend any of its meetings – pleading, in his own case, ‘indisposition of health’.303HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 503-4, 522; [G. Wharton], A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament (1659), 34 (E.977.3). After Warwick’s death in 1658, Gerard assisted the feoffees that the earl had appointed in his will – a group that included the Presbyterian divine Edmund Calamy and the parliamentarian peers the earl of Manchester and John Robartes, 2nd Baron Robartes – to settle ‘godly, zealous and able’ ministers in his church livings in Essex.304LPL, COMM/2/504; PROB11/276, f. 245.

There is no evidence that Gerard stood for election to any of the protectoral Parliaments, although his sons Francis and Gilbert were returned to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659.305Supra, ‘Francis Gerard’; ‘Gilbert Gerard’. Only, it seems, following the second restoration of the Rump, late in December 1659, did Gerard decide to resume his parliamentary career. On 27 December, he was one of a number of secluded Members who turned up at Westminster and sought to take their seats, only to be turned away by the army.306W. Prynne, A Brief Narrative of…how Divers Members of the House of Commons...were again Forcibly Shut Out (1659), 3 (E.1011.4). In mid-February 1660, he would secure an indictment at the Middlesex assizes against Matthew Alured*, John Okey* and other officers for (allegedly) assaulting him that day, which the court hoped would serve as a precedent against other would-be secluders of MPs.307A Copy of the Presentment and Indictment Found and Exhibited by the Grand-Jury of Middlesex (1660); Ludlow, Mems. ii. 232.

Restoration settlements, 1660-70

Gerard was among those secluded Members who consulted with General George Monck* and leading Rumpers in mid-February 1660 concerning their proposed re-admission to the Commons.308Baker, Chronicle, 687. He resumed his seat on the day that the secluded Members were re-admitted, 21 February, and would be named to 20 committees between then and the Long Parliament’s final dissolution in mid-March. He reported from, and may well have chaired, a committee set up on 21 February to inform the lord mayor and his brethren of Commons’ resolutions for restoring control of the City’s gates and chains to municipal authority.309CJ vii. 847b, 848b. Overall, he seems to have been an important figure in Parliament’s dealings with the City during February and March.310CJ vii. 848b, 856a, 858a, His appointments also point to his involvement in formulating policies for settling a godly and orthodox ministry, which included a trier system for vetting clerical nominees and a confession of faith.311CJ vii. 855b, 858a, 860b, 877a. On 29 February, the Commons ordered Gerard and another staunchly Presbyterian MP, Edward Leigh, to thank Calamy and his fellow divine Thomas Manton for their ‘great pains ... in carrying on the work of thanksgiving for the union of Parliament’.312CJ vii. 855b.

Gerard was a leading figure in the ‘Presbyterian’ interest that coalesced around a group of the Long Parliament’s grandees in the early months of 1660. Named to the 21 February committee on a bill for constituting a new council of state, he was among those Members voted onto the council – along with Holles and many other leading Presbyterians – two days later.313CJ vii. 847b, 849b. The Commons passed orders in March for making him custos rotulorum of Middlesex and restoring him to the office of chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster.314CJ vii. 856b, 875b. His undoubted support for a restoration of monarchy was tempered by the conviction that ‘the war undertaken by the Parliament against the forces raised by the late king and his adherents was just and lawful’.315CJ vii. 871a. In March and April, he was reportedly part of a ‘cabal’ of parliamentarian leaders, centred around Manchester, Holles, Pierrepont and St John that was anxious to set the terms for Charles II’s restoration before the meeting of the Convention. Gerard, John Crewe I* ‘and that gang’, were said to favour a Restoration in accordance with the 1648 Newport peace propositions.316Clarendon SP iii. 729; CCSP iv. 609; P. Crawford, Denzil Holles (1979), 186-7.

In the elections to the 1660 Convention, Gerard and Sir William Waller stood jointly for Middlesex against the pairing of the republican Sir James Harington* and the Cromwellian Sir William Roberts* and two royalist candidates. But although Waller took the second place, the first place went to one of the royalists. Rejected in Middlesex, Gerard was returned for Lancaster, in the county where the senior branch of the family still resided. As there is no evidence that the duchy interest operated in Lancaster elections during the Restoration period, it is more likely that he owed his return to the influence of one of his kinsmen in the county – possibly his distant cousin Lord Gerard of Brandon, the cavalier general.317HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Lancaster’; ‘Middlesex’. Gerard and his sons Francis and Gilbert – who were returned for Bossiney and Westminster – were listed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton as likely supporters of a Presbyterian church settlement.318G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 334, 337, 339.

Gerard was named to 49 committees in the 1660 Convention and made seven recorded speeches. In a debate in July on the nature of the religious settlement to be introduced, he declared that he could not support any question relating to doctrine and discipline until he had heard whether it was against the Covenant. He also spoke that month in favour of reading a bill to confirm non-scandalous ministers in their livings. In September, he was one of the few Members who voiced his support for a motion that the king be desired to marry a Protestant.319Bodl. Dep. F.9, f. 82; HP Commons 1660-1690; OPH xxii. 387, 477; J.T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry Besieged (2002), 41. If he stood for election to the Cavalier Parliament it has left no trace in the records. The ‘Sir Gilbert Gerard, bt.’ elected for Northallerton in 1661 was a royalist (another cousin of Lord Gerard of Brandon) whose grant of a baronetcy in 1645 had never passed the seals.320HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Gilbert Gerard II’.

Gerard was nominated to the knighthood of the Royal Oak at the Restoration and retained his place on the Middlesex bench, although he lost the office of custos rotulorum.321Burke, Commoners, i. 690. One ‘Mr Ambrose’ – probably the man of that name whom Calamy claimed was ejected at Hanwell, Middlesex, in the early 1660s – was described in October 1661 as ‘late chaplain’ to Gerard.322PROB11/306, f. 206v; Calamy Revised, 9. It is not clear whether Gerard retained the services of another household chaplain thereafter. He died on 6 January 1670 and was buried at St Mary, Harrow-on-the-Hill on 20 January.323CB. In his will, he charged his estate with bequests totalling £750 and an annuity of £100.324PROB11/322, f. 288. Gerard’s grandson Sir Charles Gerard† represented Middlesex and the Cumberland borough of Cockermouth between 1685 and 1698.325HP Commons 1690-1715.