GERARD, Gilbert (d. 1683), of Gray’s Inn and Harrow-on-the-Hill, Mdx.

Gerard remained in London during the civil war, performing his duties as clerk of the duchy of Lancaster – an office worth over £600 a year that his father, the previous incumbent, had passed on to him in 1640.24Infra, ‘Sir Gilbert Gerard’; CJ ii. 884b-885a; iv. 25a; SP18/66, f. 178; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 426. Gerard was included on various parliamentary commissions relating to the metropolis and its environs during the 1640s, and the Commons endeavoured early in 1646 to secure his appointment as clerk of the peace for the East Anglian circuit, but the Lords failed to pass the necessary legislation.25CJ iv. 168b, 444b, 452a, 460a, 460b; LJ viii. 195a.

In 1648, Clement Walker* included Gerard on a list of Commons-men in the Long Parliament who had conspicuously put their own interests before those of the public – in Gerard’s case by helping his father secure the above-mentioned office of clerk of the peace for their kinsman Edward Gerard.26[C. Walker], Hist. of Independency (1648), 168 (E.463.19). But there is no evidence for Walker’s claim that Gerard was an MP at this time; a reference in the Journal to the nomination of one ‘Mr. Gilb. Gerard’ to a Commons committee on 3 October 1643 must have been a clerical error for Sir Gilbert Gerard.27CJ iii. 262a. Nevertheless, Walker was insistent that Sir Gilbert was accompanied in the Long Parliament not only by his eldest son Francis, who sat for Seaford, but also by Gilbert.28[Walker], Hist. of Independency, 173.

Gerard retained his office as clerk of the duchy under the Rump – despite the removal of his father as chancellor of the duchy – and in November 1649 he took the Engagement abjuring monarchy and Lords. But it was his father’s deputy-clerk and long-time associate William Jessop* who seems to have shouldered the greater workload under the new chancellor, John Bradshawe*.29PRO30/26/21, pp. 35-50. In February 1654, several months after the Nominated Parliament had allowed the duchy jurisdiction to lapse, Gerard petitioned the protector, requesting compensation for his loss of office.30SP18/66, f. 178; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 426. The protector looked favourably on his suit, which was granted, in effect, in June, when the protectoral council passed an ordinance restoring the duchy, its officials and their customary fees and perquisites.31PRO30/26/21, pp. 61-3; Bodl. Rawl. A.36, f. 127. Nevertheless, Gerard wrote to Secretary John Thurloe* in March 1656, pleading his ‘great sufferings for my fidelity to the public good’ and requesting the secretary’s assistance in presenting Cromwell with a second petition ‘to answer my condition ... before it be too late’.32Bodl. Rawl. A.36, f. 127. Late in 1658, Gerard, Sir Charles Wolseley*, Philip Jones* and two other gentlemen leased from the protectorate for £3,000 a year the farm of the duty on coal transported from Newcastle-upon-Tyne for domestic use.33E214/657; E. Suss. RO, GLY/390.

Gerard had been elected to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament by early April 1659.34CJ vii. 627b. His failure to make any impression upon the House’s proceedings before April, and the fact that he does not figure in any of the surviving returns or published lists of Members for this Parliament, strongly suggests that he secured his seat as a result of a (now forgotten) by-election in a minor borough, far from the gaze of the London press. There were several boroughs where not only did a disputed return or a Member choosing to sit for another constituency prompt a parliamentary order for a new election but also where the outcome of the resulting by-election – assuming one was actually held before Parliament was dissolved on 21 April – is not recorded. Of these boroughs, perhaps the one with the strongest known link to the Gerard family was the Somerset constituency of Minehead, for which the Commons ordered a by-election writ to replace Richard Hutchinson (who had chosen to sit for Rochester) on 10 March.35CJ vii. 612. In the elections to the 1660 Convention, Minehead would return Charles Pym*, who was the son of Sir Gilbert Gerard’s close political associate from the late 1620s, John Pym*, and a kinsman of the borough’s main electoral patrons the Luttrell family.36Supra, ‘Minehead’; infra, ‘Sir Gilbert Gerard’; ‘Charles Pym’; HP Commons, 1660-90 ‘Charles Pym’. In 1663, Charles Pym would marry Gilbert Gerard’s sister.37Som. RO, DD/BR/ely/4/1.

Gerard was named to only three, relatively minor, committees in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate.38CJ vii. 627b, 632a, 639a. In the elections to the 1660 Convention, he and Thomas Clarges were returned for Westminster on 28 March, and it was reported that ‘the affections of the whole liberty (a thing never before known there) were so unanimous in the election, that no other appeared as a competitor’.39Parliamentary Intelligencer no. 14 (26 Mar.-2 Apr. 1660), 211 (E.183.1). Gerard probably owed his return to his father’s influence, for Sir Gilbert had recently been restored as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, which included a liberty jurisdiction within the Westminster constituency. Like his father and brother Francis – who were returned for Lancaster and Bossiney respectively – Gerard was listed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, as a likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement.40G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 334, 337, 339.

Gerard was named to approximately 26 committees in the 1660 Convention and acted as a teller in six divisions. However, he made only one recorded speech and that of no political significance. His knighthood in March 1661 has been interpreted as an inducement not to stand against the court candidate Sir Philip Warwick* in the elections for Westminster to the Cavalier Parliament – which ploy, if such it was, was apparently successful.41HP Commons, 1660-90. He retained his office as clerk of the duchy at the Restoration, and in the early 1660s he took over his father’s interest as one of the Bedford Level Adventurers.42Wells, Drainage of the Gt. Level, i. 456-63. His father’s colonial interests also formed the basis for his own involvement in the Somers Island [Bermuda] Company, of which he was a leading member after the Restoration.43Mems. of the Bermudas ed. Lefroy, ii. 237, 540; Wilkinson, Adventurers of Bermuda, 342-3, 352, 353, 355, 398.

Gerard died in the autumn of 1683 and was buried at St Mary, Harrow-on-the-Hill on 5 November.44St Mary, Harrow-on-the-Hill par. reg. Having never married, he left the bulk of his estate to his nephews Sir Charles Gerard, 3rd bt. †, and Cheke Gerard. He made bequests in his will totalling approximately £2,900, and his legatees included his brother-in-law Tristram Conyers†.45PROB11/381, ff. 325v-326. Sir Charles Gerard represented Middlesex and the Cumberland borough of Cockermouth between 1685 and 1698.46HP Commons 1690-1715.