Family and Education

b. c.1660, 2nd s. of Charles, 1st Earl of Macclesfield. educ. Christ Church, Oxf. entered 1673. unm. suc. bro. Hon. Charles Gerard as 3rd Earl of Macclesfield 5 Nov. 1701.

Offices Held

Cornet, Queen’s Horse 1678-9.

Freeman, Preston 1682, Liverpool 1698; j.p. Lancs. 1689-d., commr. for assessment 1689-90, dep. lt. Lancs. and Wales 1689-d.1

Biography

Until the last year of his life Gerard lived in the shadow of his forceful elder brother. During Monmouth’s Cheshire progress in 1682 he expressed his support for exclusion, and his name was mentioned during the investigations into the Rye House Plot as one of the gentlemen who ‘came to visit their honest Wapping men’ and drank treasonable healths with them. Returned as court candidate for Yarmouth in 1689, he was an inactive Member of the Convention. He was appointed to four committees, of which the most important was to inquire into the failure to relieve Londonderry. He supported the disabling clause in the bill to restore corporations. He remained a court Whig, and died on 26 Dec. 1702.2

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Paula Watson

Notes

R. Blunt, Hist. Handbk. to Old Chelsea, 124.

• 1. Preston Guild Rolls (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. ix), 186; Lancs. RO, QSC 103; Wahlstrand thesis, 58.
• 2. CSP Dom. 1682, p. 396; State Trials, ix. 371.