to Ireland, in order to lead a solitary life. Another account connects his leaving England with the defeat of St. Colman, bishop of Lindisfarne, at the conference at Whitby on the Easter question. The party landed in Connaught and made their way northward to Sligo. Gerald built a church in Mayo which he called Cill n-ailither, or the Church of the Pilgrims. Parties of West- and East-Saxons having from time to time joined him there, the district acquired the name of Tech Saxan, which is still preserved in the prebend of Tagh Saxan in the cathedral of Tuam. He is also said to have built an oratory for his adherents in the plain of Mayo, on land given by Raghallach, king of Connaught (640–5), but it must have been a later king, as the best authority places his own death in 731. Here he was buried and his memory was venerated. This has been confounded with the monastery built in the same neighbourhood by St. Colman of Lindisfarne for his Saxon followers. It has been suggested that St. Colman placed his followers under the charge of Gerald as their countryman, but Bede distinctly states that St. Colman's monastery was a new one, and Dr. Petrie holds that St. Colman's abbey church was founded in the seventh century, and this of St. Gerald, also known as ‘Tempull Garailt,’ in the beginning of the eighth. Another story connects him with St. Fechin of Fobhar, who belonged to the second order of Irish saints (542–99). Fechin approved a proposal of the rich to pray for a pestilence to diminish the numbers of the lower orders on occasion of a famine, that there might be enough for the survivors. Gerald opposed the wicked proposal, which is said to have been punished by a plague. These anachronisms show that little value can be attributed to the details of the life. His fame was probably due to the later prosperity of his monastery. Ussher quotes from the ‘Book of Ballymote’ a statement that there were a hundred Saxon saints at Mayo in the time of Adamnan, St. Gerald's successor, and the Litany of Oengus in the ‘Book of Leinster’ has an invocation of ‘3,300 saints with Gerald the bishop, and with the fifty saints of Leyney in Connaught, who are [buried] at Mayo of the Saxons.’ Local names and traditions also attest the reality of this English mission. Gerald is termed in the ‘Annals’ the ‘Pontifex of Mayo of the Saxons,’ and more distinctly ‘episcopus’ in the extract from the Litany of Oengus. The date of his death is given by Ussher as 697, and by the ‘Four Masters’ as 726, but the ‘Annals of Ulster,’ which appear to be the best authority, place it at 731. His day is 13 March.
[Bollandists' Acta Sanct., 13 March, ii. 290, &c.; Calendar of Oengus, p. clxxxi; Petrie's Round Towers, pp. 143, 144; Book of Leinster, p. 373, b. 59; Lanigan's Eccl. Hist. iii. 166–8; Ussher (Works), vi. 607–10.]
GERALD, JOSEPH (1763–1796), political reformer. [See Gerrald.]
GERARD or GIRARD (d. 1108), archbishop of York, was the nephew of Walkelin, bishop of Winchester, and his brother Simeon, abbot of Ely, and therefore, possibly, a distant kinsman of the Conqueror. He was precentor of the cathedral of Rouen (Rob. de Monte, ed. Stevenson, p. 680), and afterwards a clerk of William Rufus's chapel and chancery. William despatched him in 1095, in company with William of Warelwast, afterwards bishop of Exeter, to the papal court on a secret and delicate mission in connection with the dispute between the king and Anselm. The alleged object of their embassage was to investigate the claims of the two rival popes. Its real purpose was to acknowledge Urban, if in return he would consent to send William a pallium for him to bestow on the Archbishop of Canterbury, neither Anselm nor any other person being named, and would also confer on the king some kind of legatine authority. Gerard and Warelwast met Urban probably at Cremona. The result of their negotiation was the mission to the king of a papal legate, Cardinal William of Albano, with whom they returned by the middle of May, the pallium being secretly in the legate's custody (Eadmer, Hist. Novorum, p. 68). A year later (1096) Gerard, though not yet even in deacon's orders, was rewarded with the bishopric of Hereford for his successful intrigue. Anselm, then staying with his friend Gundulf at his manor of Lambeth, ordained Gerard deacon and priest the same day, and consecrated him the following day, 8 June 1096 (ib. p. 74). He was present at the consecration of Gloucester Abbey, 15 July 1100 (Sym. Dunelm. p. 225). The story told by Walter Map (De Nugis Curial. p. 224), that Gerard crowned Henry I (5 Aug. 1100) and received from him the promise of the first vacant archbishopric, that Henry repented, and that Gerard held him to his word, may safely be rejected. Anselm being absent from England, and Thomas, archbishop of York, lying on his deathbed, Maurice, bishop of London, was the prelate who crowned Henry. Gerard was present, for his name appears as one of the witnesses to Henry's famous charter of issued liberties, on the day of his coronation; but though the Oseney ‘Chronicle’ supports Map's story (Annal. Monast. iv. 14), the part he took in the ceremony must have been merely
