had been anticipated. He died on 7 Jan. 1693–4 suddenly in a fit of vomiting, and was buried on the 18th in Exeter vault in Westminster Abbey (Cobbett, State Trials, x. 1330; Luttrell, Relation of State Affairs, i. 305, 357, 399, 502, 505, 513, 522, ii. 74, iii. 250; Burnet, Own Time, fol. i. 780, 8vo iv. 79 n.; Ormerod, Cheshire, iii. 553, 556; Coll. Top. et Gen. viii. 9). Gerard married Jane, daughter of Pierre de Civelle, a Frenchman resident in England. Little is known of her except that in 1663 she was dismissed by Charles from attendance on the queen for tattling to her about Lady Castlemaine, and that on one occasion while being carried in her chair through the city she was mistaken for the Duchess of Portsmouth, saluted as the French whore, and mobbed by the populace (Hatton Corresp. Camd. Soc. i. 175). By this lady Gerard had issue two sons (Charles [q. v.], who succeeded to the title, and Fitton) and three daughters, Elizabeth, who married Digby, fifth lord Gerard of Bromley (Coll. Top. et Gen. viii. 12), and was buried in Westminster Abbey, Charlotte and Anne.
[Granger's Biogr. Hist. (4th ed.), iii. 219; Doyle's Baronage; Bank's Extinct Peerage, iii. 304; Burke's Extinct Peerage; Phillips's Civil War in Wales; Duke of Manchester's Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne, i. 335, i. 123.]
GERARD, CHARLES, second Baron of Brandon in Suffolk, Viscount Brandon, and Earl of Macclesfield (1659?–1701), the eldest son of Charles Gerard, first Earl of Macclesfield [q. v.], by Jane, daughter of Pierre de Civelle, was born at Paris about 1659, and naturalised by act of parliament in 1676–7 (Coll. Top. et Gen. viii. 12; Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. 80, 83; Lords' Journ. xiii. 47 b, 71 a). His earliest recorded achievement was the killing in his cups of a footboy belonging to a certain Captain With by a box on the ear in St. James's Park on the night of 17 May 1676. He absconded for a time, but was not brought to justice (Hatton Corresp. Camd. Soc. i. 127; Reresby, Memoirs, ed. 1813, pp. 318–19). He was returned to parliament for the county of Lancaster on 9 Sept. 1679, and again on 22 Feb. 1680–1. As one of the grand jury that presented James, duke of York, as a popish recusant at Westminster in 1680, he fell under suspicion of entertaining treasonable designs against the government, was committed to the Tower on 8 July 1683, and only released on 28 Nov., on entering into his own recognisances for 10,000l., with four sureties for 5,000l. each. The trial took place in the following February, and resulted in an acquittal. Having, however, taken part with his father in entertaining the Duke of Monmouth, he was presented jointly with him by the grand jury of Cheshire on 17 Sept. 1684 as disaffected to the government, was committed to the Tower on 31 July 1685, indicted at the king's bench of high treason on 14 Nov., convicted, mainly on the evidence of Lord Grey de Werk, of complicity in the Rye House plot on the 25th, and sentenced to death three days later. The king, however, granted a reprieve, and in January 1686–7 released him on bail. He received the royal pardon on 31 Aug., and obtained a reversal of the attainder which had followed his conviction on 26 Nov. in the same year (Clarke, Life of the Duke of York, i. 590; Rapin, ii. 713; ‘Proceedings upon the Bailing of Lord Brandon Gerard,’ Brit. Mus. Cat.; Luttrell, Relation of State Affairs, i. 265, 292, 301, 355, 363, 392, 407, 421; Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. App. 270, 7th Rep. App. 501 b; Bramston, Autobiogr. Camd. Soc. 215; Somers Tracts, viii. 406). On 17 Jan. 1688–1689 he was returned to parliament for the county of Lancaster, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the peerage. In January 1689–90 he was appointed custos rotulorum for Cheshire, and on 23 May following lord-lieutenant of Lancashire. He was an intimate friend and a connection by marriage of Lord Mohun [q. v.], for whom he became bail in 1692, on that nobleman's being committed to stand his trial for the murder of Mountfort. On 24 Jan. 1693–4 (his father having died on the 7th) he took his seat in the House of Lords. In the following February he was appointed to the command of a regiment of horse, and a few weeks later advanced to the rank of major-general. He took part in the unsuccessful attack on the outworks of Brest (8 June), in which General Talmash received a mortal wound, and on the fleet returning to Plymouth he was appointed Talmash's successor. In this capacity he accompanied Lord John Berkeley throughout his cruise along the northern coast of France, in the course of which Dieppe and Havre were bombarded (July). In March 1695–6 he was appointed lord-lieutenant of North Wales. He was accredited in June 1701 envoy extraordinary to the court of Hanover to present the electress-dowager Sophia with a copy of the Act of Succession. Toland, the freethinker, who with Lord Mohun accompanied him to Hanover, and who wrote an account of the mission, says that he was appointed solely from his father having been known in the court of Bohemia. The envoys left England early in July, and returned in the autumn. Toland describes their reception as extremely cordial. Gerard was presented by the electress with her own picture
