Charles Gerard, 1st Earl of Macclesfield PC

Royalist List
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Gerard,_1st_Earl_of_Macclesfield

Charles Gerard, 1st Earl of Macclesfield PC (ca. 1618 – 7 January 1694) was a Royalist, English aristocrat, soldier and courtier.

Life

The eldest son of Sir Charles Gerard, he was a member of an old Lancashire family, his great-grandfather having been Sir Gilbert Gerard (died 1593) of Ince, in that county, one of the most distinguished judges in the reign of Elizabeth I. His mother was Penelope Fitton of Gawsworth Hall, Cheshire. Charles' claim to Gawsworth as heir of his uncle Sir Edward Fitton (died 1643) involved him in a bitter 20 year dispute with his Irish cousins William Fitton and William's son Alexander (later Lord Chancellor of Ireland) but was eventually successful.

Charles Gerard was educated abroad, and in the Low Countries learned soldiering, in which he showed himself proficient when on the outbreak of the Civil War in England he raised a troop of horse for the king's service. Gerard commanded a brigade with distinction at Edgehill, and gained further honors at the first battle of Newbury and at Newark in 1644, for which service he was appointed to the chief command in South Wales.

Here his operations in 1644 and 1645 were completely successful in reducing the Parliamentarians to subjection; but the severity with which he ravaged the country made him personally so unpopular that when, after the defeat at Naseby in June 1645, the king endeavoured to raise fresh forces in Wales, he was compelled to remove Gerard from the local command. Gerard was, however, retained in command of the king's guard during Charles' march from Wales to Oxford, and thence to Hereford and Chester in August 1645; and having been severely wounded at Rowton Heath on 23 September, he reached Newark with Charles on 4 October.

On 8 November 1645 he was created Baron Gerard, of Brandon in the County of Suffolk; but about the same time he appears to have forfeited Charles's favour by having attached himself to the party of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, with whom after the surrender of Oxford Gerard probably went abroad. He remained on the Continent throughout the whole period of the Commonwealth, sometimes in personal attendance on Charles II, at others serving in the wars under Turenne, and constantly engaged in plots and intrigues. For one of these, an alleged design on the life of Cromwell, his cousin Colonel John Gerard, was executed in the Tower in July 1654.

At the Restoration, Gerard rode at the head of the king's life-guards in his triumphal entry into London; his forfeited estates were restored, and he received lucrative offices and pensions.

In 1662 he finally succeeded in recovering Gawsworth from his Fitton cousins; when Alexander Fitton claimed that Gerard had won the case by suborning witnesses, he was prosecuted for libelling a peer and imprisoned, although many people believed his accusations.

In 1668 he retired from the command of the king's guard to make room for the Duke of Monmouth, receiving, according to Pepys, the sum of £12,000 as solatium. On 23 July 1679 Gerard was created Earl of Newberry (changed on 20 August to Earl of Macclesfield) and Viscount Brandon. A few months later he entered into relations with Monmouth, and co-operated with Shaftesbury in protesting against the rejection of the Exclusion Bill.

In September 1685, a proclamation having been issued for his arrest, Macclesfield escaped abroad, and was outlawed. He returned with William of Orange in 1688, and commanded his body-guard in the march from Devonshire to London. By William he was made a privy councillor, and Lord Lieutenant of Wales and three western counties. Macclesfield died on 7 January 1694. The title and his estates passed to his son and heir Charles.

Family

With his French wife Macclesfield left two sons and two daughters.

Character

Samuel Pepys denounced him as a "proud and violent man" whose "rogueries and cheats" were notorious. Elrington Ball in his study of Alexander Fitton, while accepting that he was not a suitable character to be Lord Chancellor of Ireland, remarked that however bad Fitton's character it cannot have been as bad as Gerard's.

Other References

• "Charles Gerard, Earl of Macclesfield", Westminster Abbey

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Profile painting by William Dobson, Dunedin Public Art Gallery