There have been three baronies created for the Gerard family who lived historically at Bryn, Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire and Kingsley, Cheshire, in the 13th century.

The earliest traceable member of the family that gave rise to the Barons Gerard was a William Fitz Gerard, who lived during the reign of Henry III of England and obtained his lands in Kingsley, Cheshire, by marriage Emma, daughter of Richard de Kingsley.

[2] Traditional genealogical sources have shifted this man back in time and given the family a shared origin with the Hiberno-Norman FitzGeralds, Dukes of Leinster in the Peerage of Ireland, and they adopted the same arms as that famous family, argent, a saltire gules,[1] before the 17th century in place of an earlier coat bearing a lion.

[2] They were noted as having exasperated heralds by long ignoring their entreaties to be allowed to record the family's pedigree, arms, and early land documents.

The barony passed in direct line of succession until the death of the fifth Baron in 1684 when it passed to his second cousin Charles, a great-grandson of the 1st Baron Gerard, and upon his death without a male heir, to his brother Philip Gerard, a Jesuit priest who died childless in 1733 when the barony became extinct.