[5] At the Battle of Edgehill, Gerard commanded a brigade of Royalist foot guards, the steadiness of which largely contributed to averting absolute defeat.

He fought with distinction in the First Battle of Newbury (20 September 1643), and took part in the relief of Newark (March 1644), when he was again wounded, thrown from his horse, and taken prisoner, but released on parole shortly before the besiegers capitulated.

He rapidly reduced Cardigan, Newcastle Emlyn, Laugharne, and Roch castles, and seems to have experienced no check until he was already threatening Pembroke about the middle of July, when the garrison of that place by a sortie routed a portion of his force and obtained supplies.

His forces are said to have been largely composed of Irish levies, of whose barbarous atrocities loud complaint is made in the Kingdom's Intelligencer (15–23 October 1644).

[8] The ascendency of the royalists being thus re-established in South Wales, Gerard received orders to move eastward again, and was marching on Hereford at the head of five thousand horse and foot when the Battle of Naseby was fought (14 June 1645).

From Hereford Charles retreated to Abergavenny and thence to Cardiff, with the hope of raising a fresh army in Wales, but found the Welsh much disaffected, owing (according to Clarendon) to the irritation engendered by the extraordinary rigour with which Gerard had treated them; so that when news came that Hereford had been invested by the Scottish army and must fall unless relieved within a month, Charles could only induce the Welsh to move by superseding Gerard, promising at the same time to make him a baron.

After much apparently purposeless marching and counter-marching, the royalists risked an engagement with the besiegers on Rowton Heath (23 September 1645), but were totally defeated by General Sydnam Poyntz.

Gerard was dismissed from the King's service before the end of the month for taking part with Rupert and some other Cavaliers in a disorderly protest against the supersession of Sir Richard Willis, the governor of the place.

They established themselves at Worton House, some fourteen miles from Newark-on-Trent, and made overtures to Parliament with the view of obtaining passes out of the country.

There Gerard raised another troop of horse, with which he scoured the adjoining country, penetrating on one occasion as far as the neighbourhood of Derby, where he was routed in a skirmish.

He apparently belonged to the "queen's faction",[14] which was understood to favour the policy of coming to an understanding with the commissioners from the Scottish Parliament, who were then at the Hague, but were denied an audience by Charles.

[14] In the following November (1650) Nicholas writes to Gerard that he has the commission appointing him general of Kent, but that the fact must be kept secret "because the King in his late declaration promised the Scots to grant none."

In March 1650–1 Gerard left the Hague for Breda in attendance on the Duke of York, who was anxious to avoid certain "things called ambassadors," as Nicholas scornfully terms the Scottish envoys.

He remained there through part of 1654, was present at the siege of Arras, serving under Marshal Turenne as a volunteer in August of that year,[16] and then returned to Paris, where he divided his energies between quarrelling with Hyde, intriguing on behalf of Queen Henrietta Maria, and instigating his cousin, John Gerard, to assassinate the Protector.

[18] From the Hague, Gerard went to Brussels, where in April he received instructions to raise a troop of horse guards at once and a promise of an allowance of four hundred guilders a day for his family.

His title, however, was disputed by the late ranger, James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, and he was soon involved in litigation with Captains Thomas and Henry Batt, keepers of Potter's Walk and bailiffs of the Chase, whose patents he refused to recognise.

About this time he became a member of the Royal African Company, which obtained in January 1663 a grant by letters patent of the region between Port Sallee and the Cape of Good Hope for the term of one thousand years.

The title depended on the authenticity of a certain deed which Gerard alleged to be a forgery, producing the notorious forger Alexander Granger, who swore that he himself had forged it.

[22] In March 1665 Gerard was granted a pension of £1,000 per annum to retire from the post of captain of the guard, which Charles desired to confer on the Duke of Monmouth.

Pepys also states that it was his practice to conceal the deaths of the troopers that he might draw their pay; and one of his clerks named Carr drew up a petition to the House of Lords charging him with peculation to the extent of £2,000 per annum.

The petition found its way into print before presentation, and was treated by the house as a breach of privilege, voted a "scandalous paper", and ordered to be burned by the common hangman.

On the occasion of the Duke of Monmouth's unauthorised return from abroad in November 1679, Gerard was sent by Charles to him "to tell him out of his great tenderness he gave him till night to be gone".

Lord Grey de Werke in his Confession (p. 61) asserts that Gerard suggested to Monmouth the expediency of murdering the Duke of York by way of terrorising Charles.

In fact, however, he refused the application on the ground that the claim was stale, a "pitch of heroical justice" which North cannot adequately extol,[24] and which so impressed Macclesfield that he expended a shilling in the purchase of the lord keeper's portrait.

During the progress of the Prince of Orange from Torbay to London, Gerard commanded his body-guard, a troop of some two hundred cavaliers, mostly English, mounted on Flemish chargers, whose splendid appearance excited much admiration.

[25] In July 1690 he was one of a commission appointed to inquire into the conduct of the fleet during a recent engagement with the French off Beachy Head, which had not terminated so successfully as had been anticipated.

Little is known of her except that in 1663 she was dismissed by Charles II 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.