In December 1525 Erasmus begs his commendations to him among other ‘booksellers.’ In 1526 he became curate to his friend Robert Forman, rector of All Hallows, Honey Lane; but John Foxe says that he was at Oxford at Easter 1527, and had been there since Christmas 1526, selling Latin books and William Tyndale's translation of the New Testament to the scholars.
Foxe says that he had intended to take a curacy in Dorset under a false name, but gave up the plan, and was at Reading some time in 1527, selling many of his books to the prior there.
Lincoln complained (1 April) to Thomas Wolsey that Gerard is ‘a very subtyll, crafty, soleyn, and untrue man,’ as his answers differ from the scholars.
On 11 July he preached at Jervaulx Abbey, Yorkshire; a monk who interrupted him was taken into custody, and he was sent with letters from Sir Francis Bigod to Thomas Cromwell as a mark of favour.
To please Cromwell, who had taken him into favour, Edmund Bonner appointed him to preach after Stephen Gardiner and Robert Barnes at St. Paul's Cross in Lent 1540.
Gerrard, like Barnes, argued against Gardiner's sermon on passive obedience, and both of them, together with another Lent preacher, William Jerome, vicar of Stepney, were ordered to publicly recant from the pulpit of St. Mary Spital in Easter week.