Life
d.1581; cousin of Gilbert Gerard, joint-treas. Gray’s Inn (d.1593); barrister, Gray’s Inn, 1546; MP Preston, 1553, and Chester, 1555-72; recorder of Chester, 1565-72; vice-pres. Of council of Wales, 1562; loord chancellor of Ireland, 1576; knighted 1577; master of requesets, England, 1577; active member of Irish eccles. Commission; sent historical treatise on Wales to Walsingham, with suggested reforms.
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Works
Lord Chancellor Gerrard [sic], ‘Notes on his Report on Ireland, May 1578’, in analexta Hibernica 2 (1931), pp.93-291.
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Commentary
Andrew Hadfield, ‘Another Case of Censorship?: The Riddle of Edmund Spenser’s A View of the Present State of Ireland (c.1596)’, in History Ireland (Summer 1996), pp.26-30: Sir William Gerard, reporting to Irish Privy Council, 1576: ‘[I]f Irish speache, habit and conditions made the man Irish, the moste part of the English were Irish.’ Further: ‘They marrye and foster with the Irishe’. Gerard recommended that such intercourse be forbidden. (p.41.)
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