Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/229

 with the particulars’ of the Gunpowder plot. The government, however, thought they could inculpate him along with Greenway and Garnett. After the discovery of the plot the search for him was therefore renewed with redoubled vigour, and it became absolutely necessary that he should leave England. Dressed in livery he embarked with the suites of the ambassadors of Spain and Flanders, and crossed the Channel on 3 May 1606, the day on which Father Henry Garnett [q. v.] was executed.

Proceeding to Rome, he was appointed English penitentiary at St. Peter's. In 1609 he was professed of the four vows, and was nominated ‘socius’ of Father Thomas Talbot, rector and novice-master in the English jesuit novitiate at Louvain. He took a leading part in the establishment of the college of his order at Liège, and became its first rector and master of novices (1614–22). After acting for some time as instructor of the tertians at Ghent, he was recalled in 1627 to Rome, and became spiritual director of the students of the English College, where he died on 27 July 1637.

His works are: 1. ‘The Exhortation of Jesus Christ to the Faithful Soul,’ London, 1598, 8vo; St. Omer, 1610, 8vo. A translation from the Latin of Landsberger. 2. ‘The Spiritual Combat; translated from the Italian,’ London, 12mo; Rouen, 1613, 12mo. 3. ‘A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot,’ 1606, manuscript fol. preserved at Stonyhurst College, ff. 170. Printed under the editorship of Father John Morris in ‘The Condition of Catholics under James I,’ London, 1871, 8vo; 2nd edition, 1872. Portions of Gerard's valuable narrative were printed in the ‘Month’ in 1867–8, and these, rendered into French by Father J. Forbes, appeared in the ‘Études Théologiques,’ Paris, 1868, and were reprinted separately in 1872. A German translation of Father Morris's first edition was published at Cologne in 1875. 4. ‘Narratio P. Johannis Gerardi de Rebus a se in Anglia gestis,’ manuscript at Stonyhurst, compiled in 1609 for the information of his superiors. Considerable use was made of this autobiography by Father Morris in writing the ‘Life’ of Gerard, which is contained in ‘The Condition of Catholics under James I.’ A third edition of the ‘Life,’ rewritten and much enlarged, was printed at London, 1881, 8vo. The translation of the autobiography is from the pen of the Rev. G. R. Kingdon, S.J. It has been printed separately as the forty-sixth volume of the ‘Quarterly Series,’ under the title of ‘During the Persecution,’ London, 1886, 8vo, and is of very high interest.

[Life by the Rev. John Morris; Catholic Spectator, 1824, i. 257, 325, 360, 389; De Backer's Bibl. des Écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus, 1869, i. 2089; Dodd's Church Hist. ii. 419; Douay Diaries; Gardiner's Hist. of England, 1603–42, i. 114, 243; Gillow's Bibl. Dict.; Lives of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, and his Wife, p. 233; Husenbeth's Colleges and Convents on the Continent, p. 49; London and Dublin Orthodox Journal, ii. 67; More's Hist. Missionis Anglicanæ Soc. Jesu, pp. 249, 253, 256, 261, 263, 337, 339, 414; Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 101; Southwell's Bibl. Scriptorum Soc. Jesu, p. 452.] 

GERARD, JOHN (1632–1654), royalist colonel, was second son of Lieutenant-colonel Ratcliffe Gerard and first cousin to Charles Gerard, lord Brandon, d. 1694 [q. v.] (, Baronage, p. 418). He entered the king's army as an ensign, and speedily rose to the rank of colonel, commanding both in England and France. There were seven colonels besides himself of the name of Gerard in the army. In November 1653 he appeared as a witness at the trial of Don Pantaleone, a brother of the Portuguese ambassador, for the murder of an Englishman. The night before the murder Gerard had overheard Pantaleone and his friends talking of English affairs in the street and had given them the lie, whereupon they had attacked him, and, though a little man, yet ‘he threw him off that was upon him, and so was hustling with him a good while,’ but was rescued by a passer-by, after he had received a stab in the shoulder (, State Trials, v. 462). Early in 1654 Gerard went over to France, where he was presented to Charles II by his cousin, Lord Gerard. Soon after his return to England (May) he was arrested, with two others, on a charge of conspiring against the government. In company with a royalist major, one Henshaw, whom he had met in France, Gerard and others were to attack the Protector with a band of thirty horse as he rode to Hampton Court, and, after killing him, to besiege Whitehall (State Papers, Dom. 1654, pp. 219, 233–40, 274–436), seize the Tower, and proclaim Charles king. The trial began on 3 June before the high court of justice. Gerard declared that he had been to Paris on private business, and that Charles had desired his friends not to engage in plots. The reluctant evidence of his younger brother Charles, to whom he sent his forgiveness from the scaffold, pointed to treasonable conversations with Henshaw and the rest in taverns. Gerard and Vowell, a schoolmaster, were sentenced to death. Gerard successfully petitioned to be beheaded instead of hanged. The royalist writers published his dying