Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/233

 by whom he had two sons and four daughters. His eldest son married Jane, daughter of William Almer of Pentyokin, Denbighshire (Harl. MSS. 1441 f. 15 b, 2094 f. 62). A certain bent towards historical research is indicated by his labours in connection with the cess, and also by a ‘Discourse on the Estate of the Country and People of Wales in the Time of King Edward I, and from that Time until the Establishment of the Council in the Marches of Wales, with orders devised to avoid and remove evil Practices and Abuses at this day used,’ which he forwarded to Walsingham as the fruit of his experience in the Principality in 1576 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547–80, p. 515). A ‘Short Treatise on Ireland,’ preserved among Lord Calthorpe's MSS., is also attributed to him (Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. App. 40 a).

[O'Flanagan's Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland; Mason's Hist. of the Collegiate and Cathedral Church of St. Patrick, p. 172.] 

GERARDS, MARC, painter. [See .]

GERBIER, BALTHAZAR (1591?–1667), painter, architect, and courtier, born about 1591 (State Papers, Dom. xl. 133) at Middelburg, in Zeeland, was the son of Anthony Gerbier, by his wife, Radigonde Blavet, protestant refugees from France. ‘My Great Grand-father,’ he gave out, ‘was Anthony Gerbier, the Baron Doully,’ and he at one time assumed in England the title of Baron Douvilly, though his claims are doubtful (ib. xxv. 68). His father dying, he accompanied one of his brothers into Gascony, where he picked up a knowledge of drawing, architecture, fortifications, and ‘the Framing of Warlike Engines,’ which brought him the favour of Prince Maurice of Orange. The prince recommended him to Noel de Caron, the Dutch ambassador in London, with whom he passed over to England in 1616. He entered the service of George Villiers, afterwards duke of Buckingham, and was employed ‘in the contriving of some of the Duke of Buckingham's Houses,’ particularly York House, of which he was appointed keeper, and in painting miniatures. The Jones collection in the South Kensington Museum contains a miniature portrait of Charles I, done in grisaille by Gerbier, dated 1616. He was also employed in collecting for the duke (cf., James I, ii. 260, 326, 369). In 1623 he followed Prince Charles and Buckingham to Spain, where he made a portrait of the Infanta, which was sent over to King James; and in 1625 he went with Buckingham to Paris. He was equally ready at devising machines for a mask or the mines ‘which were to have blown up the Dycke at Rochell,’ and at conducting a state intrigue at some foreign court. He now kept the ciphers of the duke's foreign correspondence; and his pamphlets contain numerous allusions to his frequent missions abroad. His first public employment, he tells us, was in Holland, probably in connection with the negotiation carried on by Weston at Brussels in 1622. In 1625 Gerbier met Rubens in Paris, who had then spoken to Buckingham of the advantages of a peace with Spain. In January 1627 Rubens repeated these proposals to Gerbier, who was again in Paris. Gerbier was sent to Brussels to carry out negotiations founded on these proposals, while ostensibly buying pictures. The negotiations, however, failed. Gerbier shared Buckingham's unpopularity, and a bill for his naturalisation was in danger of being thrown out by the commons in the summer of 1628 (ib. cviii. 52). On 3 Dec. 1628 he took the oath on entering the service of the king after Buckingham's assassination, and was knighted in the same year. In 1629 and 1630 his name is mentioned in connection with contracts for pictures and statues (ib. cxxxiii. 29, cxli. 82, clviii. 48, 54). It must have been about this time that Vandyck painted the family piece of Gerbier, his wife, and his nine children, now at Windsor.

In 1631 Gerbier was appointed ‘his Maties Agent at Brussels,’ and on 17 June he sailed with his wife and family. Charles put special trust in him, and sent him direct orders, occasionally in contradiction to those sent through the secretary of state (cf., State Papers, ii. 54). But in November 1633 Gerbier betrayed to the Infanta Isabella, for the sum of twenty thousand crowns, the secret negotiations of Charles with the revolutionary nobles of the Spanish Netherlands.

During 1636–7 the court at Brussels, instigated, as he thought, by the ‘Cottingtonian faction,’ asked for his removal; but Rubens supported him, and Charles's confidence remained unbroken. While in London towards the end of June 1641, having, without the king's leave, let himself be drawn into a lawsuit before the House of Lords, he accused Lord Cottington of betraying state secrets, and, though his commission was signed for his departure to Brussels, he was detained and examined by the lords. The charge broke down, and Gerbier was superseded at Brussels. Upon the death of Sir John Finet [q. v.] he succeeded to the place of the master of the ceremonies, which had been granted to him by patent, 10 May 1641. He was impoverished by debts incurred abroad, and could only with difficulty bring over his family from Brussels (ib. cccclxxxii. 3, 4, 5,