Lord Chancellor of Ireland
Even Elrington Ball, who has a rather poor opinion of Gerard overall, admits that he came to Ireland with good intentions and at first showed himself to be an energetic and capable Lord Chancellor. He announced his intention of extending the assize system across the Kingdom of Ireland, to restore public order and deal with the serious crime problem, and quickly established regular sessions throughout the east and south-east. Ball, however, argues that going on assize so often caused him to neglect the duties of his own office, which was based in Dublin. He initially urged the removal of most of the Irish-born High Court judges as being old and unfit to serve, calling them "scarecrows, mere shadows", and requested that they be replaced by English-born judges; later, however, he was prepared to accept Irish judges of sufficient legal ability.
He argued for the need to introduce large numbers of English settlers to Ireland (in Ball's opinion, this is an example of Gerard's habit of constantly interfering in matters which were none of his business). He wrote vividly of the wretched and starving condition of the native Irish; some parts of the country were almost depopulated. The country was much afflicted by thieves, all of whom should be hanged: "English justice must be the executioner". He had a low opinion of his Irish civil servants, finding "not one good man among the whole crew". By March 1577 he was insisting that he must have English lawyers to assist him, or else, he claimed, the job would be the death of him.
Crawford, the author of A Star Chamber Court in Ireland, argues that Gerard as Lord Chancellor had a twofold aim: to re-establish the authority of the courts of common law throughout Ireland, and to supplement their authority by using the powers vested in his own office to turn the Court of Castle Chamber, the Irish equivalent of Star Chamber, which had been established in 1571, into an effective executive body for maintenance of public order. In the second aim at least he had considerable success in the early years, when Castle Chamber heard a large number of cases dealing with riot, affray and other offences against public order. Gerard has been praised for the meticulous care he took in investigating cases before the Court and his willingness to bring them to resolution.
So heavy indeed was the volume of public order cases in Castle Chamber that in 1579 he apologized to Lord Burghley for being unable to hear a private case in which Burghley had an interest. One notable private case was brought against the 8th Baron Howth on a charge of cruelty to his wife and daughter Jane. Castle Chamber accepted the evidence that he had beaten his wife so severely that she was in fear of her life, while Jane had died soon after a similar beating, and probably as a direct result of it. Given Howth's social standing, the penalties were severe enough: he was briefly imprisoned, subjected to heavy fines and ordered to pay maintenance to his wife, who was allowed to live apart from him and was given custody of their children.
Gerard studied the history of English rule in Ireland, and the reasons for the Crown's failure to establish its authority over the whole island, in-depth.He concluded that the turning point was 1350, after which English authority in Ireland began inexorably to shrink.
