The Noble and Gentle Men of England / or, notes touching the arms and descents of the ancient knightly and gentle houses of England, arranged in their respective counties.

by Evelyn Philip Shirley

Gerard of Bryan, Baronet 1611.

This family claims the same ancestor as the now extinct house of the Windsors Earls of Plymouth; the Carews also, both of England and Ireland, are descended, according to Camden, from the same progenitors: the pedigree therefore is extended to the Conquest, Otherus or Otho being the first recorded ancestor. The Lancashire branch were not settled there till the reign of Edward III., when they became possessed of Bryn, by marriage with the heiress of that name and place, From the Gerards of Ince descended the extinct Lords Gerard, of Gerard's-Bromley, and Sir William Gerard, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, who died in 1581.

See Baines's Lancashire, iii. 641; and Wotton's Baronetage, i. 51.

Arms.—Argent, a saltire gules.

Present Representative, Sir Robert Tolver Gerard, 13th Baronet.

Stanley of Knowesley, Earl of Derby 1485; Baronet 1627.

Although Sir Rowland Stanley Errington, brother of Sir William Massey Stanley, late of Hooton, in the county of Chester, Baronet, is in fact the head of this illustrious house, yet, as that estate has been sold, and his family have now no connection with Cheshire, the Earl of Derby must be considered the chief, as he is in truth the principal, branch of the house of Stanley.

As few families have acted a more prominent part in History, so few can trace a more satisfactory pedigree. Descended from a younger branch of the Barons Audeley, of Audeley in Staffordshire, the name of Stanley, from the manor of that name in this county, in the reign of John, was assumed by William de Audleigh. Sir John Stanley, K.G., Lord Deputy of Ireland, in 1381 married the heiress of Lathom, and thus became possessed of Knowesley; it was this Sir John also who obtained a grant of the Isle of Man, which afterwards descended to the Murrays Dukes of Athol till 1765. The principal branch of this family became extinct on the death of James, tenth Earl, in 1736; when the earldom descended on Sir Edward Stanley of Bickerstaff, Baronet, descended from Sir James Stanley, brother of Thomas second Earl of Derby.