this time married Alice Rivet, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Rivet of Chippenham, who had lands in Staffordshire. So it was for Staffordshire he decided to sit. It is possible that both he and the electors were influenced by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, who was the rising power in the county and leader of a powerful court faction. As a result, Lancashire was forced to hold a by-election in February 1589, just after the assembly of the parliament. The other knight of the shire for Staffordshire in the 1589 parliament was Walter Harcourt. His family, based at Ellenhall and Ranton Abbey were part of a religiously conservative faction that had dominated Staffordshire politics early in Elizabeth's reign. However, Essex was determined to win over both Gerard and Harcourt. Member of the Essex faction In 1591 Essex was put in charge of an English force sent to aid Henry IV of France in his war with the Catholic League. He persuaded both Gerard and Harcourt to join the expedition. After a successful campaign, he knighted both of them before the walls of Rouen. Both seem to have been won over to his side. Essex regarded Staffordshire as his own county and was trying to build a power base in it. The county contained Chartley Castle, his main seat, and Lettice Knollys, his mother, lived at Drayton Bassett with Sir Christopher Blount, her husband, who was a crony of Essex. The earl was appointed Staffordshire's Custos Rotulorum sometime in the early 1590s. He gathered around him a faction made up of ambitious, mainly young, members of local landowning families, particularly the Littleton, Bagot, Chetwynd, Trew and Aston families. While leaning personally towards the Puritan wing of the Church of England, Essex was tolerant of other beliefs. In 1590 it was rumoured he had links to the Catholic double agent Gilbert Gifford, son of the Staffordshire landowner John Giffard. Gerard's own father was accused of being "a protestant at London and a papist in Lancashire", so the relatively relaxed attitude of Essex may have been an attraction, and he was similar in age and background to the majority of the earl's Staffordshire supporters. Gerard proved particularly helpful and accommodating to Essex in 1593. A parliament was summoned on 4 January. Essex had already appointed Sir Edward Littleton, Sir Edward Aston and Richard Bagot as his agents in Staffordshire. On 2