Joan de Burnhull married William Gerard from the lord of the manor of Kingsley and Agnes de Burnhull married David Egerton of Egerton near Malpas. Joan and Agnes were granddaughters of Thomas de Burnhull. Thomas Gerard in 1452 married young to Douce de Ashton, the daughter of Sir Thomas Ashton and later a second wife Cecily Foulshurst by who their son Peter married Margery the daughter of Sir Thomas Stanley of Hooton. Margery was also the granddaughter of Sir John Bromley by whom Gerard Bromley's family came. Peter Gerard died in 1523 duing an expedition against the Scots. His son Sir Thomas Gerard sold his interest in the Kingsley family for the other third part of the manor of Ashton from John Atherton. Thomas married the daughter of Sir John Port of Etwall in Derbyshire and was later sent to the Tower if 1571 for a share in the unestablished relgion of the ways and the previous yeare for sympathy with Mary Queen of scots. His release was said to have been purchased by the surrender of Bromley to Sir Gilbert Gerard, Master of the Rolls. The second time of his commitment was liberated after three years by the sufficing of Philip Earl of Arundel who was at the Tower in 1586 to the effect of his prayer for the inquisition against him. His younger son John became a Jesuit and laboured in England until the Gunpowder Plot and the living in Belgium became founding agency of the English College at Liege. Sir Thomas died in 1601. His son Thomas was made a knight in 1603 and a baronet in 1611 succeeded him. Having held manors of Ashton and Windle in Lancashire and Etwall and Hardwick in Derbyshire. He was succeeded by his son Sir William Gerard who was appointed governor of Denbigh Castle and sold holding of Derbyshire during the outbreak of the Civil War. They were sold under the confiscation Act of 1652 to John Wildman. Some of the field names from getting coals, in a survey of the lands that year- Tootell, Leachfield, Tunstall Heads, Coalpit Banks, Mill Hill and Pingotts. William's son William married to the Cansfield family in 1696. They were shut out by legal proscription of the ancient religion. The third part of the manor in Ashton held in 1212 by Henry son of Roger became a possessed by the Athertons of Atherton until the sixteenth century, sold to the Gerards of Brynn. The only landowner contributing to the subsidy in Mary's reign was Sir Thomas Gerard; but the following freeholders were recorded in 1600: Sir Thomas Gerard of Brynn, Thomas Gerard of Garswood, James Ashton, Edward Knowles, James Richardson, William Slynehead, and William Stanley. There is no record of the origin of St. Thomas's Chapel at Ashton, which is first named in the pleadings in 1515 respecting the dispute about Turnshea Moss between Sir Thomas Gerard and his namesake of Ince. A school was founded in 1588 and by 1590, the church was without a priest.

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