  The gauge fixing dependence of the one-loop effective action of quantum
gravity in the proper-time representation is investigated for a space of
arbitrary curvature, and the investigation is extended to Maxwell-Einstein
theory. The construction of Vilkovisky and DeWitt for removal of this depence
is then considered in general gauges, and it is shown that nontrivial criteria
arising from a Ward identity of the theory must be obeyed by the regularization
scheme, if the construction is to remove the gauge dependence of quadratic and
quartic divergences. The results apply also to non-Abelian gauge theories; they
are used to address the question of gauge dependence of asymptotic freedom
arising through internal graviton lines at one-loop order as suggested by
Robinson and Wilczek.
