Alan Gardner, 2nd Baron Gardner
The Lord Gardner | |
|---|---|
 Vice-Admiral the Lord Gardner, 1815 | |
| Born | 5 February 1770 Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, England |
| Died | 22 December 1815 (aged 45) |
| Buried | |
| Allegiance | Great Britain United Kingdom |
| Branch | Royal Navy |
| Service years | 1781–1815 |
| Rank | Vice-Admiral |
| Commands | HMS Cygnet HMS Daphne HMS Circe HMS Heroine HMS Ruby HMS Resolution HMS Hero |
| Conflicts | |
| Awards | KCB (1815); Naval Gold Medal (1808) |
| Relations | Admiral the Hon. Francis Ffarington Gardner (brother) General the Hon. William Henry Gardner (brother) Colonel William Linnæus Gardner (cousin) |
Vice-Admiral Alan Hyde Gardner, 2nd Baron Gardner, KCB (5 February 1770 – 22 December 1815), was a decorated Royal Navy officer and member of the House of Lords.
Naval career and titles
The eldest son of Admiral Alan Gardner, 1st Baron Gardner, he followed his father into the Royal Navy joining as a midshipman in 1781. Serving under his father aboard HMS Duke, Alan Hyde Gardner saw action being wounded at the Battle of the Saintes in 1782 and was commissioned as lieutenant on 12 January 1787. In 1796 he was promoted captain of the frigate HMS Heroine,[1] and in 1802 he was commanding HMS Resolution.[2] Given command in 1805 of 74-gun HMS Hero,[3] Captain Gardner was present at the action off Ferrol,[3] before leading the vanguard at the Battle of Cape Finisterre later that year.[4]
Promoted rear-admiral in 1808, he succeeded as Baron Gardner upon the death of his father on 1 January 1809 taking his seat in the House of Lords in May 1809.
In 1810 Gardner was appointed Commander-in-Chief, North Sea, at Yarmouth, Norfolk, but resigned his post in May 1811 following the untimely death of his wife. He was then promoted vice-admiral on 4 December 1813.
Appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath on 2 January 1815,[5] and gazetted behalf the Prince Regent on 30 September to be advanced as a Viscount, Lord Gardner died before his letters patent passed the Great Seal, so the viscountcy was not created, despite being so titled in his Will.
Lord Gardner died on 22 December 1815 in Berkeley Square, being buried at St James's Church, Westminster. His only son, Alan Legge Gardner, inherited the family titles after it was formally established in 1825[6] that his first wife's son (born 1802) was illegitimate.
Marriage and issue
Gardner married twice, firstly without issue (annulled), and secondly having issue (two children):
- His first marriage (as Captain Gardner) was on 9 March 1796 in India to Maria Elizabeth Adderley (1780–1831), only daughter of Thomas Adderley MP (1712–1791)[7] and his wife Margaretta née Bourke (1766–1796), and (after her mother's second marriage in 1792) step-daughter of the Hon. Robert Hobart, then Governor of Madras.[8] Disappointed to learn in June 1803 of his wife's adultery and secret delivery of a child, Gardner brought ecclesiastical legal proceedings which led to the marriage's annulment and dissolution by Act of Parliament in 1805,[9] citing her adultery with Henry Devereux Jadis[10] (father of her son, Henry Fenton Gardner later Jadis,[11] who was declared illegitimate by the House of Lords in 1825).[2][12] According to the Treatise on Adulterine Bastardy, the divorced Mrs Gardner promptly married her lover at St Marylebone Parish Church, raising their child as Henry Fenton Jadis.[13]
- His second marriage (as Lord Gardner) was on 10 April 1809 to the Hon. Charlotte Elizabeth Smith (1784 – 27 March 1811), third daughter of Robert Smith, 1st Baron Carrington, by his wife Anne Boldero-Barnard.[14] The couple had one son the Hon. Alan Legge Gardner (29 January 1810 – 2 November 1883) and one daughter, the Hon. Charlotte Susannah Gardner (29 December 1810 – 15 August 1859), who married in 1835 Edward Vernon Harbord, 4th Baron Suffield (1813–1853), without issue.[15]
Their children were "Irish twins" (born in the same calendar year, and within twelve months of each other); Lady Gardner died three months later in 1811.
Legacy
Succeeding his father to the family baronies and baronetcy in 1809, Lord Gardner died a widower in 1815, leaving legitimate issue (two young children, for whom Lord Carrington acted as sponsor).
Efforts were made, from 1824, to establish his son's right to sit in the House of Lords, thus ensuring that Henry Fenton Jadis aka Gardner[16] (son of Lord Gardner's first wife), could not claim the peerage title.[17] The subsequent proceedings before the House of Lords Committee for Privileges established in 1825 that Alan Legge Gardner was the 3rd Baron Gardner, and that his (alleged) half-brother was in fact illegitimate.[18] These proceedings heard evidence from domestic servants and also medical practitioners, testifying to the possible lengths of human gestation; the medical evidence also received an eccentric contemporary commentary by Robert Lyall, MD, FLS,[19] with a science-fictional experiment to calculate the exact length of human gestation, which Lyall called the "Experimental Conception Hospital".[20]
See also
References
- ^ Marshall, John (1828). . Royal Naval Biography. Vol. sup, part 2. London: Longman and Company. p. 115.
- ^ a b Le Marchant, Sir Denis (1828). Report of the Proceedings of the House of Lords on the Claims to the Barony of Gardner; with an Appendix, containing a Collection of Cases illustrative of the Law of Legitimacy. London: Henry Butterworth.
- ^ a b Allen, Joseph (1852). Battles of the British Navy. Vol. 2. p. 150.
- ^ Brenton, Edward Pelham (1837). The Naval History of Great Britain, from the year 1783 to 1786. H. Colburn. p. 21.
- ^ www.rmg.co.uk
- ^ www.lordslibrary.parliament.uk
- ^ www.dib.ie
- ^ Her mother, Margaretta Adderley née Bourke, married 2ndly (as his 1st wife) 1792 the Hon. Robert Hobart (1760–1816), later Baron Hobart (by writ of acceleration 1798), then 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire (1804), eldest son of George Hobart, 3rd Earl of Buckinghamshire, who succeeded his half-brother 1793. Robert's mother, the Hon. Albinia Bertie, a granddaughter of the 1st Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven, was the Hon. Mrs Hobart of gaming house-fame (see references in Georgette Heyer's Faro's Daughter). Robert and Margaretta had issue, one son (John, who died young) and one daughter Lady Sarah Hobart who married Prime Minister Lord Goderich and was mother of George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon. Through her mother's 2nd marriage and her surviving half-sister the Dowager Countess of Charlemont, Mrs Gardner had influential relatives: her stepfather, Lord Buckinghamshire, his cousin Lady Castlereagh (born a Hobart), Lady Lothian who was herself a divorcée (also a Hobart), Baroness Willoughby de Eresby and her sister Lady Cholmondeley (both Bertie sisters) and so forth. It is not certain how much they helped her. None of them seems to have helped her in the divorce case 1805 or in the subsequent attempt of her son Henry Fenton Jadis to claim the barony in 1824.
- ^ www.hansard.parliament.uk
- ^ www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk
- ^ www.bol.com: A Catalogue of Some Books in the Possession of H. Jadis, in Bryanstone Square (1826)
- ^ Nicolas, Sir Harris; Knollys, Gen. William, UK Parliament, House of Lords: A Treatise on the Law of Adulterine Bastardy: with a Report of the Banbury Case, and of all other Cases bearing upon the Subject (Google eBook). W. Pickering, 1836, 588 pages.
- ^ Nicolas & Knollys, p. 214 "He was called by the name of the adulterer who reared him, educated him, and finally provided for him; having moreover married Mrs Gardner the instant the divorce was obtained."
- ^ Henry Boldero-Barnard, of Cave Castle @ www.yorkshiregardenstrust.org.uk
- ^ Debrett's Complete Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1838 edn) GARDNER, B p. 323 (ed. Courthope, William). Printed by George Woodfall, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London, Printer-in-Ordinary to Her Majesty; retrieved from Google Books.
- ^ Article about TV show Who Do You Think You Are? Frances De La Tour, 2015]
- ^ Nicolas & Knollys, p. 214. "[I]t was the adultery of his mother, and the concealment of the birth from the husband which justified the House in holding that he could not have been the result of intercourse which took place on board ship between Captain Gardner and his wife on the 30th of January preceding his birth." The point made here was that unusually long gestation alone is not proof of illegitimacy, but rather known adultery coupled with a secret birth or concealed births of children of a married woman are proofs.
- ^ www.nytimes.com "Gardner Peerage Case: The great Gardner peerage case is simple of plot construction as compared with the intricacies of the Wicklow case, but here a strong love interest is introduced. In 1796 a naval officer named Alan Gardner, the son of Lord Gardner, married a Miss Maria Adderley. One night Captain and Mrs. Gardner were on their way to a party at Lord Strathmore's house when word came to Captain Gardner that his presence was required at one of the Government offices. Mrs. Gardner accordingly arrived at Lord Strathmore's alone. There she met a man named Henry Jadis, who appears to have made on her an immediate impression. Jadis thereafter became a regular visitor to the Gardner house in London. When Captain Gardner was ordered to rejoin his ship, restraint was thrown to the winds and the pair became acknowledged lovers. Gardner went to sea on Feb. 7– this date is an important feature of the case. On July 10 he returned unexpectedly to London, still ignorant of his wife's relations with Jadis. On being informed of them, he flatly refused to believe the news. The following December Mrs. Gardner secretly gave birth to a boy baby, of whose existence her husband was not informed. Meantime Captain Gardner was convinced that the gossip about his wife and Jadis was only too true. He divorced his wife, and two years after the birth of her child Henry Jadis married her. The child henceforth was known as Henry Fenton Jadis.
"A Peerage Without Property: A few years later old Lord Gardner died and Captain Gardner succeeded to the title. He married as his second wife the daughter of Lord Carrington, and in due time an heir was born. But seven years after his second marriage the new Lord Gardner died. His little boy. Alan Legge Gardner, aged 6, now became Lord Gardner, his maternal grandfather, Lord Carrington, being appointed his guardian. Nine years later the former Mrs. Alan Gardner's son, now known by the name of Jadis, suddenly asserted that his real name was Henry Fenton Gardner and that he intended to press his claim to the Gardner peerage, basing it on the statement that he was the elder son of the late Lord Gardner, the first, husband of his mother. The case hinged chiefly on the point that Henry Fenton Jadis was born eleven months after Captain Gardner left his wife to rejoin his ship. This, coupled with the fact that the former Mrs. Gardner had carefully concealed his birth, obtained a verdict in favor of Alan Legge Gardner, the son of the previous. Lord Gardner's second marriage. But the victor in this famous contest died in 1883, leaving no heir. More or less remote descendants of the family have pressed their claims to the peerage, but have never been able to substantiate them with any satisfaction to the authorities of the House of Lords. The Gardner peerage is consequently dormant, although it is probable that somewhere exists the man who is the rightful Lord Gardner." - ^ Lyall, Dr Robert (1826). A Treatise on Medical Evidence relative to Pregnancy as given in the Gardner Peerage Case before the Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords in 1825-26. London: Burgess and Hill.
- ^ Davis, Dr Isabel (2018). "The Experimental Conception Hospital: Dating Pregnancy and the Gothic Imagination". Social History of Medicine. 32 (4): 773–798. doi:10.1093/shm/hky005. PMC 6839528. PMID 31723312.