Alan Gardner, 2nd Baron Gardner

Vice-Admiral Alan Hyde Gardner, 2nd Baron Gardner,, 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, and in 1802 he was commanding HMS Resolution. Given command in 1805 of 74-gun, Captain Gardner was present at the action off Ferrol, before leading the vanguard at the Battle of Cape Finisterre later that year.
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, 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 that his first wife's son was illegitimate.

Gardner married twice, firstly without issue, and secondly having issue :

His first marriage was on 9 March 1796 in India to Maria Elizabeth Adderley, only daughter of Thomas Adderley and his wife Margaretta née Bourke, and step-daughter of the Hon. Robert Hobart, then Governor of Madras. 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, citing her adultery with Henry Devereux Jadis. 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.
His second marriage was on 10 April 1809 to the Hon. Charlotte Elizabeth Smith, third daughter of Robert Smith, 1st Baron Carrington, by his wife Anne Boldero-Barnard. The couple had one son the Hon. Alan Legge Gardner and one daughter, the Hon. Charlotte Susannah Gardner, who married in 1835 Edward Vernon Harbord, 4th Baron Suffield, without issue.

Their children were "Irish twins" ; Lady Gardner died three months later in 1811.

Succeeding his father to the family baronies and baronetcy in 1809, Lord Gardner died a widower in 1815, leaving legitimate issue.
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, could not claim the peerage title. 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. 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, with a science-fictional experiment to calculate the exact length of human gestation, which Lyall called the "Experimental Conception Hospital".