fore the Swift sure came up, as well as the circumstances of Gardiner's death, have all combined to render the action one of the most celebrated in our naval annals; and that this distinction should have been achieved by a pupil of Byng and Griffin is perhaps not its least remarkable feature.
[Charnock's Biog. Nav. v. 383 ; Beatson's Nav. and Mil. Mem. ii. 153 ; Minutes of the Court Martial on Admiral John Byng ; Official letters and other documents in the Public Record Office.]
GARDINER, BERNARD (1668–1726), warden of All Souls' College, Oxford, was younger son of Sir William Gardiner of Roche Court, first baronet and K.C.B., by his wife, Jane Brocas, heiress of Beaurepaire and Roche Court in Hampshire. He was born in 1668, became a demy of Magdalen College (whence he was temporarily ejected during the struggle with James II), and was elected fellow of All Souls in 1689, proceeding B.A. 26 Oct. 1688, B.C.L. 21 June 1693, and D.C.L. 9 June 1698. He was elected warden of All Souls in 1702, on the nomination of Archbishop Tenison; became custos archivorum in 1705-6, and was vice-chancellor from 1712 to 1715. Both as warden and vice-chancellor he was a prominent figure in his time, a conscientious, indomitable, stern, uncompromising man. In the former capacity he was engaged in a continuous struggle with his fellows in order to put an end to the abuses of non-residence, illusory dispensations from taking holy orders, and others of the same sort, the college during the process being subjected to two visitations from Archbishops Tenison and Wake respectively. The result was not, as he wished, to restore the college to the condition contemplated by the founder, but to establish it on the secular and non-resident basis which the lawyers and statesmen who were prominent among the fellows desired, and which, free from the undergraduate element, it has ever since retained. Gardiner's efforts to enlarge, rebuild, and beautify his college in the style of his age, as we now see it, were crowned with a success denied to his constitutional reforms. As vice-chancellor Gardiner was, along with Wake, the chief means of saving his university from the consequences of its pronounced and prevalent Jacobitism. He governed with a strong hand and made many enemies, especially Hearne the antiquary, to whom as a Hanoverian tory, manager of the university press, and keeper of the archives, the vice-chancellor was exceedingly obnoxious. Hearne described Gardiner as 'a person of very little learning and less honesty, standing for all places that he can make any interest to procure' (Hearne, Collections, ed. Doble, i. 85); but they had some amicable intercourse on antiquarian topics (cf. ib. iii. 397, 419, &c.) It was Gardiner's chief distinction that in the pursuit of the line of duty which he had prescribed for himself he put an end to the intolerable abuse of the 'terræ filius' or elected undergraduate, who by ancient custom had been permitted unlimited freedom of scurrilous speech at the annual act. At the critical periods of 1714 and 1715 these performances, which on such occasions always took a violent political direction, would probably have turned the scale against the permanent independence of the university, already temporarily menaced by the presence of the 'troop of horse' familiarly known to posterity by means of the famous epigram. He died on 22 April 1726 (Hist. Reg. 1726, p. 17). While warden of All Souls he married (29 Feb. 1711-12) Grace, daughter of Sir Sebastian Smythe of Tackley Park and Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire, and through their daughter Grace, wife of Dr. Whalley of Clerk Hill, Lancashire, part of the Brocas estates have been transmitted to the Gardiners of Roche-Court.
[Montagu Burrows's Worthies of All Souls, 349 et seq.; Historical Family of Brocas of Beaurepaire and Roche Court, by the same author; Bloxam's Reg. Magdalen College, iii. 45.]
GARDINER, GEORGE (1535?–1589), dean of Norwich, son of George Gardiner, was born at Berwick-on-Tweed about 1535. He was a scholar of Christ's College, Cambridge, where he proceeded B.A. in 1554. He took the M.A. degree in 1558, having in the meantime become a fellow of Queen's College, an appointment of which he was deprived on 6 Aug. 1561 by reason of his continued absence from Cambridge. In December 1560, at the instigation of Leicester, who was always a firm friend, he was presented by the queen to the living of Chatton, Northumberland. In or about 1562 he became a minor canon of Norwich Cathedral, and was appointed minister to the church of St. Andrew in the same city. He was promoted to be prebendary in 1565, and in 1570 was one of those who entered the choir of the cathedral and, among other outrages, broke down the organ. In the previous year, at a metropolitan visitation, articles had been lodged against him charging him with having been 'a man very unquiet, troublesome, and dissenting, setting debate between man and man.' It was also said that in Queen Mary's time he had persecuted persons supposed to favour the gospel at the universities. In 1571 Gardiner gave up his Norwich living on being instituted by the Merchant Taylors'
