1642) Gardiner was appointed his leading counsel. On 9 March 1641–2 the lords directed him to open the defence, but he declined, and was committed to the Tower (Lords' Journal, iv. 639 b). On 12 March he petitioned for his release. A few days later the House of Commons resolved to impeach him on account of his support of the ship-money edict, and of his frequent avowals of sympathy with Charles I. The articles, seven in number, were sent up to the House of Lords 18 May, and were published five days later (cf. Rushworth, Hist. Coll. iv. 780–2). Shortly afterwards Gardiner wrote to the king at York, reasserting his loyalty (cf. Edward Littleton … His Flight to… York, 1642). On 29 June 1643 his goods were ordered to be sold (Commons' Journal, iii. 149). Meanwhile he had joined the king at Oxford, and on 30 Oct. 1643 was nominated his solicitor-general. In 1644 he drew up a royal pardon for Laud (Clarendon, viii. 213). In October 1644 he was apparently again a prisoner at the hands of the parliament (Commons' Journal, iii. 658), but in January 1644–5 he was one of the royalist commissioners at the futile Uxbridge negotiations, and on 3 Nov. 1645 was appointed by the king attorney-general. On 23 Sept. 1647 he paid to parliament a fine of 942l. 13s. 4d., and his delinquency was pardoned (ib. v. 347). Thereupon he retired to Cuddesdon, near Oxford. On 12 Nov. 1650 the council of state issued an order permitting him to come to London for nine days on taking the engagement (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1650). He died at Cuddesdon, where he was buried 15 Oct. 1652.
Gardiner married Rebecca Child, by whom he had many children. Two of his sons were slain in the civil wars within a few weeks of each other. The elder, Thomas, a captain of horse in the royalist army, was knighted by the king at Oxford as he sat at dinner on his reporting Prince Rupert's success at Newark, March 1643, and lost his life near Oxford at the end of July 1645. Henry, the younger son (b. 1625), also a royalist captain, was shot dead on 7 Sept. 1645 at Thame during a successful reconnaissance made by the royalists. Both were buried in Christ Church Cathedral in one grave amid ‘universal sorrow and affection.’ Wood praises the two young men very highly, and speaks of the younger's ‘high incomparable courage, mixed with much modesty and sweetness’ (Wood, Autobiog., ed. Bliss, x.). The fourth daughter, Mary (1627–1664), was second wife of Sir Henry Wood, and was mother of Mary Fitzroy, first duchess of Southampton (d. 1680).
[Information kindly supplied by Joseph Foster, esq.; Wood's Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 404; Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple, p. 31; Lloyd's Memoirs of Excellent Personages, 1668, p. 587; Gent. Mag. 1821, i. 577–9; Notes and Queries, 4th ser. iii. 531, 560, iv. 20; Overall's Remembrancia, p. 304; Lysons's Environs, ii. 440; Thurloe State Papers, i. 56; Commons' Journal, vols. ii. iii. v.; Verney's Notes on Long Parliament (Camd. Soc.), pp. 167–9; Clarendon's Rebellion; Chester's Westminster Abbey Registers, p. 161.]
GARDINER, WILLIAM or WILLIAM NEVILLE (1748–1806), minister plenipotentiary at Warsaw, second son of Charles Gardiner (d. 1765), and brother of Luke Gardiner, viscount Mountjoy was born on 23 April 1748, and on 31 Dec. 1767 was gazetted cornet in the old 18th light dragoons or Drogheda light horse. On 31 March 1770 he was promoted to a company in the 45th foot, then in Ireland. He went to America with his regiment, made the campaigns of 1775–6, part of the time as aide-de-camp to the commander-in-chief, Sir William Howe; and brought home the despatches after the battle of Long Island, for which he received a majority in the 10th foot. He served with the 10th in Philadelphia in 1777, and was wounded at Freehold during the operations in New Jersey, on 28 June 1778 (Cannon, Hist. Rec. 10th Foot). On 29 June 1778 he was appointed lieutenant-colonel 45th foot. Joining his old corps in England, he commanded it for three and a half years, during which time, in accordance with resolutions passed at a general county meeting of the Nottinghamshire gentry (August 1779), the 45th foot (now Sherwood Foresters) was ordered to assume the title of the ‘Nottinghamshire Regiment,’ so soon as three hundred men should have been recruited in the county. An extra bounty of six guineas per man was paid out of the county subscriptions. The title was given three years before county titles were bestowed on other line regiments (Lawson Lowe, Hist. Nottingham Regt. of Marksmen). In January 1782 Gardiner was appointed lieutenant-colonel commandant of the 88th foot, and in February 1783 colonel of the 99th or Jamaica regiment of foot, a corps raised in England at the cost of the Jamaica planters, and the second of the six regiments which have successively borne that numerical rank. He appears never to have joined the corps, being employed in Ireland as aide-de-camp to the lord-lieutenant. The 99th was disbanded at the peace of 1783, and Gardiner, who was then put on half-pay, had no government employment until December 1789 (see memorial in For. Office Recs. in Public Record Office under
