Cornet, 29 April, 1813. Lieutenant, 3 May, 1815. Captain by purchase, 19 January, 1817. Exchanged to half pay, unattached, 6 December, 1833.
JAMES GARDINER.
24 February, 1707-8, Lieutenant in Captain William Crawford's Additional Troop.
The above entry in the original manuscript "Army List" at the Record Office was evidently unknown to the editors of the "Dictionary of National Biography," who have been careful to explain that the famous Colonel Gardiner killed at Prestonpans had not served in the Greys.
In the same manuscript the Earl of Stair is recorded as Colonel, and this same William Crawford as Captain-Lieutenant commanding the Colonel's own troop. In the next MS. list, of about 1714, James Gardiner appears again.
The chief points in Gardiner's life must be taken from the Rev. Dr. Doddridge's "Some remarkable passages in the Life of the Hon. Colonel James Gardiner, who was slain at the battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745." He was the son of Captain Patrick Gardiner, of Torwood Head, Linlithgowshire, and was born 10 January, 1687. At the early age of 14 he bore an ensign's commission in a Scotch Regiment in the Dutch service until 1702, when he received an Ensign's commission from Queen Anne. At the age of 19, in the battle of Ramillies, he received a wound in his mouth by a musket ball. "He was of a party in the forlorn hope, and was commanded on what seemed almost a desperate service, to dispossess the French of the churchyard at Ramillies, where a considerable number of them were posted to remarkable advantage. He planted his colours on an advanced ground, and while he was calling to his men, he received a shot into his mouth."
Mr. Dalton has rightly recorded Gardiner as a Lieutenant in the Greys, and adds a note—"Master of the Horse to the Earl of Stair when that nobleman was sent Ambassador to France in 1715. Appointed Major of the Earl of Stair's Regiment of Dragoons (now the Inniskilling Dragoons), 14 January, 1717. Lieutenant-Colonel of the same Regiment, 4 January, 1730. Colonel of the Regiment now the 13th Hussars, 18 April, 1743."
On the 22nd July, 1715, at the battle of Preston, he headed a storming party of 12, and advancing to the barricades of the insurgents, set them on fire, in spite of a furious storm of musketry, by which 8 of his men were killed.
I abridge from the "Dictionary of National Biography," and other sources, the following note of Colonel Gardiner's last fight:—On 19 April, 1743, Gardiner became Colonel of the 13th Hussars, then quartered in East Lothian, in which district Gardiner had lately purchased a residence. On the outbreak, in 1745, Gardiner's and Hamilton's Dragoons were retained in the low country, while Cope set out to oppose the Pretender in the highlands. 14 August, 1745, four troops of Gardiner's Dragoons marched to Perth, but had to retreat, chiefly owing to the supineness of Cope and the fame of the Pretender's highlanders. On 20 September, 1745, the two armies sighted each other at Prestonpans, and the battle was fought the following morning. "Gardiner's Dragoons were posted on Cope's right wing, and after the discomforture of Whitney's Dragoons were ordered to charge the enemy, but after a faint fire only 11 obeyed the word of command, the others wheeling round and galloping from the field. The battle was irretrievably lost; but Gardiner, who had already been wounded by shots in the left breast and right thigh, seeing a party of infantry who were bravely fighting near him without an officer to head them, rode up to them crying out, 'Fire on, my lads, and fear nothing!' but at that moment he was cut down by three more wounds—one in his shoulder by a ball, another in his fore-arm by a broadsword, and the third was a blow on the head from a Lochaber axe. He was carried to the manse of Tranent, and lived until the forenoon of the next day."
JOHN GARDNER.