Vice-Admiral Alan Hyde Gardner, 2nd Baron Gardner, (5 February 1770 â 22 December 1815), was a decorated Royal Navy officer and member of the House of Lords.
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 (born 1802) was illegitimate.
Gardner married twice, firstly without issue (annulled), and secondly having issue (two children):
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.
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 (son of Lord Gardner's first wife), 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".