Gardiner

Gardiner, SAMUEL RAWSON, historian, was born at Ropley, in Hampshire, March 4, 1829, and educated at Winchester and at Christ Church, Oxford, taking a first-class in 1851. For some years he filled the chair of Modern History at King's College, London, but resigned it in 1885 to continue his History at Oxford on an All Souls' elective fellowship. In 1882 he was granted a Civil List pension of £150. The work to which he has devoted himself with more than German thoroughness and unbiased openness of mind began with the following instalments: The History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Disgrace of Chief-justice Coke (1863), Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage (1869), England under the Duke of Buckingham and Charles I. (1875), The Personal Government of Charles I. (1877), and The Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I. (vols. i. and ii. 1882). The last was of course intended to extend to the death of the king, but in the first two volumes had only been brought down to 1642, when the whole of the preceding were grouped together and republished (1883-84) in ten volumes, as a continuous history of England from 1603 to 1642. The History of the Civil War (3 vols. 1886-91) was continued by The History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate (vols. i. and ii. 1894-97). Shorter books deal with the character of Cromwell (1897) and with the Gunpowder Plot (1897, in reply to Father Gerard's attempt to prove that there was no real plot). The Student's History of England (3 vols.) appeared 1890-92. Other works are The Thirty Years' War (1874) and The Puritan Revolution ('Epochs' series, 1875), and an Introduction to the Study of English History (1881; new ed. 1894), written with Mr J. Bass Mullinger. For the Camden Society he edited the Fortesque Papers, the Hamilton Papers, the Parliamentary Debates in 1610, and Debates in the House of Commons in 1625.