Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jardine, David

1398993Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 29 — Jardine, David1892Gordon Goodwin

JARDINE, DAVID (1794–1860), historical and legal writer, born at Pickwick, near Bath, in 1794, was son of David B. Jardine (1766–1797), unitarian minister at Bath from 1790, by his wife, a daughter of George Webster of Hampstead. The father died on 10 March 1797, and John Prior Estlin [q. v.] of Bristol edited, with a memoir, two volumes of his sermons. The son graduated M.A. at Glasgow University in 1813, was called to the bar as a member of the Middle Temple (7 Feb. 1823), chose the western circuit, and became recorder of Bath. In 1839 he was appointed police magistrate at Bow Street, London. He died at the Heath, Weybridge, Surrey, on 13 Sept. 1860; his wife, Sarah, died three weeks later (Gent. Mag. 1860, ii. 446, 565).

In 1828 Jardine published an admirably compiled ‘General Index’ to Howell's ‘Collection of State Trials.’ In 1840 and 1841 he communicated to the Society of Antiquaries two papers of ‘Remarks upon the Letters of Thomas Winter and the Lord Mounteagle, lately discovered by J. Bruce. … Also upon the Evidence of Lord Mounteagle's implication in the Gunpowder Treason’ (printed in ‘Archæologia,’ xxix. 80–110, and also separately). These formed the materials for an elaborate volume entitled ‘A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot,’ 8vo, London, 1857. Jardine also edited from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library ‘A Treatise of Equivocation,’ 8vo, 1851, and translated F. C. F. von Mueffling's ‘Narrative of my Missions in 1829 and 1830,’ 8vo, 1855.

For the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge he selected and abridged from Howell's ‘State Trials of England’ two volumes of ‘Criminal Trials,’ 12mo, 1832–3 (in Library of Entertaining Knowledge). To the ‘Lives of Eminent Persons,’ in the Library of Useful Knowledge, published by the same society, he contributed a ‘Life’ of Lord Somers. He wrote also: 1. ‘A Reading on the use of Torture in the Criminal Law of England previously to the Commonwealth,’ 8vo, London, 1837, which was described by Macaulay as ‘very learned and ingenious.’ 2. ‘Remarks on the Law and Expediency of requiring the presence of Accused Persons at Coroners' Inquisitions,’ 8vo, London, 1846.

[Annual Register, 1860, p. 453; Law Mag. November 1860, pp. 198, 199; information from Jerom Murch, esq., and Albert Nicholson, esq.; Estlin's Memoir of David B. Jardine.]

G. G.