GARDINER, JAMES (1688–1745), Scottish soldier, was born at Carriden in Linlithgowshire, on the 11th of January 1688. At the age of fourteen he entered a Scottish regiment in the Dutch service, and was afterwards present at the battle of Ramillies, where he was wounded. He subsequently served in different cavalry regiments, and in 1730 was advanced to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and in 1743 to that of colonel. He fell at the battle of Prestonpans, the 21st of September 1745. The circumstances of his death are described in Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley. In his early years he was distinguished for his recklessness and profligacy, but in 1719 a supernatural vision, as he regarded it, led to his conversion, and from that time he lived a life of great devoutness and of thorough consistency with his Christian profession. Dr Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk, author of an autobiography, says that he was “very ostentatious” about his conversion—speaks of him as weak, and plainly thinks there was a great deal of delusion in Col. Gardiner’s account of his sins.
His life was written by Dr Philip Doddridge and has been often reprinted.