Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/98

 Irving: she died in 1878; (2) in 1882 Bertha Meriton Cordery, who survived him and was granted a civil list pension of 75l. in 1903. He left six sons and two daughters.

Gardiner was buried at Sevenoaks, and tablets in memory of him were placed in the cloisters of Christ Church and in Winchester Cathedral. His best memorial is his history. Its pages reveal the thoroughness of his workmanship and his single-minded devotion to truth. The book was based on a mass of materials hitherto unknown or imperfectly utilised, and those materials were weighed and sifted with scientific skill. Each new edition was corrected with conscientious care as fresh evidence came to light. In his narrative minute accuracy and wide research were combined with sound judgment, keen insight, and a certain power of imagination. Earlier historians of the period, and some of Gardiner's own contemporaries, had written as partisans. Gardiner succeeded in stating fairly and sympathetically the position and the aims of both parties. He did not confine himself to relating facts, but traced the growth of the religious and constitutional ideas which underlay the conflict. No side of the national life was neglected. He won the praise of experts by his accounts of military and naval operations, elucidated continually the economic and social history of the time, and was the first to show the interaction of English and continental politics. The result of his labours was to make the period he treated better known and better understood than any other portion of English history. A narrative which fills eighteen volumes and took forty years to write is necessarily somewhat unequal as a literary composition. Many critics complained that Gardiner's style lacked the picturesqueness and vivacity of Macaulay or Froude; others that his method was too chronological. There was truth in both criticisms; but the chronological method was chosen because it enabled the historian to show the development of events far better than a more artificial arrangement would have done. He sought to interest his readers by his lucid exposition of facts and the justice of his reflections rather than by giving history the charms of fiction, and was content with the distinction of being the most trustworthy of nineteenth-century historians.

 GARGAN, DENIS (1819–1903), president of Maynooth College, born at Duleek, co. Meath, in June 1819, was second son of Patrick Gargan and Jane Branagan.

Destined by his parents for the priesthood, he was sent at an early age to St. Finian's seminary, Navan. On 25 Aug. 1836 he entered St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, where he showed much promise, especially in physics and astronomy. He was ready for ordination before the canonical age. Ordained by Archbishop Daniel Murray on 10 June 1843, Gargan was sent to the Irish College, Paris, where he taught physics and astronomy till 1845. In that year he was appointed professor of humanity in Maynooth, and in 1859 he succeeded Matthew Kelly [q. v.] as professor of ecclesiastical history at the college. After many years of notable success in this position, he was in 1885 made vice-president of the college, and in 1894 became its president. Two historic events happened during his presidency, namely, the centenary celebration of the college foundation in 1895, and the visit of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1903. His management of both ceremonies was dignified and impressive. He died at Maynooth on 26 Aug. 1903, after sixty years' association with the college. Though a man of wide and accurate scholarship, Gargan published only two books, 'The Charity of the Church a Proof of its Divinity,' a translation from the Italian of Cardinal Balluffi (1885), and 'The Ancient Church of Ireland, a Few Remarks on Dr. Todd's "Memoirs of the Life and Times of St. Patrick" ' (Dublin, 1864).

 GARNER, THOMAS (1839–1906), architect, son of Thomas Garner by his wife Louisa Savage, was born at Wasperton Hill, Warwickshire, on 12 Aug. 1839. Brought up in country surroundings, he acquired as a boy a love of riding and 