John Dunn Gardner

Who was John Dunn Gardner?

John Gardner, formerly of Soham Mere and later of Chatteris House, Isle of Ely, in the county of Cambridge, known as John Townshend until 1843 and sometimes styled "Earl of Leicester", was a British Member of Parliament from 1841 to 1847, elected to represent Bodmin as a Conservative. He was also a Justice of the Peace, a Deputy Lieutenant, and High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in 1859.

He is otherwise notable for the tangled marital history of his mother, the Marchioness Townshend.

Baptised John Townshend on 26 December 1823 at St. George's Bloomsbury, he was the eldest surviving son of the brewer John Margetts and the heiress Sarah, estranged wife of George Townshend, 3rd Marquess Townshend.

All the children of this union were declared illegitimate by a private Act of Parliament in 1843. Dunn Gardner, who had styled himself "Earl of Leicester" before his election to parliament, then assumed his mother's maiden name of Dunn Gardner.

Dunn Gardner died in January 1903, aged 91.