they laid the foundation of his future
conversion, and of that exemplary piety and purity which extorted
admiration even in a dissolute age. After being present at every battle
that Marlborough had fought in Flanders, Colonel Gardiner had signalized
his courage in the Insurrection of 1715; and in 1745 he was again
ordered to the north to meet the Jacobite forces near Edinburgh.[331]

It was during this, his last campaign, when broken by ill health and
premature age, for this brave and good man despaired of the restoration
of peace to his country, that he supped in company with Lord Kilmarnock,
at Linlithgow. Colonel Gardiner's prognostications had long been most
gloomy. "I have heard him say," declared Dr. Doddridge, "many years
before the Scottish Insurrection, that a few thousands might have a
fair chance for marching from Edinburgh to London, uncontrolled, and
throw the whole kingdom into an astonishment." This opinion was derived
from his knowledge of the defenceless state of the country, and the
general prevailing disaffection. And the pious, but somewhat distrustful
views of Gardiner led him to assign yet more solemn reasons for his
anticipations of evil. "For my own part, though I fear nothing for
myself, my apprehensions for the public are very gloomy, considering the
deplorable prevalency of almost all kinds of wickedness among us; the
natural consequences of the contempt of the Gospel. I am daily offering
up my prayers to God for this sinful land of ours, over which His
judgments seem to be gathering; and my strength is sometimes so
exhausted with those strong cries and tears, which I pour out before God
upon this occasion, that I am hardly able to stand when I arise from my
knees."[332]

Imbued with these convictions, Colonel Gardiner, when he was retreating
at Linlithgow with the troops under his command, spoke unguardedly to
Lord Kilmarnock of the prospects of the English army, and thus confirmed
the wavering inclination of that ill-fated nobleman to follow Charles
Edward.[333] The decisive step was not, it appears, taken until after
the battle of Preston Pans, in which Colonel Gardiner, who had a
mournful presentiment of the event of that engagement, fell, after a
deportment truly worthy of the British soldier, and of the Christian.
This brave officer, after having received two wounds, fought on, his
feeble frame animated by the almost supernatural force of strong
determination. As he headed a party of f