Francis Garden, Lord Gardenstone

Francis Garden, Lord Gardenstone FRSE FSA (24 June 1721 – 22 July 1793) was a Scottish lawyer and judge. He was joint Solicitor General for Scotland from 1760 to 1764, when he became a Senator of the College of Justice.

Garden was born in Edinburgh on 24 June 1721. He was the second son of Alexander Garden of Troup, Banffshire, by Jean or Jane Grant, eldest daughter of Sir Francis Grant, later Lord Cullen.

He was educated at Edinburgh University, and was admitted an advocate on 14 July 1744.

In 1745, while serving as a volunteer under Sir John Cope, he narrowly escaped being hanged as a spy at Musselburgh Bridge.

In 1748 he was appointed sheriff depute of Kincardineshire, and on 22 Aug. 1759 was elected one of the assessors to the magistrates of Edinburgh.

On 30 April 1760 Garden was appointed with Sir James Montgomery, Bt as joint Solicitor Generalfor Scotland, but to neither of them was conceded the privilege of sitting within the bar (Cat. of Home Office Papers, 1760–5, pp. 54, 55–6). Garden was employed in the Douglas cause, and appeared before the chambre criminelle of the parliament of Paris, where he was opposed by Wedderburn, and greatly distinguished himself by his legal knowledge and the fluency of his French.

He was appointed an ordinary lord of session in the place of George Sinclair, Lord Woodhall, and took his seat on the bench on 3 July 1764 with the title of Lord Gardenstone. On the resignation of James Ferguson, Lord Pitfour, in April 1776, Garden also became a lord of justiciary, a post from which he retired in 1787, with a pension of £200 a year.

Upon the death of his elder brother Alexander in 1785, Garden succeeded to the family estates in Banffshire and Aberdeenshire, as well as to a large fortune. In September 1786 he went abroad for the sake of his health, returning in the summer of 1788. In 1790 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

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