John Dunn-Gardner

He was a Conservative Member of Parliament for Bodmin from 1841 to 1847, and served as a Justice of the Peace, a Deputy Lieutenant, and as High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in 1859.

[7] Sarah and her husband married on 12 May 1807, and were known as Lord and Lady Chartley, a courtesy title from his grandfather, the 1st Marquess Townshend.

They separated a few months later, in May 1808, without having produced issue, and she filed an ecclesiastical suit for annulment, alleging non-consummation of the marriage, i.e. that the couple had never had sex.

While the suit was still pending, Lady Leicester eloped with John Margetts, a brewer, and married him in a bigamous ceremony at Gretna Green in October 1809.

[5][9] In August 1831 (three months before his death[10]) Sarah's father William Dunn-Gardner (formerly "William Dunn") of Chatteris House, Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, bequeathed the estate of Soham Mere, bought with the funds he had settled on his daughter and her husband, to his eldest natural grandson then known as "John Townshend" (later John Dunn-Gardner), described in 1863 as a stranger in blood under the law.

William Dunn-Gardner apparently bequeathed the estate by name[clarification needed] to ensure that his grandson would not be disinherited by any future legal steps taken by the Townshend family, which in fact happened in 1842.

[3][13][14][15] (One child, being a minor and having no legal guardian, was exempted from the act's provisions,[16][15] but was similarly excluded from succession to the peerage by a second private bill as soon as he came of age.

[19] Although A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain (1862) fails to mention Mr Dunn-Gardner's parentage (as the eldest natural son of the brewer John Margetts and his bigamous spouse Sarah Dunn-Gardner (Marchioness Townshend), it mentions that he had two surviving brothers (William and Cecil) and two sisters.

The marquis took no steps to dissolve the marriage, and his brother had no means to dispute the legitimacy of the so-called Earl of Leicester, because no property depended on the title.