Career
He was elected a representative peer in 1809, created Earl of Blessington in 1816, and inherited the title of Viscount Mountjoy in 1829. He was present at the trial of Queen Caroline. lieutenant was during her Hampshire stay that she met Gardiner, 7 years her senior.
Jenkins received £10,000 from Gardiner to cover the jewels and clothing that he had purchased for Margaret, buying his approval for Gardiner"s and Power"s marriage, after which she changed her name to Marguerite.
Honeymooning in Ireland, they returned to a newly leased town mansion at 10 Saint James"s Square, London, in 1820. This address (now the base of Chatham House) soon became a social centre, but their heavy spending and extravagant tastes meant that, despite his annual income of £30,000 from his Irish estates, they were soon both heavily in debt.
On 25 August 1822 they set out for a continental tour with Marguerite"s youngest sister, the twenty-one-year-old Mary Anne, and servants. They met Count Doctorate"Orsay (who had first become an intimate of Lady Blessington in London in 1821) in Avignon on 20 November 1822, before settling at Genoa for four months from 31 March 1823.
There they met Byron on several occasions, giving Lady Blessington material for her "Conversations with Lord Byron".
The Blessingtons and the new couple moved to Paris towards the end of 1828, taking up residence in the Hôtel Maréchal Ney, where the Earl suddenly died at forty-six of an apopleptic stroke in 1829. Doctorate"Orsay lived with Lady Blessington until her death, and she let out the Earl"s Street James"s house.