Sir Andrew Agnew, 7th Baronet

Sir Andrew Agnew, 7th Baronet (21 March 1793 – 28 April 1849) was a Scottish politician and a prominent promoter of Sunday Sabbatarianism, which brought him to the notice of Charles Dickens who criticised both his cause and his character.

Biography Andrew Agnew was the son of Andrew Agnew and Martha, daughter of John de Courcy, 19th Lord Kingsale. The family lived at Lochnaw Castle in the parish of Leswalt.

Agnew was Member of Parliament for Wigtownshire, 1830–1837. He stood as a moderate reformer, but soon became deeply attached to the cause of Sabbatarianism, and pressed for the banning of all secular labour on Sunday. For this purpose he introduced no less than four Sabbath Observance Bills in the Commons, none of which passed. It was the third attempt which drew on him the wrath of Charles Dickens, whose essay Sunday Under Three Heads (1836) is very largely a personal attack on Agnew, whom he described as a fanatic, motivated by resentment of the idea that those poorer than himself might have any pleasure in life. While Dickens made many cogent arguments against the Bill, the strongest perhaps being that people cannot be forced to go to Church on Sunday, his personal attack is probably unjust: the Dictionary of National Biography speaks of Agnew's "genial and kindly nature". He left Parliament in 1837, and no further effort to proceed with a Sabbath Observance Bill was made.

He died from scarlet fever in 1849 and he was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son. Martha Agnew (d. 1904), married Frederick Lewis Maitland-Heriot in 1848. Reverend David Carnegie Andrew Agnew (1821–1887)) James Andrew Agnew (1823–1918) Sir Stair Andrew Agnew (1831–1916) Thomas Frederick Andrew Agnew (1834–1924) Lt.-Col. Gerald Andrew Agnew (1835–1927)