Sir Andrew Agnew, 8th Baronet

Sir Andrew Agnew, 8th Baronet DL (2 January 1818 – 25 March 1892) was a Scottish politician and baronet.

Early life Agnew was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 2 January 1818 into the Scottish Lowlands Clan Agnew. He was the oldest son of Sir Andrew Agnew, 7th Baronet and his wife Madeline Carnegie.

His paternal grandparents were Andrew Agnew (a son of Sir Stair Agnew of Lochnaw, 6th Baronet) and Hon. Martha de Courcy (the daughter of John de Courcy, 19th Baron Kingsale). His maternal grandparents were the former Agnes Murray Elliot (a daughter of Gov. Andrew Elliot) and Sir David Carnegie, 4th Baronet. The office of Sheriff of Wigtown was hereditary in the Agnew family for more than 400 years, until 1747, when the 5th Baronet was compensated £4,000 for the abolition of the office. The first three baronets successively sat for the same county in Parliament, with the 3rd Baronet also being a member of the Convention of the Estates of Scotland, summoned by William III in 1689.

In 1843, he was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Wigtownshire and he succeeded as the 8th Baronet Agnew, of Lochnaw in the baronetage of Nova Scotia, on 28 April 1849, which had been created in 1629 for his ancestor, Sir Patrick Agnew (a member of the Parliament of Scotland for Wigtownshire). He was later appointed Vice Lord Lieutenant of Wigtownshire in 1852.

Agnew wrote the book The Agnews of Lochnaw: A History of the Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway, which was published by Adam & Charles Black in 1864.

Personal life

On 20 August 1846, he married Lady Mary Arabella Louisa Noel (d. 1883), daughter of Charles Noel, 1st Earl of Gainsborough, and Arabella Hamlyn-Williams. From her father's second marriage to Elizabeth Grey (a second daughter of Sir George Grey, 1st Baronet), she had an elder half-brother Charles, who married Lady Ida Harriet Augusta (a daughter of William Hay, 18th Earl of Erroll and Elizabeth FitzClarence, an illegitimate daughter of King William IV) who succeeded their father as the 2nd Earl of Gainsborough. she had two younger half-siblings: Roden Noel (a Groom of the Privy Chamber) and Lady Victoria Noel (the wife of Sir Fowell Buxton, 3rd Baronet, the Governor of South Australia).

Madeline Diana Elizabeth Agnew (1847–1907), who married Thomas Henry Clifton, an MP for North Lancashire and the only son of John Talbot Clifton and Lady Eleanor Cecily Lowther (a daughter of Hon. Henry Lowther), in 1867. After his death, she married, secondly, Sir James Williams-Drummond, 4th Baronet, son of Sir James Williams-Drummond, 3rd Baronet, in January 1889. in 1889. Catherine Carnegie Agnew (–1858), who died young. Quentin Charles Graham Kinnaird Agnew (1861–1937), a Colonel in the Royal Scots Fusiliers and Military Secretary to the Governor of Gibraltar who married Evelyn Mary Alexander, daughter of Capt. John Hobhouse Inglis Alexander (aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria) and sister of Admiral Sir Edwyn Alexander-Sinclair, in 1899. After her death, he married, secondly, Cicely Anne Churchill Inskip, daughter of James Inskip and sister of the Rt. Rev. James Inskip, Bishop of Barking, in 1916. Rosina Constance Agnew (1863–1920), who married the Rev. James Davidson.

Through his son Charles, he was a grandfather of Sir Fulque Melville Gerald Noel Agnew, 10th Baronet of Lochnaw (1900–1975), who married Swanzie Erskine, daughter of Major Esmé Nourse Erskine (a cadet branch of the Earls of Buchan) in 1937.

Through his youngest daughter Marguerite, he was a grandfather of Eleanor Mary Williams-Drummond (1891–1962), married Robert Barnewell Elliot; Constance Marie Katherine Williams-Drummond (1893–1968), who married her cousin's ex-husband, Francis Stapleton-Cotton, 4th Viscount Combermere of Bhurtpore (and was the mother of Michael Stapleton-Cotton, 5th Viscount Combermere); and Sir William Hugh Dudley Williams-Drummond, 6th Baronet (1901–1976), who died unmarried upon which his baronetcy became extinct.