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Agnew and exhaustive family history alludes to a pile of correspondence still extant, dealing with the minutest details of the interior economy of that corps, which had its headquarters at Southampton and was disbanded in 1748. Sir Andrew Agnew was not afterwards actively employed. About 1748 the heritable offices of constable and sheriff of the province of Galloway (the present counties of Wigton and Kirkcudbright), with which the lands of Lochnaw had been invested since the time of King David II, were abolished, Sir Andrew receiving 4,000l. as compensation. In 1750 he was appointed governor of Tynemouth Castle, Northumberland, in succession to the Duke of Somerset, a post worth 300l. a year. He became a major-general in 1756, and lieutenant-general in 1759. He died at Lochnaw in 1771, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. As a military officer ‘the Sheriff,’ as he was popularly known, his father having resigned the shrievalty in his favour as early as 1723, appears to have been skilful as well as brave, and as a magistrate shrewd, kindly, and true-hearted, despite his eccentricities. Sir Walter Scott describes him as ‘a soldier of the old school, stiff and formal in manner, brave to the last degree, and something of a humourist’ (Hist. of Scotland); and Dr. Chambers says of him that he was ‘a skilful and accomplished officer, distinguished by deeds of personal daring, as well as by an eccentric personal manner that long made him a favourite in the fireside legends of the Scottish peasantry’ (, Lives of Eminent Scotsmen).

[Agnew's Hist. Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway, London, 1864; Chambers's Lives of Eminent Scotsmen, vol. i.]  AGNEW, ANDREW (1793–1849), of Lochnaw, baronet, and promoter of Sabbatarian legislation, was born at Kinsale, Ireland, 21 March 1793. He was seventh baronet of Lochnaw, and head of an ancient and distinguished family in Wigtonshire. His mother was the eldest daughter of John, twenty-sixth Lord Kinsale, premier baron of Ireland. His education was received chiefly from private tutors, but partly at the university of Edinburgh; and he came in his youth under very deep religious impressions. Succeeding his grandfather when only sixteen, he spent his early years chiefly in the improvement of his ancestral castle and estate, and in 1830 he was unanimously elected member of parliament for his own county, Wigtonshire, in the character of ‘a moderate reformer.’ It was after his third election, in 1832, that the Sabbath movement began to attract public attention, mainly through the efforts of an English association termed the ‘Lord's Day Society.’ When it was resolved to prosecute measures in parliament for the protection of the Lord's Day, Sir Andrew Agnew in 1832 took charge of the movement.

The first step to be taken was the appointment of a committee of the House of Commons to procure information on the facts of the case, and the next the introduction of a bill to remedy the evil. Sir Andrew Agnew's bill prohibited all open labour on Sunday, excepting works of necessity and mercy. Sir Andrew Agnew encountered intense and varied opposition on account of the thoroughgoing nature of his bill, but he firmly refused to modify it. The bill was introduced on four several occasions. On the first, the second reading was rejected by 79 votes to 73; on the second, by 161 to 125; on the third by 75 to 43; while on the fourth (in 1837) it was carried by 110 to 66. Having thus at length passed into committee, the clauses were about to be discussed when the death of King William IV caused a dissolution of parliament. To the new House of Commons Sir Andrew was not elected, and no further attempt was made to pursue the movement in parliament.

In a private capacity Sir Andrew continued to advocate the cause in many ways, and not without success, and he threw his energies with much ardour into many of the other religious and philanthropic movements of the time. Of genial and kindly nature, he was much beloved and esteemed among those who knew him. An attack of scarlet fever terminated his life, at the age of 56, on Thursday, 12 April 1849.

[Life, by Thomas McCrie, jun., D.D., LL.D., London, 1850; Hansard's Debates.]  AGNEW, PATRICK ALEXANDER VANS (1822–1848), an Indian civil servant, whose murder at Multán by the retainers of Mulráj led to the second Sikh war and to the annexation of the Punjáb as a British province, was the second son of Lieutenant-colonel Patrick Vans Agnew, a Madras officer of considerable reputation, and afterwards a director of the East India Comnany. After a very successful career at Haileybury College, where he gave evidence of superior talent and of judgment and force of character in advance of his years, Agnew joined the Bengal civil service in March 1841, and in the following year commenced his official life as assistant to the commissioner of the Delhi division. In December 1845 he was appointed assistant to Major Broadfoot, the superintendent of the Cis-Sutlej states, and was present at the 