Agnews of Lochnaw

14 THE AGNEWS IN IRELAND. [l200.
Lame and Glenarm, as well as the present parishes of Carncastle
and Kilwaghter, and a large range of country in the interior.
Among some of the old Sheriff's papers are leases and other
documents giving a variety of strange-sounding names of lands
of which we neither know the situation, or if they still pass by
their ancient designations; such as "all that his three-toune
land, commonly called and known by the names of Lelesh,
Drummidonnaghan, and Drummiho Beliaderdawn!"
The early successions of the Lords of Larne have not been
preserved. Ireland was long in such an unsettled state — what
betwixt the campaigns of Edward Bruce, the subsequent irrup-
tions of piratical Scots from the Western Isles, and rebellions
against the English kings — that we can hardly be surprised if
literature was little attended to, and that all provincial records
were entirely lost, and that even traditions have almost disap-
peared. The late Sir Andrew Agnew, anxious to collect any
notices existing as to the Agnews of Larne, applied to an Antrim
gentleman of antiquarian tastes, a Mr. Earrell of Camstradden,
who replied at length in a very interesting letter, dated in 1818,
of which the following are extracts : —
" The Agnews were a Norman family that had obtained an
estate in the county of Antrim, and were Lords of Lairn (now
Larne), in the neighbourhood of which the estates of the present
Agnew family of Kilwaghter are chiefly situated.
" I formerly mentioned to you, as a proof of your family
being connected with that country, that there was a denomina-
tion of land in the Kilwaghter estate called the Shekiff's Land.
"It is well known that there are very few estates in the
north of Ireland that are not spoken of as having been the pro-
perty of some Irish family not now in possession, so late as the
reign of Elizabeth, and many of them to a much later period ;
but I have never heard of the most distant idea being suggested
that the Kilwaghter estate was claimed by, or supposed to have
been the property, of any other family than that of the Agnews.
" I do not know of any mountain in the north of Ireland
that bears the name of a family, excepting Agnew's Hill ; no