AGNATE (Lat. aynatits, born in add it but to, from ad, to + twins, born). Agnates, in the law of both England and Scotland, are persons related through the fa ther.as cognates nre persons through their mother. Ity the English law of suc cession, agnates inherit unless the inheritance ILas received by the deceased person a parts materna, that is. from the mother, or a cognate, in which ease it would descend, it lie left, no issue, to her cognate:. In the Roman law, both of these terms had a somewhat different s4,mi tication. Agnates, by that system, were persons related th•imgh males only, whilst cognates were all those in whose though on the father's side, one or more female links inter vened. Thus, a brother's son was his uncle's agnate, beeause the propinquity was wholly by males; a sister's son was his cognate, bemuse female was interposed in that relationship. The reason for having thus changed the meaning of terms manifestly borrowed from the Roman law seems to he that in Rome the distinction between agnates and cognates was founded on an insti tution which has not been adopted in the Roman sense by any modern nation that, namely, of the patria potestas (9.v.). Boman agnati are de fined by lingo to be all those who either actually were under the same IM frri 11 !HMIS R, or would have been so bad he been alive; and thus it was that. as no one could belong to two ditTerent
families at the same time, the agitation to the original family was destroyed and a new agna tbm erealed, not only by marriage, hut by adop tion (q.v.).
Justinian abolished entirely the distinction be tween agnates and cognates, and admitted both to legal succession. As to the legal effeets of the distinction in the modern sense, see StrcrEssION Gt-AnniAN. Sec the works referred to under CIVIL LAW'.
AGNES (•r, pron. a'nytts'). (1 ) Iii .)1oli i.re's L'Erolc des females, a •haraeter who has become proverbial as a type of ingr'nue. She is a young girl brought up in ignorance of many of the social relations, who innocently makes the most suggestive remarks and without inten tion cruelly wounds other people's feelings. In English, Wyeherley's 11 rs. l'inehmifr is in some respects patterned after her. (2) A character in Lillo's tragedy, Fatal Curiosity. (3) Agnes ill Dickens's Thzrid Cupperlichl. See ICKFIELD, A C NES.