Viscount Somerton
(1818-1896)

Volume 1, page 170, sitting number 883.

Viscount Somerton was the courtesy title of the eldest son of the Earl of Normanton, a title in the Irish peerage.

James Charles Herbert Welbore Ellis Agar was born on 17 September 1818, the eldest son of the Welbore Ellis Agar, 2nd Earl of Normanton and Lady Diana née Herbert. He succeeded his father on 26 August 1868, becoming the 3rd Earl of Normanton. On 9 April 1856 he married the Honourable Caroline Susan Augusta Barrington, daughter of William Keppel Barrington, 6th Viscount Barrington of Ardglass.

Lord Normanton died at his London residence on 19 December 1896, at the age of 78. 

According to an obituary in the Lisburn Herald (26 December 1896); 'In 1873 he was created a peer of the United Kingdom as Baron Somerton, of Somerley, Hants. As indicated, the earldom was of the Irish creation, and it dated back to the latter end of the last century. [...] The third Earl was born in 1818, and was therefore nearly 80 years of age. In 1856 he married a daughter of the 6th Viscount Barrington. Of a family of eight children, seven survive. The title will pass to the second son, the present Viscount Somerton, who married a daughter of Colonel the Hon. Henry Byng, C.B., late Coldstream Guards. The late Lord Normanton, who had been ailing for some time, was Deputy-Lieutenant of the counties of Wilts and Hants.'