Andrew Robinson Stoney

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Andrew Robinson Stoney, later renamed Andrew Robinson Stoney-Bowes (1747–1810), was an Anglo-Irish member of parliament, high sheriff, and criminal.

Stoney grew up at Greyfort House, Borrisokane, County Tipperary in Ireland, son of George Stoney and Elizabeth Johnston. His grandfather, Thomas Stoney, had migrated to Ireland from Yorkshire, England, in the wake of the Williamite conquest of Ireland, 1689–91.^[1]

While Andrew Stoney-Bowes was a member of parliament for Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1780–4) and also High Sheriff of Northumberland,^[2] he is perhaps best remembered for his marriage to Mary Eleanor Bowes, the Dowager Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, during which, it was later shown, he was severely abusive towards his wife. Mary Eleanor Bowes became known as "The Unhappy Countess", perhaps due to the abuse she suffered, and their marriage ended in scandal. The story of Stoney-Bowes and the Countess of Strathmore was later fictionalised by William Makepeace Thackeray in The Luck of Barry Lyndon. Stanley Kubrick later adapted the novel into the 1975 award-winning film Barry Lyndon.