Sir Egerton Leigh, 1st Baronet

Sir Egerton Leigh, 1st Baronet (11 October 1733 – 15 September 1781) was a British colonial jurist, who became HM Attorney-General of South Carolina.[1] He was a Loyalist who permanently fled South Carolina in 1774 for England.

The son of Peter Leigh and Elizabeth née Latus, he was educated at Westminster School, London,[2] before emigrating to America where his father was Chief Justice of South Carolina.

Leigh became a lawyer and served as a Member of Council and a Judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court, before becoming Surveyor-General of South Carolina. He was appointed Attorney-General of South Carolina by King George III in 1765 and, on 15 May 1773, was created a Baronet, styled "of South Carolina, America".[3]

In addition to his enterprises and legal positions, Leigh was a Freemason of the Moderns Lodges, and was elected and then re-elected as Provincial Grand Master of South Carolina in 1772, with a rather large celebration in Charleston for his election.[4] Following his adultery scandal and his continued loyalty to the Crown, his credibility was ruined and no Masonic meetings were held, and by default Leigh remained Provincial Grand Master for nine years[5] until he was finally seceded by John Deas in 1781.

In 1756 he married Martha Bremar (died 1801) and they had 13 children, including: Martha Leigh who married Nathan Garrick; Elizabeth Leigh who married Lieutenant-Colonel Friedrich Wilhelm, Baron von der Malsburg; Harriet Leigh who married Captain James Burnett, RM ; the Revd Sir Egerton Leigh, 2nd Baronet (born 1762); Sir Samuel Leigh, author of "Munster Abbey, a Romance: Interspersed with Reflections on Virtue and Morality" and father of Sir Samuel Egerton Leigh, 3rd Baronet (born 1796);[6] and, Thomas Leigh a plantation owner in Georgetown County, where he remained settled after the American Revolutionary War.