Sir Arthur Wardour of Knockwinnock Castle is a character in Walter Scott's 1816 novel The Antiquary, a Scottish Tory baronet who is vain of his ancient family but short of money.

Things get so heated that the Wardours call the dinner-party short and walk homeward over the sands of the intervening bay, but the incoming tide cuts them off and threatens to drown them.

Wardour later invites Oldbuck and Lovel to join him in a trip to the ruins of St. Ruth's Priory, and when the day comes the conversation turns to a treasure rumoured to be buried there.

Isabella's lover is discovered to be the long-lost legitimate son of a wealthy earl, and the two are speedily married, putting Sir Arthur out of all financial danger.

[3] Sir Arthur's particular interest is in the history of the Wardour family and of the kings of Scotland, this pursuit being motivated by his need to bolster his own feelings of social superiority over those around him, including the middle-class Oldbuck.

[5][6][4] He is altogether a futile figure with many faults: he is shown as being financially extravagant, self-centred, weak, gullible, and tyrannical over his daughter Isabella, who tries to protect him from the results of his stupidity.

[16] Yet another claim is that Wardour is a portrait of his own author as a true-blue Tory supporter of the claims of the established aristocratic order;[12] A. N. Wilson was also struck by the similarity Sir Arthur displays to Scott's behaviour in later years, "duped by hare-brained financial schemes and folie de grandeur", and, when his fortune is restored, talking of buying contiguous estates that would stretch from shore to shore.

[20] Edgar Johnson found him exaggeratedly credulous and insufficiently realized for us to care about the final clearing up of all his troubles, and complained that though we are told he has in the end learned greater wisdom we are not shown it.