Tour Scotland photograph shot today of the John Mellis Nairne memorial in Collace, Perthshire, Scotland. Sacred to the memory of John Mellis Nairne of Dunsinnan, Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Perth, formerly Captain of the 14th Regiment of Foot, who departed this life on 2nd October, 1866, aged 68.
A baronetcy was possessed by the family of Nairne of Dunsinnan, Perthshire, the supposed site of a stronghold of Macbeth, 15 miles from Birnam, celebrated by Shakespeare:
“Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.”
It was conferred, 31st March 1704, on Sir William Nairne of Dunsinnan, descended from Michael de Nairn, who lived in the reign of Robert III. Sir William Nairne the fifth baronet, a younger son of the second baronet, was a lord of session. Admitted advocate in 1755, he was, in 1758, appointed commissary clerk of Edinburgh, conjunctly with Alexander Nairne, a relative of his own. In 1786 he was promoted to the bench, and took his seat as Lord Dunsinnan. In 1790 he succeeded in the baronetcy, on the death of his nephew. At the same time he bought the estate of Dunsinnan from another nephew, for the sum of £16,000. It comprises almost the entire parish of Collace, and as soon as it came into his hands, he spared no expense in putting it into a state of the highest improvement. He was appointed a lord of justiciary in 1792, and continued to attend the duties of the circuit until 1808, when he resigned, and in 1809 he retired from the bench altogether. He died, at an advanced age, at Dunsinnan house, 25th March 1811. The title became extinct at his death. His sister’s son, John Mellis Nairne, succeeded to the estate and assumed the name of Nairne.
Lord Dunsinnan was uncle to the famous Catherine Nairne or Ogilvie, whose trial in 1765, for the crimes of murder and incest, occupied public attention very much at the time. She had married, in that year, being then only nineteen, Thomas Ogilvie of Eastmiln, Forfarshire, – a gentleman, as stated at the trial, forth years of age and of a sickly constitution. Three or four days before the marriage, his younger brother, Patrick Ogilvie, a lieutenant in the 89th foot, returned, on account of bad health, from India, and took up his residence at his house. In less than a week after the marriage an improper intimacy is stated to have commences between the brother and Mrs. Ogilvie. Four months afterwards, at his instigation, she poisoned her husband with arsenic, and with her accomplice, was brought to trial, when they were both found guilty, and condemned to be hanged. Patrick Ogilvie was, in spite of every effort made to save him, executed in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh. The interval betwixt his condemnation and execution he almost exclusively devoted to playing on the violin, of which he was very fond. Catherine Nairne escaped from the Tolbooth, the Execution of her sentence had been delayed on account of pregnancy, and, soon after her accouchement, she disguised herself in the clothes of the midwife, Mrs. Shiells, who, for several days, while in attendance on her, had had her head muffled up, under pretence of a violent attack of toothache, and so got out of prison. Her uncle, Mr. Nairne, then an advocate of ten years’ standing, is supposed to have assisted in her escape. It was on Saturday, 15th March 1766, that she contrived to get away from the Tolbooth, and the same night she left the city, in a carriage, accompanied by Mr. Nairne’s clerk, Mr. James Bremner, afterwards solicitor of stamps. This gentleman went with her as far as Dover, on her way to France. Her behaviour on the way was marked by great frivolity, as she was continually putting her head out of the window and laughing immoderately. In the proclamation issued for her apprehension by the magistrates of Edinburgh, she is described as attired in “an officer’s habit, with a hat slouched in the cocks, and a cockade in it;” and “a about twenty-two years of age, middle-=sized, and strong made, has a high nose, black eyebrows, and a pale complexion.” Government offered a reward of £100 for her apprehension, and the city of Edinburgh the same. It is said she afterwards married a Dutch gentleman, by whom she had a numerous family. It was also reported that she had retired to a convent and taken the veil, also that she died in England soon after the beginning of the nineteenth century.
All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.
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