Colstorphine.] THE FORRESTERS. 119
of land, in any proper place;? and in 1383 there
followed another charter from the same king concerning
? the twenty merks yearly from the farmes
of Edinburgh.? (Burgh Charters.) In the preceding
year this influential citizen had been made
Sheriff of Edinburgh and of Lothian.
In 1390 he was made Lord Privy Seal, and
negotiated several treaties with England; but in
1402 he followed Douglas in his famous English
raid, which ended in the battle of Homildon Hill,
where he fell into the hands of Hotspur, but was
ransomed. He died in the Castle of Corstorphine
on the 13th of October, leaving, by his wife, Agnes
Dundas of Fingask, two sons, Sir John, his heir,
and Thomas, who got the adjacent lands of Drylaw
by a charter, under Robert Duke of Albany, dated
?? at Corstorfyne,? 1406, and witnessed among others
by Gilbert, Bishop of Aberdeen, then Lord Chancellor,
George of Preston, and others.
Sir John Forrester obtained a grant of the barony
of Ochtertyre, in favour of him and his first wife
in 1407, and from Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney,
he obtained an annuity of twelve merks yearly,
out of the coal-works at Dysart, till repaid thirty
nobles, ?which he lent the said earl in his great
necessity.??
In 1424 he was one of the hostages for the
ransom of James I., with whom he stood so high
in favour that he was made Master of the Household
and Lord High Chamberlain, according to
Douglas, and Lord Chancellor, according to Beatson?s
Lists. His second wife was Jean Sinclair, daughter
of Henry Earl of Orkney. He founded the collegiate
church of which we have given a description,
and in 1425 an altar to St Ninian in the
church of St. Giles?s, requiring the chaplain there
to say perpetual prayers for the souls of James I.
and Queen Jane, and of himself and Margaret his
deceased wife.
He died in 1440, and was succeeded by his son
Sir John, who lived in stormy times, and whose
lands of Corstorphine were subjected to fire and
sword, and ravaged in 1445 by the forces of the
Lord Chancellor, Sir William Crichton, whose lands
of Crichton he had previously spoiled.
By his wife, Marian Stewart of Dalswhton, he
had Archibald his heir, and Matthew, to whom
James III., in 1487, gave a grant of the lands of
Barnton. Then followed in succession, Sir Alexander
Forrester, and two Sir Jameses. On the
death of the last without heirs Corstorphine devolved
on his younger brother Henry, who married
Helen Preston of Craigmillar.
Their son GerJrge was a man of talent and probity.
He stooci high in favour with Charles I.,
who made him a baronet in 1625, and eight years
afterwards a peer, by the title of Lord Forrester
of Corstorphine. By his wife Christian he had
several daughters-Helen, who became Lady Ross
of Hawkhead ; Jean, married to. lames Baillie of
Torwoodhead, son of Lieutenant-General William
Baillie, famous in the annals of the covenanthg
wars ; and Lilias, married to William, another son
of the same officer, And now we approach the
dark tragedy which, for a time, even in those days,
gave Corstorphine Castle a temble notoriety.
George, first Lord Forrester, having no male
heir, made a resignation of his estates and honours
into the hands of the king, and obtained a new
patent from Charles II., to himself in life-rent,
and after his decease, ?to, or in favour of, his
daughter Jean and her husband the said James
Baillie and the heirs procreate betwixt them ;
whom failing, to the nearest lawful heir-male of the
said James whatever, they carrying the name and
arms of Forrester ; the said James being designed
Master of Forrester during George?s life.?
This patent is dated 13th August, 1650, a few
weeks before the battle of Worcester. He died
soon after, and was succeeded by his son-in-law,
whose wife is said to have sunk into an earlygrave,
in consequence of his having an intrigue with one
of her sisters.
James Lord Forrester married, secondly, a
daughter of the famous old Cavalier general, Patrick
Ruthven, Earl of Forth and Brentford, by whom,
says Burke, ?he had three sons and two daughters,
all of whom assumed the name of Ruthven,?
while Sir Robert Douglas states that he died
without any heir, and omits to record the mode of
his death.
He was a zealous Presbyterian, and for those of
that persuasion, in prelatic times, built a special
meeting-house in Corstorphine ; this did not prevent
him from forming a dangerous intrigue with
a handsome woman named Christian Nimmo,
wife of a merchant in Edinburgh, and the scandal
was increased in consequence of the lady being
the niece of his first wife and grand-daughter of
the first Lord Forrester. She was a woman of a
violent and impulsive character, and was said to
carry a weapon concealed about her person. - It
is further stated that she was mutually related to
Mrs. Bedford, a remarkably wicked woman, who
had murdered her husband a few years before, and
to that Lady Warriston who was beheaded for the
same crime in 1600 ; thus she was not a woman to
be treated lightly.
Lord Forrester, when intoxicated, had on one
occasion spoken of her opprobriously, and this
I20 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [COrStOrphiie.
fact came to her kcoivledge. Inspired with fury
she repaired at once to the castle of Corstorphine,
and finding that he was drinkiig at a tavern in the
village, sent for him, and they met in the garden
at a tree near the old dovecot, which marked the
spot. A violent altercation ensued between them,
and in the midst of it, she snatched his sword from
his side, ran him through the body and killed him
on the instant. (Fountainhall.)
?The inhabitants of th?e village,? says C. Kirksought
to extenuate it on the plea that Lord Forrester
was intoxicated and furious, that he ran at her
? with his sword, on which she took it from him to
protect herself, and he fell upon it; but this was
known to be false, says Fountainhall. She practised
a deception upon the court by which her sentence
of death was postponed for two months, during
which, notwithstanding the care of her enjoined on
John Wan, Gudeman of the Tolbooth, she escaped
in male apparel but was captured by the Ruthvens
CORSTORPHINE CHURCH.
patrick Sharpe, in his Notes to Kirkton?s ? History,?
? still relate some circumstances of the murder not
recorded by Fountainhall. Mrs. Nimmo, attended
by her maid, had gone from Edinburgh to the
castle of Corstorphine,? and adds that after the
murder ?she took refuge in a garret of the castle,
but was discovered by one of her slippers, which
dropped through a crevice of the floor. It need
scarcely be added, that till lately the inhabitants
of the village were greatly annoyed of a moonlight
night by the appearance of a woman clothed in
white, with a bloody sword in her hand, wandering
and wailing near the pigeon-house.?
Being seized and brought before the Sheriffs of
Edinburgh, she made a confession of her crime, but
next day at Fala MilL On the 12th of November,
1679, she was beheaded at the market cross, when
she appeared on the scaffold in deep mourning,
laying aside a large veil, and baring her neck and
shoulders to the executioner with the utmost
courage.
Though externally a Presbyterian it was said at
the time ?that a dispensation from the Pope to
marry the woman who murdered him was found in
his (Lord Forrester?s) closet, and that his delay in
using it occasioned her fury.? (?< Popery and
Schism,? p. 39.)
Connected with this murder, a circumstance very
characteristic of the age took place. The deceased
peer leaving onIy heirs of his second marriage, who
