Rcstalrig.] THE NISBETS OF CRAIGANTINNIE. ?37
receiving and returning their visits as such.
After a four-days? debate, the Lords of Session
pronounced for the defender, with expenses. The
son John, as sixth baronet; but not without a
contest, as fourteen years afterwards a Mr. John
Edgar raised in the Court of Session an action
of reduction of his service, as nearest lawful heir
of the late baronet, on the plea that the latter had
never been legally married to his wife.
It was alleged that he had gone to France, and
there had formed a connection with a lady whose
social position was inferior to his own, but who
accompanied him to Britain, where she bore him
The question was, whether from the whole circumstances,
Sir John and this lady were to be
considered as married persons? In evidence it
appeared that they had never doubted that they were
so, though Sir John, in dread of his proud relations,
had sedulously kept the fact a secret while in
Scotland, where, it was alleged for the pursuer,
Sir John had ventured to pay his addresses to a
lady of rank.
On the other side there was the evidence of an
Locn END.
two sons. After selling out of the army, in 1775,
Sir John went to Carolina, to settle upon an estate
he possessed there, taking with him this lady and
his two sons, and the process stated that after
their arrival in America, in 1775, or the beginning
of 1776, Sir John and his lady were shipwrecked
and drowned. From this awful catastrophe their
two sons were preserved, having been left at school
in the Jerseys. Some time afterwards the boys
were sent over to this country, and the eldest of
them-the defender in this action-on the 15th
August, 1781, was served heir to his father. From
the time of his father and mother?s death, till
1790, when this action was raised, he had been in
the uninterrupted possession of his fatheis estates.?
114
138 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Restalrig.
latter married a lady whom Burke calls ?Miss
Alston, of America,? and died without any family,
and now the line of the Nisbets of Dean and
Craigantinnie has passed completely away ; but
long prior to the action recorded the branch at
Restalrig had lost the lands there and the old
house we have described.
In the beginning of the last century the proprietor
of Craigantinnie was Nisbet of Dirleton, of
the male line of that Sir John Nisbet of Dirleton
who was King?s Advocate after the Restoration.
It was subsequently the property of the Scott-
Nisbets, and on the death of John Scott-Nisbet,
Esq., in 1765, an action was raised against his
heirs and trustees, by Young of Newhall, regarding
the sale of the estate, which was ultimately carried
to the House of Peers.
Craigantinnie was next acquired by purchase by
William Miller, a wealthy seedsman, whose house
and garden, at the foot of the south back of the
Canongate, were removed only in 1859, when the
site was added to the Royal Park. When Prince
Charles?s army came to Edinburgh in 1745, he
obtained 500 shovels from William Miller for
trenching purposes. His father, also Wdliam Miller,
who died in 1757, in his eightieth year, had previously
acquired a considerable portion of what is
now called the Craigantinnie estate, or the lands
of Philliside, and others near the sea. He left
.&20,000 in cash, by which Craigantinnie proper
was acquired by his son M7illiam. He was well
known as a citizen of Edinburgh by the name of
?? the auld Quaker,? as he belonged to the Society
of Friends, and was ever foremost in all works of
chanty and benevolence.
About 1780, when in his ninetieth year, he
married an Englishwoman who was then in her
fiftieth year, with whom he went to London and
Pans, where she was delivered of a child, the late
William Miller, M.P. for Newcastle-under-Lyne ;
and thereby hangs a story, which made some stir
at the time of his death, as he was currently averred
to be a changeling-even to be a woman, a suggestion
which his thin figure, weak voice, absence of
all beard, aad some peculiarity of habit, seemed to
corroborate. Be that as it may, none were permitted-
save those interested in him-to touch his
body, which, by his will, lies now buried in a
grave, dug to the great depth of foity feet, on the
north side of the Portobello Road, and on the
lands of Craigantinnie, with a classic tomb of considerable
height and beauty erected over it.
At his death, without heirs, the estate passed into
the hands of strangers.
His gigantic tomb, however, with its beautiful
sculptures, forms one of the most remarkable
features in this locality. Regarding it, a writer in,
Tem~jZe Bar for 1881, says :-?? Not one traveller
in a thousand has ever seen certain sculptures
known as the ? Craigantinnie Marbles.? They arel
out of town, on the road to Portobello, beyond the
Piershill cavalry barracks, and decorate a mausoleum
which is to be found by turning off the high
road, and so past a cottage into a field, green and?
moist with its tall neglected grass. There is something
piquant in coming upon Art among humble?
natural things in the country or a thinly peopled
suburb.? After referring to Giotto?s work outside
Padua, he continues : ? It is obvious there is no
comparison intended between that early work of
Italy, so rich in sincere thought and beautiful expression,
and the agreeable, gracious and even
manly hbour, of the artist who wrought for modern
Scotland, the ?Song of Miriam? in this Craigantinnie
field. Still there is a certain freshness of pleasure
in the situation of the work, nor does examination
of the art displayed lead to prompt disappointment.?
Standing solitary and alone, westward of Restalrig
Church, towers the tall villa of Marionville,
which, though now rather gloomy in aspect, was
prior to 1790 the scene often of the gayest private
theatricals perhaps in Britain, and before its then
possessor won himself the unenviable name of ?? the
Fortunate Duellist,? and became an outcast and
one of the most miserable of men, The house is
enclosed by shrubbery of no great extent, and by
high walls. ?Whether it be,? says Chambers,
? that the place has become dismal in consequence
of the rise of a noxious fen in its neighbourhood,
or that the tale connected with it acts upon the
imagination, I cannot decide ; but unquestionably
there is about the house an air of depession and
melancholy such as could scarcely fail to strike the
most unobservant passenger.?
Elsewhere he mentions that this villa was built,
by the Misses Ramsay, whose shop was on the
east side of the old Lj-on Close, on the north side
of the High Street, opposite the upper end of the
City Guardhouse. There they made a fortune,
spent on building Marionville, which was locally
named hjpeet Ha? in derision of their profession.
Here, for some time before 1790, lived Captain
James Macrae, formerly of the 3rd Regiment of
Horse (when commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel
Sir Ralph Abercrombie), and now known as the
6th Dragoon Guards, or Carabineers ; and his story
is a very remarkable one, from the well-known
names that must be introduced in it. He was
Macrae of Holemains, whom Fowler, in his Ren-,
