62 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Water of Leith
name doesnot appear in the Baronage) was Sheriff and
Provost of Edinburgh (?Burgh Records?). After him
come five -barons of his surname, before the famous
Sir Simon Preston, also Provost of the city, into
whose mansion, the Black Turnpike, Mary was
thrust by the confederate lords. A son or nephew
of his appears to have distinguished himself in the
Low Countries. He is mentioned by Cardinal
Bentivoglio, in his History,? as ?? Colonel Preston,
a Scotsman,? who cut his way through the German
lines in 1578.
Sir Richard Preston of Craigmillar, Gentleman of
the Bedchamber to JamesVI., K.B., and Constable
of Dingwall Castle, raised to the peerage of Scotland
as Lord Dingwall, was the last of this old
line. He married Lady Elizabeth Butler, only
daughter of Thomas, Earl of Ormond, and widow
of Viscount Theophilim, and was created Earl of
Desmond, in the peerage of Ireland, 1614. He
was drowned on his passage from Ireland to Scotland
in 1628, and was succeeded in the Scottish
honours of Dingwall by his only daughter, Elizabeth,
who became Duchess of Ormond.
The castle and lands of Craigmillar were acquired
in 1661 by Sir John Gilmour, son of John
Gilmour, W.S. He passed as Advocate on the 12th
December, 1628, and on the 13th February, 1666,
became Lord President of the Court of Session,
which, after a lapse of nearly eleven years, resumed
its sittings on the I Ith June. The bold stand
which he made for the luckless Marquis of Argyle
was long remembered in Scotland, to his honour.
His pension was only A500 per annum. He became
a Baron of Exchequer, and obtained a clause
in the Militia Act that the realm of Scotland
should not maintain any force levied by the king
without the consent of the Estates. He belonged
latterly to the Lauderdale party, and aided in procuring
the downfall of the Earl of Middleton. He
resigned his chair in 1670, and died soon after.
He was succeeded by his son, Sir Alexander of
Craigmillar, who was created a baronet in 1668,
in which year he had a plea before the Lords
against Captain Stratton, for 2,000 marks lost at
cards. The Lords found that only thirty-one guineas
of it fell due under an Act of 1621, and ordered
the captain to pay it to thm for the use of the poorp
? except 6 5 sterling, which he may retain.?
Sir Charles, the third baronet, was M.P. for
Edinburgh in 1737, and died at Montpellier in
?750.
The fourth baronet, Sir Alexander Gilmour of
Craigmillar, was an ensign in the Scots Foot Guards,
and was one of those thirty-nine officers who, with
800 of their men, perished so miserably in the affair
of St. Cas in 1758.
In 1792 SirAlexanderGilrnour,Bart.,whoin 1765
had been Clerk of the Green Cloth, and M.P. for
Midlothian, 1761-1771, diedat Boulogne in 1792,
when the title became extinct, and Craigmillar devolved
upon Charles Little of Liberton (grandson
of Helen, eldest daughter of the second baronet),
who assumed the surname of Gilmour, and whose
son, Lieutenant-General Sir Dugald Little Gilmour
of Craigmillar, was Major of the Rifle Brigade, or
old 95th Regiment, in the Peninsular War,
Nearly midway between Craigmillar and the
house of Prestonfield, in a flat grassy plain, stands
the quaint-looking old mansion named Peffer Mill,
three storeys high, with crowstepped gables, gableted
dormer windows, and a great circular staircase
tower with a conical roof. It has no particular
history ; but Peffer Mill is said to mean in old
Scoto-Saxon the mill on the dark muddy stream.
Braid?s Bum flows past it, at the distance of a few
yards
.
CHAPTER VI.
THE VALLEY OF THE WATER OF LEITH.
Lady Sinclair of Dunbeath-Bell?s Mills-Water of Leith Village-Mill at the Dean-Tolbooth then-Old Houxs--The Dean and Poultry
Lands thereof-The Nisbet Family-A Legend-The Dean Village-Belgrave Crescent-The Parish Church-Stewart?s Hospital-
Orphan Hospital-John Watson?s Hospital-The Dean Cemetery-Notable Interments there.
IN No. 16, Rothesay Place, one of the new and
handsome streets which crown the lofty southern
bank of the valley of the Water of Leith, and
overlooks one of the most picturesque parts of it,
at the Dean, there died in 1879 a venerable lady
-a genuine Scottish matron of ?? the old school,?
a notice of whom it would be impossible to omit in
a work like this.
Dame Margaret Sinclair of Dunbeath belonged
to a class now rapidly vanishing-the clear-headed,
gifted, stout-hearted, yet reverent and gentle old
Scottish ladies whom Lord Cockburn loved to.
