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Old and New Edinburgh Vol. V

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THE NISBET$ OF DEAN. 65 The Water of Leith.1 Embosomed among venerable trees, the old house of a baronial family, the Nisbets of Dean, stood here, one of the chief features in the locality, and one of the finest houses in the neighbourhood of From the Water of Leith village a steep path that winds up the southern slope of the river?s bank on its west side, leads to the high ground where for ages there stood the old manor-house of Dean, and on the east the older village of the same name. During the reign of James IV., on the r5th June, 1513, the Dean is mentioned in the Burgh Records? as one of the places where the pest existed; and no man or woman dwelling therein was regard that the farnily-of-Dean is the only family of that name in Scotland that has right, by consent, to represent the original family of the name of Nisbet, since the only lineal male representative,? and armorial bearings, it was literally a history in stone of the proud but now extinct race to which it belonged. H e n j Nisbet, descended from- the Nisbets of Dalzell (cadets of the Nisbets of that ilk), who for many years was a Commissioner to the Parliament for Edinburgh, died some time before 1608, leaving three sons : James, who became Nisbet of Craigintinnie, near Restalrig; Sir William of Dean, whose grandson, Alexander,. exchanged the lands THE DEAN HOUSE, 1832. (Aftv a Dravving ay Rolcrl Gibb.) permitted to enter the city, under pain, if a woman, of being branded on the cheek, and if a man, of such punishment as might be deemed expedient. In 1532 James Wilson and David Walter were committed prisoners to the Castle of Edinburgh, for hamesucken and oppression done to David Kincaid in the village of Deanhaugh. In 1545 the Poultry Lands near Dean were held mm qfi& PuZtrie Regim, as Innes tells us in his Scottish ? Legal Antiquities.? of Dean with his cousin, Sir Patrick Nisbet, the first baronet; and Sir Patrick of Eastbank, a Lord of Session. The Nisbets of Dean came to be the head of the house, as Alexander Nisbet records in his System of Heraldry,? published in I 7 2 z ; soon after which, he died, by the failure of the Nisbets of that ilk in his own person-a contingency which led him to?lay aside the chevron, the mark of fidelity, a mark of cadency, used formerly by the house of Dean, in
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