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
