tenant-colonel in the army, and to whose son, William Murray Nairne, husband of Carolina, lady Nairne [q. v.], the title was restored by parliament 17 June 1824; Charles, an officer in the service of the States-General, who died in June 1775; Thomas, who was an officer in Lord John Drummond's regiment, and was captured in October 1745 on board the French ship L'Esperance, on his way to join the prince in Scotland, but afterwards obtained his pardon, and died at Sancerre, in France, 3 April 1777; and Henry, who was an officer in the French service.
[Histories of the Rebellion by Patten, Rae, Ray, Home, and Chambers; Lockhart Papers; Nathaniel Hooke's Negotiations (Roxburghe Club); Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. pt. viii.; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), ii. 280–1.]
NAIRNE, Sir ROBERT, of Strathord, first Lord Nairne (1600–1683), lord of session, was representative of a family which claimed descent from Michael de Nairne, who on 10 Feb. 1406–7 was witness to a charter of Robert, duke of Albany. He was the eldest son of Robert Nairne of Muckersie, and afterwards of Strathord, both in Perthshire, by Margaret, daughter of Sir John Preston of Penicuick, Midlothian, lord-president of the court of session. Like his father, he became a member of the Faculty of Advocates. With other royalists he was captured by a detachment from General Monck at Alyth, Forfarshire, 28 Aug. 1651, and sent a prisoner to the Tower, where he remained till the Restoration. By Charles II he was appointed one of the lords of session, 1 June 1661, receiving also the honour of knighthood; and on 11 Jan. 1671 he was appointed one of the court of justiciary. On 23 Jan. 1681 he was created a peer of Scotland by the title of Baron Nairne, to himself for life, and after his decease to his son-in-law, Lord William Murray, who assumed the surname of Nairne [see under Nairne, John, third Lord Nairne]. At the trial of the Earl of Argyll in 1681 Nairne was compelled from fatigue to retire while the pleadings on the relevancy were still proceeding. The judges who remained being equally divided as to the relevancy, and the Duke of Queensberry, who presided, being unwilling to vote, Nairne was sent for to give his vote. According to Wodrow he fell asleep while the pleadings for the relevancy were being read to him, but being awakened after this ceremony had been performed, voted for the relevancy of the indictment (Sufferings of the Kirk of Scotland, iii. 336). On 10 April 1683 Lord Castlehill was appointed to be one of the criminal lords in place of Lord Nairne, who was excused from attendance on account of his great age. ‘This,’ according to Lauder of Fountainhall, ‘provoked the old man to reflect that when he was lying in the Tower for the king Castlehill was one of Oliver Cromwell's pages and servants, and Nairne died within six weeks after this’ (Historical Notices, p. 435). By his wife Margaret, daughter of Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie, Perthshire, he had an only daughter, Margaret, married to Lord William Murray, who became second Baron Nairne.
[Wodrow's Sufferings of the Church of Scotland; Lauder of Fountainhall's Historical Notices; Brunton and Haig's Senators of the College of Justice; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), ii. 279–80.]
NAIRNE, Sir WILLIAM, Lord Dunsinane (1731?–1811), Scottish judge, born about 1731, the younger son of Sir William Nairne, bart., of Dunsinane, Perthshire, by his wife, Emelia Graham of Fintry, Forfarshire, was admitted an advocate on 11 March 1755, and in 1758 was appointed joint commissary clerk of Edinburgh with Alexander Nairne. He was uncle to the notorious Katharine Nairne or Ogilvie, whose trial for murder and incest attracted great attention in August 1765. He is supposed to have connived at her subsequent escape from the Tolbooth. He succeeded Robert Bruce of Kennet as an ordinary lord of session, and took his seat on the bench, with the title of Lord Dunsinane, on 9 March 1786. He succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his nephew William, the fourth baronet, in January 1790, and at the same time purchased the estate of Dunsinane from another nephew for 16,000l. On the resignation of John Campbell of Stonefield, Nairne was appointed a lord of justiciary, 24 Dec. 1792. He resigned his seat in the court of justiciary in 1808, and his seat in the court of session in 1809. He died at Dunsinane House on 23 March 1811.
Nairne was unmarried. The baronetcy became extinct upon his death, while his estates devolved upon his nephew, John Mellis, who subsequently assumed the surname of Nairne.
Nairne was not a rich man; and in order to clear off the purchase money of Dunsinane he had to adopt the most rigid economy. To save the expense of entertaining visitors, he is said to have kept only one bed at Dunsinane, and upon one occasion, after trying every expedient to get rid of his friend George Dempster, he exclaimed in despair, ‘George, if you stay, you will go to bed at ten and rise at three, and then I shall get the bed after you’ (Kay, i. 217–18).
Two etchings of Nairne will be found in
