William Nairne, Lord Dunsinane

Sir William Nairne, Lord Dunsinane, 5th Baronet of Nairne (c. 1731–1811) was a Scottish advocate and judge, and the uncle of Katherine Ogilvie.

The title of Lord Dunsinane was taken from Dunsinane Hill, a ruined fort near Collace, Perthshire, the family seat of the Nairne family. Dunsinane Hill is referenced in Shakespeare's play, Macbeth. The alternative Gaelic spelling of the term Dunsinane is Dunsinnan, meaning "The hill of ants"; probably a reference to the large number of people it took to build the fortress.

Early life

William Nairne was born in Perthshire, Scotland in about 1731. He was the son of Sir William Nairne, 2nd Baronet and his wife, Emilia Graham of Fintry, Forfarshire. He was admitted as an advocate on 11 March 1755, and in 1758 was appointed joint Commissary Clerk of Edinburgh with Alexander Nairne, a distant relative.

Connection to Katherine Ogilvie

Nairne was the uncle of Katherine Ogilvie, née Nairne, known as "Kitty". Anne, before her marriage, was employed as a house-servant in an Edinburgh "lewd house". Alexander may have harboured a desire to succeed to the estate of Thomas Ogilvie over his brother Patrick.

In 1783 he was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He served as the society's vice president from 1789 to 1796.

Sir Walter Scott described Nairne as "a man of unscrupulous integrity." When Nairne, who at the time was serving as Sheriff of Perthshire, determined that he had incorrectly found an innocent man guilty of a crime, he privately provided the litigant with the necessary funds to bring the case forward to the Court of Session, where his earlier judgement was reversed. After his death the property was subdivided as rental property, and eventually demolished in the 1870s. A lifelong bachelor, the Nairne baronetcy became extinct upon his death. The heir to his estate was James Mellis, the son of Nairne's niece, who later assumed the surname of Nairne.