Linlithgowshire, by his wife Janet Muir, was born in July 1654. He was sent first to the school at Bathgate, whence, on account of a quarrel of his father with the schoolmaster, he was transferred to Stirling. He joined the insurgents after Drumclog, and was among those defeated at Bothwell Bridge, 22 June 1679. Being on this account proscribed, he fled to the north of Scotland, and was taken into the service of the laird of Park and Lochloy in Moray. There he married Elizabeth Brodie, granddaughter of John Brodie of Windiehills, the marriage being celebrated on 4 Dec. 1682 by the ‘blessed Mr. Hog.’ Shortly afterwards, on account of the arrival of a party of soldiers in search of outlawed covenanters, he had to go into shelter in the old vaults of Pluscarden. Ultimately he fled south to Edinburgh, where he arrived on 23 March 1683. Thence he went to Berwick-on-Tweed, and finally he took refuge in Holland. He returned to Scotland in April 1688, and after the revolution obtained a post in the customs in Edinburgh. Subsequently he was appointed treasurer of the city. He died 6 Aug. 1709. He had four sons and a daughter. Of the sons, John, like his father, was a member of the Edinburgh town council, and treasurer of the city. The ‘Narrative of Mr. James Nimmo, written for his own Satisfaction, to keep in some Remembrance the Lord's Ways, Dealings, and Kindness towards him, 1654–1709,’ was printed under the editorship of W. G. Scott-Moncrieff by the Scottish History Society, from a manuscript in possession of Mr. Pingle of Torwoodlee in Selkirkshire.
[Nimmo's Narrative, and the Preface by W. G. Scott-Moncrieff; Diary of the Lairds of Brodie (Spalding Club).]
NINIAN or NINIAS, Saint (d. 432?), apostle of Christianity in North Britain, was sometimes also referred to in Irish hagiology under the names Mancennus, Mansenus, Monennus, or Moinennus. According to Bæda, who gives the earliest extant account of him, he was a Briton by birth, and made a pilgrimage to Rome, where he received a regular training in ‘the facts and mysteries of the truth.’ He was consecrated a bishop, and established his episcopal seat on the present site of Whithorn, on the northern shore of the Solway. It was here that he built a church of stone, instead of wood, as was ‘customary among the Britons,’ and dedicated it to St. Martin of Tours. He worked successfully in evangelising the southern Picts, who inhabited the country south of the Grampians. In his church, commonly called Candida Casa, he was buried, and there also several of his coadjutors found their last resting-place (Eccles. Hist. iii. 4).
Meagre as are these details, they may be regarded as forming a trustworthy tradition of the outstanding facts of Ninian's career. Although they were recorded by one who lived two and a half centuries after the period of the saint, the testimony of Alcuin, in a letter to the brethren serving God at Candida Casa, confirms that of Bæda, and shows that Ninian's memory formed the theme of monkish panegyric a century afterwards.
The later lives add little to our scanty knowledge. A ‘Life’ written by an Irish monk is now lost. It was known to Ussher and the Bollandists, but, to judge from the extracts preserved by them, was of no historic value. Another, in metrical form, and ascribed with but small probability to the poet Barbour, is important merely as furnishing an account of what was believed regarding him in the fourteenth century, when Candida Casa had become a favourite resort of pilgrims. A third biography, by Ailred, abbot of Rievaulx, in Yorkshire (1143–1166), professes to give a detailed history, founded on an earlier ‘Book of his Life and Miracles,’ written in a barbaric speech (sermo barbaricus). It is merely a diffuse amplification of the paragraph in Bæda. It was composed at the request of Christianus, the then bishop of Candida Casa, and its author might at all events claim to have an intimate acquaintance with the local tradition of his time, since he was educated at the court of King David and paid a visit to the south-west of Scotland. His work is extremely vague, however, and even the miracles, which he revels in, are devoid of historic colouring. Posterity is indebted to him, however, for one fact, which is important as fixing approximately the chronology of St. Ninian's life. He asserts that, while engaged in building his church at Whithorn, the bishop heard of the death of St. Martin, and dedicated his church to him as a tribute to his memory. If, on the authority of Bæda, we accept as historic his visit to Rome, which is conjectured to have taken place during the pontificate of Damasus or Siricius, the tradition of his intimate intercourse with St. Martin of Tours, mentioned by Ailred, is very probably authentic. St. Martin's death occurred, according to Tillemont, about 397, so that the mission of Ninian was begun in the last decade of the fourth century, and might have extended over the first third of the fifth. Another circumstance, noticed by Ailred, relating to Ninian's intercourse with the Bishop of Tours, also bears the aspect of fact. St. Martin, we are told, at Ninian's request, supplied him
