Quick Facts
Biography
Sir James Dick of Prestonfield (1644–1728) was a 17th/18th century Scottish merchant who served as Lord Provost of Edinburgh from 1679 to 1681. He was the first Baronet of Prestonfield and was progenitor to the Dick baronets.
Life
He was born around 1644 the son of Alexander Dick and his wife, Helen Rocheid. Alexander was the son of William Dick of Braid, a prominent statesman who was Lord Provost of Edinburgh 1638-1640 and who had loaned the city £45,000 in 1646.
James Dick was a merchant and Dean of Guild in Edinburgh.James purchased the Priestfield estate, including the medieval Priestfield House, in 1677. In 1679 he was elected Lord Provost of Edinburgh under the title of James Dick of Priestfield in succession to Francis Kinloch. In 1681/82 he was the Member of Parliament for Edinburgh.
Priestfield House had been built by King James IV's printer, Walter Chepman. The house had a long history of Catholic sympathy (which was tolerated in the Scottish upper classes despite being illegal. In 1681 the original Priestfield House was burnt down in an anti-Catholic demonstration. James Dick employed the prominent architect Sir William Bruce to design a new house in 1681. The U-plan house also had a formal garden attached. It was not completed and occupied until 1689, then being renamed Prestonfield House to distance it from the Catholic associated word "priest". James then became known as James Dick of Prestonfield and most records use this term, despite being technically incorrect in his earlier life.
He was made a baronet of Nova Scotia at the Union of 1707 (Burke's Peerage states 1677). In 1713 he purchased the estate of Corstorphine from Hugh Wallace of Ingliston who had purchased it from the Forresters, the traditional family in that area, in 1698.
He died on 15 November 1728.
Family
He married Anne Paterson (died 1710), daughter of William Paterson of Dunmure (or Drumure) in Fife.
Their daughter Janet Dick (1670–1753) married William Cunningham of Caprington. Their son William Cunningham (1701–1746) inherited the baronetcy on James' death in 1728 and readopted the surname Dick (sometimes Dick-Cunningham).
