even allowing Sir James to have been guilty, it will only add another to the list of great men concerned in the transaction, and show the more clearly how neither learning, rank, official dignity, nor any other ennobling qualification, prevented a man in those days from staining his hands with blood. Balfour outlived Lennox, and was serviceable in bringing about the pacification between the King's and Queen's party, under Morton, in 1573. He would appear to have been encouraged by Morton in the task of revising the laws of the country, which he at length completed in a style allowed at that time to be most masterly. Morton afterwards thought proper to revive the charge brought by Lennox against Sir James, who was consequently obliged to retire to France, where he lived for some years. He returned in 1580, and revenged the persecution of Morton, by producing against him, on his trial, a deed to which he had acceded, in common with others of the Scottish nobility, alleging Bothwell's innocence of the King's murder, and recommending him to the Queen as a husband. Sir James died before the 14th of January, 1583-4.
The Practicks of Scots Law, compiled by Sir James Balfour of Pittendreich, president of the Court of Session, continued to be used and consulted in manuscript, both by students and practitioners, till nearly a century after his decease, when it was for the first time supplanted by the Institutes of Lord Stair. Even after that event, it was held as a curious repertory of the old practices of Scottish law, besides fulfilling certain uses not answered by the work of Lord Stair. It was therefore printed in 1754, by the Ruddimans, along with an accurate biographical preface by Walter Goodal. The work was of considerable service to Dr Jamieson in his Dictionary of the Scottish language.
BALFOUR, (Sir) James, an eminent antiquary, herald, and annalist, was born about the close of the sixteenth century. He was the eldest son of a small Fife laird, Michael Balfour of Denmylne, who derived his descent from James, son of Sir John Balfour of Balgarvy, a cadet[1] of the ancient and honourable house of Balfour of Balfour in Fife. James Balfour, the ancestor of Sir Michael, had obtained the estate of Denmylne from James II., in the fourteenth year of his reign, which corresponds with 1450-1. Michael Balfour, the father of Sir James, and also of Sir Andrew, whose life has been already commemorated, was, in the words of Sir Robert Sibbald, "equally distinguished for military bravery and civil prudence." He bore the honourable office of Comptroller of the Scottish Household, in the reign of Charles I., and in 1630 was knighted, at Holyrood house, by George, Viscount Dupplin, Chancellor of Scotland, under his Majesty's special warrant. This eminent personage was, by Jean Durham, daughter of James Durham of Pitkerrow, the father of five sons, all of whom attained to distinction in public life, besides nine daughters, who all formed honourable alliances, except two, who died unmarried. He lived to see three hundred of his own descendants; a number which his youngest son, Sir Andrew, lived to see doubled.
Sir Michael Balfour gave his eldest son an education suitable to the extended capacity which he displayed in his earliest years. This education, of which the fruits are apparent in his taste and writings, was accompanied by a thorough initiation into the duties of religion, as then professed on a presbyterian model. The genius of the future antiquary was first exhibited in a turn for poetry, which was a favourite study among the scholars of that period, even where there was no particular aptitude to excel in its composition, but for which
- ↑ This branch was ennobled in 1607, in the person of Michael Balfour of Balgarvy, who, having served King James in several embassies to the principal courts of Europe, was created Lord Balfour of Burleigh. This peerage was attainted in consequence of the concern of its occupant in the civil war of 1715.
