Latin History, and of the first five books of Livy, into the vernacular language of his time, was a native of Lothian, and appears to have been born towards the close of the 15th century. He studied at the university of St Andrews, where his name is thus entered in the records: "1508, Jo. Balletyn nac. Lau [doniæ]." It is probable that he remained there for several years, which was necessary before he could be laureated. His education was afterwards completed at the university of Paris, where he took the degree of Doctor of Divinity; and as has been remarked by his biographer, [Works of Bellenden, I., xxxvii,] "the effects of his residence upon the continent may be traced both in his idiom and language."
He returned to Scotland during the minority of James V., and became attached to the establishment of that monarch as "Clerk of his Comptis." This appears from "the Proheme of the Cosmographe," prefixed to his translation of Boece, in which he says:—
And first occurrit to my remembering,
How that I wes in service with the king;
But to his grace in yeris tenderest,
Clerk of his compts, thoucht I wes indign [unworthy,]
With hart and hand and every other thing
That micht him pleis in my maner best;
Quhill hie invy me from his service kest,
Be thame that had the court in governing,
As bird but plumes heryit of the nest.
The biographer of Ballentyne, above quoted, supposes that he must have been the "Maister Johnne Ballentyne," who, in 1528, was "secretar and servitour" to Archibald Earl of Angus, and in that capacity appeared before parliament to state his master's reasons for not answering the summons of treason which had been issued against him. We can scarcely, however, reconcile the circumstance of his being then a "Douglas's man," with the favour he is found to have enjoyed a few years after with James V., whose antipathy to that family was so great as probably to extend to all its connections. However this may be, Ballentyne is thus celebrated, in 1530, as a court poet, by Sir David Lyndsay, who had been in youth his fellow-student at St Andrews, and was afterwards his fellow-servant in the household of the king:
But now of late has start up heastily
A cunning clerk that writeth craftily;
A plant of poets, called Ballanten,
Whose ornat writs my wit cannot defyne;
Get he into the court authority,
He will precel Quintin and Kenedy.
In 1530 and 1531, Ballentyne was employed, by command of the king, in translating Boece's History, which had been published at Paris in 1526. The object of this translation was to introduce the king and others who had "missed their Latin," to a knowledge of the history of their country. In the epistle to the king at the conclusion of this work, Ballenden passes a deserved compliment upon his majesty, for having "dantit this region and brocht the same to sicken rest, gud peace and tranquillity; howbeit the same could nocht be done be your gret baronis during your tender age;" and also says, without much flattery, "Your nobill and worthy deidis proceeds mair be naturall inclination and active curage, than ony gudly persuasioun of assisteris." He also attests his own sincerity, by a lecture to the king on the difference between tyrannical and just government; which, as a curious specimen of the prose composition of that time,
