Background
Balfour was the fourth son of James Maitland Balfour, of Whittingehame, Haddingtonshire, and Lady Blanche Cecil, daughter of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 2nd Marquess of Salisbury.
Balfour was the fourth son of James Maitland Balfour, of Whittingehame, Haddingtonshire, and Lady Blanche Cecil, daughter of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 2nd Marquess of Salisbury.
He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained 1st Class Honours in the Classical Tripos.
He served as Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1895 to 1900, as president of the Board of Trade from 1900 to 1905 and as president of the Local Government Board in 1905. He was admitted to the Privy Council of Ireland in 1895, and to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1905. On retiring from the House of Commons, he was chairman of the Commission on Lighthouse Administration in 1908, and chairman of the Cambridge Committee of the Commission on Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
During his first spell at the Houses of Parliament, Balfour received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Cambridge University, and was a fellow of Trinity.
From 1901 Balfour lived at Fisher"s Hill House, a large home which he had built by Lutyens in Hook Heath, Woking, Surrey, also living in the rural hamlet by 1911 were Alfred Lyttelton (Liberal U), Secretary of State for the Colonies (1903-1905) who married into his wider family and the Duke of Sutherland.
23rd United Kingdom Parliament. 24th United Kingdom Parliament. 25th United Kingdom Parliament.
26th United Kingdom Parliament.
27th United Kingdom Parliament]
Balfour sat as Conservative Member of Parliament for Leeds Central from 1885 to 1906. Lord Balfour survived her by three years and died in January 1945, aged 91, by which time he was the last surviving member of any of long-serving Prime Minister Salisbury"s cabinets.