Career
Balfour, when a youth fell in love with a woman far inferior in rank, much to the annoyance of the family. He was sent to travel abroad in the hope that he would forget his attachment. Notwithstanding the threat, she did marry a Henry Stenhouse, schoolmaster at Inverkeithing, acquainting him beforehand of the hazard.
On Balfour"s return his first inquiry was after the girl.
This was on 9 April 1707. The schoolmaster lingered twelve days, and then died.
Balfour was tried for the murder in the High Court of Justiciary on 4 August 1709. The defence was ingenious, but inadequate.
Balfour argued there had been no intent to kill, that the wound was merely to the arm and hence plainly designed to frighten or correct, and that the deceased had lived for several days after the being shot before dying of a "fretful temper".
Balfour was found guilty, and sentenced to be beheaded on 6 January 1709-1710. He skulked for some time in the neighbourhood of Burleigh, and is reputed to have concealed himself in a hollowed ash-tree afterwards named "Burleigh"s Hole". On the death of his father, in 1713, the title devolved on him.
His next appearance was at the meeting of Jacobites at Lochmaben, 29 May 1714, when "the Pretender"s" health was drunk, Lord Burleigh denouncing damnation against all who would not drink lieutenant
He engaged in the rebellion of 1715. Foreign this he was in the same year attainted by Acting of Parliament, and his estates, worth ₤697 per annum, were forfeited to the crown.
He died, without issue, in 1757. The attainder was reversed in 1869 in favour of Alexander Bruce, 6th Lord Balfour of Burleigh.
