and shortly afterwards in 1581 or 1582 he was restored to his
estates and received at court. His career, one of the blackest in the
annals of political perfidy and crime, closed shortly before the 24th of
January 1584. He was the greatest lawyer of his day, and part-author at
least of Balfour's _Practicks_, the earliest text-book of Scottish law, not
published, however, till 1754. He married Margaret, daughter and heir of
Michael Balfour of Burleigh, by whom, besides three daughters, he had six
sons, the eldest of whom was created Baron Balfour of Burleigh in 1607.[3]

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--See article in the _Dict. of Nat. Biog._ and authorities
there quoted; Balfour's _Practicks_ (1754) and introductory preface; A.
Lang's _Hist. of Scotland_, vol. ii. and authorities (1902); Sir J.
Melville's _Memoirs_ (Bannatyne Club, 1827); _Cal. of State
Papers--Register of Privy Council of Scotland_, i.-iii.; _Scottish Series_
(Thorpe), i. and ii. (Bain), ii.-iv.; _The Border Papers_, i.; _Hamilton
Papers_, ii. (_Foreign_).

(P. C. Y.)

[1] _Cal. of State Pap. (Scottish)_, ii. 218, 250.

[2] _Cal. of State Pap. (Foreign)_, 1579-1580, p. 294.

[3] The title was attainted in 1716, through the 5th baron's complicity in
the Jacobite rising of 1715. In 1869 it was restored to Alexander Hugh
Bruce (b. 1849), as 6th baron; he became one of the most influential of
contemporary Scottish noblemen, on the Conservative side in politics, and
was secretary for Scotland from 1895 to 1903.

BALFOUR, ROBERT (known also as BALFOREUS) (1550?-1625?), Scottish
philosopher, was educated at St Andrews and the university of Paris. He was
for many years principal of the Guienne College at Bordeaux. His great work
is his _Commentarii in Organum Logicum Aristotelis_ (Bordeaux, 1618); the
copy in the British Museum contains a number of highly-eulogistic poems in
honour of Balfour, who is described as _Graium aemulus acer_. Balfour was
one of the scholars who contributed to spread over Europe the fame of the
_praefervidum ingenium Scotorum_. His contemporary, Dempster, called him
the "phoenix of his age, a philosopher profoundly skilled in the Greek and
Latin languages, and a mathematician worthy of being compared with the
ancients." His _Cleomedis meteora_, with notes and Latin translation, was
reprinted at Leiden as late as 1820.

See Dempster, _Historia Ecclesiastica Gent. Scotorum_; Irving's _Lives of
the Scottish Writers_; Anderson's _Scottish Nation_, i.