year, the Scots made a bold and successful incursion into England, under Randolph and Douglas, and King Edward was obliged, April 1328, to consent to the treaty of Northampton, which acknowledged at once the independency of the Scottish crown, and the right of Robert Bruce to wear it. No more is heard of Edward Baliol, till after the death of Bruce, when he was tempted by the apparent weakness of Scotland under the minority of David II. to attempt the recovery of his birth-right. Two English barons, Henry de Beaumont and Thomas Lord Wake, claimed certain estates in Scotland, which had been declared their property by the treaty of Northampton; Randolph, the Scottish regent, distrusting the sincerity of the English in regard to other articles of this treaty, refused to restore those estates; and the two barons accordingly joined with Baliol in his design. That the English king might not be supposed accessory to so gross a breach of the treaty, he issued a proclamation against their expedition; but they easily contrived to ship four hundred men at arms and three thousand infantry at Holderness, all of whom were safely landed on the coast of Fife, July 31, 1332. Only eleven days before this event, the Scottish people had been bereft of their brave regent, Randolph Earl of Moray, who was almost the last of those worthies by whom the kingdom of Bruce had been won and maintained. The regency fell into the hands of Donald, Earl of Mar, in every respect a feebler man. Baliol, having beat back some forces which opposed his landing, moved forward to Forteviot, near Perth; where the Earl of Mar appeared with an army to dispute his farther progress. As the Scottish forces were much superior in number and position to the English, Baliol found himself in a situation of great jeopardy, and would willingly have retreated to his ships, had that been possible. Finding, however, no other resource than to fight, he led his forces at midnight across the Erne, surprised the Scottish camp in a state of the most disgraceful negligence, and put the whole to the route. This action, fought on the 12th of August, was called the battle of Dupplin. The conqueror entered Perth, and for some time found no resistance to his assumed authority. On the 24th of September, he was solemnly crowned at Scone. The friends of the line of Bruce, though unable to offer a formal opposition, appointed Andrew Moray of Bothwell to be regent in the room of the Earl of Mar, who had fallen at Dupplin. At Roxburgh, on the 23rd of November, Baliol solemnly acknowledged Edward of England for his liege lord, and surrendered to him the town and castle of Berwick, on account of the great honour and emoluments which he had procured through the good will of the English king, and the powerful and acceptable aid contributed by his people." The two princes also engaged on this occasion to aid each other in all their respective wars. Many of the Scottish chiefs now submitted to Baliol, and it does not appear improbable that he might have altogether retrieved a kingdom which was certainly his by the laws of hereditary succession. But on the 15th of December, the adherents of the opposite dynasty surprised him in his turn at Annan, overpowered his host, and having slain his brother Henry, and many other distinguished men, obliged him to fly, almost naked, and with hardly a single attendant, to England. His subsequent efforts, though not so easily counteracted, were of the same desultory character. He returned into Scotland in March, and lay for some time at Roxburgh, with a small force. In May, 1333, he joined forces with King Edward, and reduced the town of Berwick. The Scottish regent being overthrown at Halidon Hill, July 19, for a time all resistance to the claims of Baliol ceased. In a parliament held at Edinburgh in February, he ratified the former treaty with King Edward, and soon after surrendered to that monarch the whole of the counties on the frontier, together with the province of Lothian, as part of the kingdom of England. His power, 66 however, was solely supported by foreign influence, and, upon the rise of a few of the opposite hostile barons, in November, 1334, he again fled to England. In July, 1335, Edward III. enabled him to return under the protection of an army. But, notwithstanding the personal presence and exertions of no less a warrior than the victor of Cressy, the Scots never could altogether be brought under the sway of this vassal king. For two or three years, Edward Baliol held a nominal sway at Perth, while the greater part of the country was in a state of rebellion against him. The regent Andrew Moray, dying in July, 1338, was succeeded by Robert Stewart, the grandson of Bruce, and nephew of David II. who having threatened to besiege Baliol in Perth, obliged him to retreat once more to England. The greater part of the country speedily fell under the dominion of the regent, nor was Edward III. now able to retrieve it, being fully engaged in his French wars. The Scots having made an incursion, in 1344, into England, Baliol, with the forces of the northern counties, was appointed to oppose them. Two years after this period, when the fatal battle of Durham, and the capture of David II. had again reduced the strength of Scotland, Balio) raised an insurrection in Galloway, where his family connections gave him great influence, and speedily penetrated to the central parts of the kingdom. He gained, however, no permanent footing. For some years after this period, Scotland maintained a noble struggle, under its regent Robert Stewart, against both the pretensions of this adventurer, and the power of the King of England, till at length, in 1355-6, wearied out with an unavailing contest, and feeling the approach of old age, Baliol resigned all his claims into the hands of Edward III. for the consideration of five thousand merks, and a yearly pension of two thousand pounds. After this surrender, which was transacted at Roxburgh, and included his personal estates, as well as his kingdom, this unfortunate prince retired to England. "The fate of Edward Baliol," says Lord Hailes, singular. In his invasion of Scotland during the minority of David Bruce, he displayed a bold spirit of enterprise, and a courage superior to all difficulties. By the victory at Dupplin, he won a crown; some few weeks after, he was surprised at Annan and lost it. The overthrow of the Scots at Halidon, to which he signally contributed, availed not to his re-establishment. Year after year, he saw his partisans fall away, and range themselves under the banner of his conpetitor. He became the pensioner of Edward III. and the tool of his policy, assumed or laid aside at pleasure: and, at last, by his surrender at Roxburgh, he did what in him lay to entail the calamities of war upon the Scottish nation, a nation already miserable through the consequences of a regal succession dis 16 was puted for threescore years. The remainder of his days was spent in obscurity; and the historians of that kingdom where he once reigned, know not the time of his death." It may further be mentioned, that neither these historians nor the Scottish people at large, ever acknowledged Edward Baliol as one of the line of Scottish monarchs. The right of the family of Bruce, though inferior in a hereditary point of view, having been confirmed by parliament on account of the merit of King Robert, this shadowy intruder, though occasionally dominant through the sword, could never be considered the legitimate monarch, more especially as he degraded himself and his country by a professed surrender of its independence, and even of a part of its territory, to a foreign enemy. Но died childless, and, it would also appear, unmarried, in 1363, when he must have been advanced to at least the age of seventy. BALLANTYNE, JOHN. Of all the remarkable men, by whom this name, in its various orthographical appearances, has been borne, not the least worthy of notice is John Ballantyne, who died on the 16th of June, 1821, about the age of forty-five years. This gentleman was the son of a merchant at Kelso, where he 124 JOHN BALLENTYNE (OR BELLENDEN). was born and educated. In his youth, he displayed such an extraordinary quickness of mind, as sufficiently betokened the general ability by which he was to be distinguished in after life. While still a young man, his mind was turned to literary concerns by the establishment of a provincial newspaper, the Kelso Mail, which was begun by his elder brother James. The distinction acquired by his brother in consequence of some improvements in printing, by which there issued from a Scottish provincial press a series of books rivalling, in elegance and accurate taste, the productions of a Bensley or a Baskerville, caused the removal of both to Edinburgh about the beginning of the present century. But the active intellect of John Ballantyne was not to be confined to the dusky shades of the printing-house. He embarked largely in the bookselling trade, and subsequently in the profession of an auctioneer of works of art, libraries, &c. The connection which he and his brother had established at Kelso with Sir Walter Scott, whose Border Minstrelsy was printed by them, continued in this more extensive scene, and accordingly during the earlier and more interesting years of the career of the author of Waverley, John Ballantyne acted as the confidant of that mysterious writer, and managed all the business of the communication of his works to the public. Some of these works were published by John Ballantyne, who also issued two different periodical works, written chiefly by Sir Walter Scott, entitled respectively the Visionary and the Sale-room, of which the latter had a reference to one branch of Mr Ballantyne's trade. It is also worthy of notice, that the large edition of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, which appeared under the name of Mr Henry Weber as editor, and which, we may presume to say, reflects no inconsiderable credit upon the Scottish press, was an enenterprise undertaken at the suggestion and risk of this spirited publisher. Mr Ballantyne himself made one incursion into the field of letters: he was the author of a tolerably sprightly novel in two thin duodecimos, styled, "The Widow's Lodgings," which reached a second edition, and by which, as he used to boast in a jocular manner, he made no less a sum than thirty pounds! It was not, however, as an author that Mr Ballantyne chiefly shonehis forte was story-telling. As a conteur, he was allowed to be unrivalled by any known contemporary. Possessing an infinite fund of ludicrous and characteristic anecdote, which he could set off with a humour endless in the variety of its shades and tones, he was entirely one of those beings who seem to have been designed by nature for the task, now abrogated, of enlivening the formalities and alleviating the cares of a court: he was Yorick revived. After pursuing a laborious and successful business for several years, declining health obliged him to travel upon the continent, and finally to retire to a seat in the neighbourhood of Melrose. He had been married, at an early age, to Miss Parker, a beautiful young lady, a relative of Dr Rutherford, author of the View of Ancient History and other esteemed works. This union was not blessed with any children. In his Melrose rustication, he commenced the publication of a large and beautiful edition of the British Novelists, as an easy occupation to divert the languor of illness, and fill up those vacancies in time, which were apt to contrast disagreeably with the former habits of busy life. The works of the various novelists were here amassed into large volumes, to which Sir Walter Scott furnished biographical prefaces. But the trial was brief. While flattering himself with the hope that his frame was invigorated by change of air and exercise, death stepped in, and reft the world of as joyous a spirit as ever brightened its sphere. The Novelist's Library was afterwards completed by the friendly attention of Sir Walter Scott. BALLENTYNE, (or BELLENDEN,) JOHN, otherwise spelt Ballanden and Ballentyn-an eminent poet of the reign of James V., and the translator of Boece's 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 univer sity 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, 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; 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, 126 JOHN BALLENTYNE (OR BELLENDEN). and also a testimony to the enlightened and upright character of Ballentyne, we shall extract into these pages: "As Seneca says in his tragedeis, all ar nocht kingis that bene clothit with purpure and dredoure, but only they that sekis na singulare proffet, in dammage of the commonweill; and sa vigilant that the life of their subdetis is mair deir and precious to them than thair awin life. Ane tyrane sekis riches; ane king sekis honour, conquest be virtew. Ane tyrane governis his realmis be slauchter, dredoure, and falset; ane king gidis his realme be prudence, integrite, and favour. Ane tyrane suspeckis all them that hes riches, gret dominioun, auctorite, or gret rentis; ane king haldis sic men for his maist helply friendis. Ane tyrane luffis nane bot vane fleschouris, vicious and wicket lymmaris, be quhais counsall he rages in slauchter and tyranny; ane king luffis men of wisdom, gravite, and science; knawing weill that his gret materis maybe weill dressit be thair prudence. Treuth is that kingis and tyrannis hes mony handis, mony ene, and mony mo memberis. Ane tyrane sets him to be dred; ane king to be luffet. Ane tyrane rejoises to mak his pepill pure; ane king to mak thame riche. Ane tyrane draws his pepill to sindry factiones, discord, and hatrent; ane king maks peace, tranquillite, and concord; knawing nothing sa dammagious as division amang his subdittis. Ane tyrane confounds all divine and hummane lawis; ane king observis thaime, and rejoises in equite and justice. All thir properteis sal be patent, in reding the livis of gud and evil kingis, in the history precedent." To have spoken in this way to an absolute prince shows Ballentyne to have been not altogether a courtier. He afterwards adds, in a finely impassioned strain :— -“Quhat thing maybe mair plesand than to se in this present volume, as in ane cleir mirroure all the variance of tyme bygane; the sindry chancis of fourtoun; the bludy fechting and terrible berganis sa mony years continuit, in the defence of your realm and liberte; quhilk is fallen to your hieness with gret felicite, howbeit the samin has aftimes been ransomit with maist nobill blude of your antecessoris. Quhat is he that wil nocht rejoise to heir the knychtly afaris of thay forcy campions, King Robert Bruce and William Wallace? The first, be innative desyre to recover his realme, wes brocht to sic calamite, that mony dayis he durst nocht appeir in sicht of pepill; but amang desertis, levand on rutes and herbis, in esperance of better fortoun; bot at last, be his singulare manheid, he come to sic preeminent glore, that now he is reput the maist valyeant prince that was eftir or before his empire. This other, of small beginning, be feris curage and corporall strength, not only put Englishmen out of Scotland, but als, be feir of his awful visage, put Edward king of England to flicht; and held all the borders fornence Scotland waist." Ballentyne delivered a manuscript copy of his work to the king, in the summer of 1533, and about the same time he appears to have been engaged in a translation of Livy. The following entries in the treasurer's book give a curious view of the prices of literary labour, in the court of a king of those days. "To Maister John Ballentyne, be the kingis precept, for his translating of the Chronykill, £30. 64 1531, Oct. 4th. To Maister John Ballantyne, be the kingis precept, for his translating of the Chroniclis, £30. 66 Item, Thairefter to the said Maister Johne, be the kingis command, £6. 1533, July 26. To Maister John Ballentyne, for ane new Chronikle gevin to the kingis grace, £12. แ Item, To him in part payment of the translation of Titus Livius, £8. |