James Balfour, Lord Pittendreich

Who was James Balfour, Lord Pittendreich?

James Balfour, Lord Pittendreich was a Scottish legal writer, judge and politician.

The son of Sir Michael Balfour of Montquhanny, he was educated for the legal branch of the Church of Scotland. In June 1547, together with John Knox and others captured at St Andrews, Fife, following the capture of the castle by pro-Catholic French forces he was condemned to become a galley-slave rowing French galleys, but was released in 1549. He denounced Protestantism and entered the service of Mary of Guise, and was rewarded with important legal appointments.

He subsequently joined the Lords of the Congregation, a group of Protestant nobles who were against the marriage of the young, Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Dauphin of France, but betrayed their plans.

After Mary's arrival in Scotland he became one of her secretaries, in 1565 being reported as her greatest favourite after Rizzio. He obtained the parsonage of Flisk in Fife in 1561, was nominated an Extraordinary Lord of Session, and in 1563 one of the commissaries of the court which now took the place of the former ecclesiastical tribunal; in 1565 he was made a privy councillor, and in 1566 Lord Clerk Register, and was knighted.