BALFOUR, Thomas (1810-1838), of Cliffdale, Elwick, Shapinsay, Orkney; 18 Curzon Street, London; and 9 Doune Terrace, Edinburgh.

Balfour was descended from the branch of the family which moved from Fife to Orkney in the sixteenth century and which was subsequently recognised as the oldest branch of the family, known as Balfour of Balfour. They became the lairds of Trenaby on the island of Westray and during the course of the eighteenth century established themselves as a major force in the kelp industry and one of the leading Orkney families.1R.P. Fereday, The Orkney Balfours 1747-99 (1990); W.P.L. Thomson, Kelp-making in Orkney (1983); I. Rosie, Thomas Balfour M.P. 1835-1837 (1978), 1. Balfour’s great-uncle John Balfour (1750-1842) sat for Orkney & Shetland, 1790-6, 1820-6.2HP Commons 1790-1820, iii. 125-6; 1820-32, iv. 139-42. He had made a considerable fortune in India and by purchasing land in Orkney, including the estates of Lord Armadale, became the second largest landowner there, after the earl of Zetland.3Rosie, Thomas Balfour, 1. His younger brother Thomas (1752-1799) studied medicine at Edinburgh University, enhanced the family’s wealth by marrying the sister of Earl Ligonier, and settled at Elwick on the island of Shapinsay, later becoming colonel of the Orkney and Shetland fencible regiment.4Fereday, The Orkney Balfours, 44-5, 59, 62, 78-81, 144-53; W.P.L. Thomson, The new history of Orkney, 3rd ed. (2008), 339. Thomas’s son William (1781-1846) was a captain in the royal navy until his retirement in 1809 and later became vice-lieutenant of Orkney, provost of Kirkwall and agent for and heir to his uncle John, who lived in England from 1804.5Fereday, The Orkney Balfours; Rosie, Thomas Balfour, 5; HP Commons, 1820-32, iv. 139; J. Foster, Members of Parliament, Scotland 1357-1882 (1882), 23; W.R. O’Byrne, A naval biographical dictionary (1849), 42-3. William married his cousin Mary, the daughter of William Manson, comptroller of customs at Kirkwall.6Fereday, The Orkney Balfours, 107, 121; Burke LG. Balfour was the third of their eight children and the oldest surviving son.7Burke LG. The eldest son, John, was born in 1807 and died in 1808. His aunt Mary Brunton (1778-1818), William Balfour’s elder sister, was a noted novelist.8I. Bour, ‘Brunton, Mary’, Oxf. DNB [www.oxforddnb.com].

Balfour was educated by Rev. John Esbie of Everton, Liverpool and at Cambridge where he was admitted at the age of sixteen. He did not take a degree, perhaps because of head injuries sustained in a riding accident.9Rosie, Thomas Balfour, 1; R. Syers, The history of Everton (1830), 300; Al. Cant., i. 134. He then studied law, was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates on 3 December 1831 and practised in Edinburgh.10Rosie, Thomas Balfour, 1; F.J. Grant, The Faculty of Advocates in Scotland 1532-1943 (1944), 10. At the age of eighteen he had been admitted to the Speculative Society of Edinburgh and at twenty to the Royal Company of Archers.11The history of the Speculative Society 1764-1904 (1905), 126; J.B. Paul, The history of the Royal Company of Archers (1875), 379. In 1834 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.12http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/fellowship/all_fellows.pdf He was active in and a director of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland.13Caledonian Mercury, 18 Jan., 20 Feb. 1834, 19 Jan., 19 Feb. 1835, 16 Feb. 1837. He was an elder of the Church of Scotland and, from 1835 until his death, a member of its General Assembly.14Rosie, Thomas Balfour, 4; Caledonian Mercury, 13 Apr. 1835, 10 May 1838; R. Gordon, Memorial addressed to the Members of Her Majesty’s Government (1841), 6. For the benefit of the poorer classes who were unable to purchase books he established an ‘itinerating’ library in the northern islands of Orkney.15The new statistical account of Scotland (1845), xv. 131.

In February 1832 Balfour considered contesting the forthcoming election in Orkney but was discouraged by his great-uncle who supported George Traill, the sitting member.16Rosie, Thomas Balfour, 2. By 1834 John Balfour, as a supporter of Peel, wanted to oppose Traill but did not wish either to be a candidate himself or to support any other member of his family.17Ibid., 3. In late December 1834, after considering the claims of Thomas Gladstone, John Balfour was persuaded by Balfour’s father that only a member of the Balfour family would be likely to succeed as a Conservative candidate and he agreed to support Balfour and give him financial assistance.18Ibid., 4-5; The Standard, 31 Dec. 1834. Balfour had political opinions ‘similar to those expressed by Sir Robert Peel in his address to the electors of Tamworth’,19Rosie, Thomas Balfour, 19. and would ‘promote the reform of every abuse that may be shown to exist, either in the Government or the public expenditure’.20Parliamentary test book (1835), 11; Caledonian Mercury, 8 Jan. 1835. He was described as ‘a young gentleman of excellent talents and of strict application to business’, ‘a staunch Conservative’ and ‘a determined supporter of our Church establishment’.21Morning Post, 28 Jan. 1835. He emphasised his local connections in Orkney’,22Caledonian Mercury, 8 Jan. 1835. and was ‘ready to seize every opportunity of advocating the justice of the claims of Orkney and Zetland to the possession of separate representatives’.23Rosie, Thomas Balfour, 19. William Balfour assisted the campaign by hiring two vessels to transport voters from the outer isles to Lerwick and Kirkwall, and Balfour’s brother-in-law, James Kinnear, campaigned actively for him in Shetland and received a letter from Traill expressing his respect for Balfour.24Ibid., 5-6.

Balfour is not known to have spoken in debate but he voted regularly in the Conservative lobbies, casting his first vote in the minority for Manners Sutton as speaker, 19 Feb. 1835. He voted for the Sunday observance bills introduced by Poulter, 25 Mar. 1835, and Agnew, 3 June 1835, 21 Apr., 18 May 1836, and for Roebuck’s motion on Mauritius, 15 Feb. 1836. He sat on the committees which examined the election petitions for Dublin City, when he was involved in controversial exchanges with Daniel O’Connell, and county Carlow.25The Times, 27 Mar. 1835, 2 May 1835; Caledonian Mercury, 3 Mar. 1836; PP 1837 (307), x. 3. He pursued his constituency’s interests in matters ranging from the provision of increased church accommodation in Scotland, on which he presented petitions, 2 Apr. 1835, to the erection of lighthouses along the Solway Firth and on Orkney, moving for a return on this subject in 1836.26PP 1836 (232), xlv. 1; Caledonian Mercury, 4 Apr., 25 Apr. 1836. The bulk of his constituency correspondence was concerned with requests for assistance in obtaining posts, supporting the families of men lost on whaling ships, problems over enclosures and famine relief.27Rosie, Thomas Balfour, 9-11. His brother David advised him to oppose Fox Maule’s proposals to build more prisons in Scotland because of the unfair cost which would fall on Orkney and Shetland.28Ibid., 10.

By January 1837 Balfour had become disenchanted with parliamentary life, partly because of concerns about money and his marriage prospects, and was contemplating retirement. The financial support he received from John Balfour, never an enthusiastic advocate of his great-nephew, seems to have been unreliable. His great-uncle rejected Balfour’s father’s suggestion that Balfour should become a part-time assistant factor on the estate, while also practising as an advocate in Edinburgh, and considered that he possessed ‘neither the experience nor the habits of mind suited to the management’ of the tenants and the estate. It was widely believed that ‘he was not suited to a job of responsibility and stress’. Balfour discussed his plans with Peel on 20 March 1837 and was advised by Lord Granville Somerset, as well as by John Balfour, not to announce his retirement and so give an advantage to the Whigs.29Ibid., 11, 14 (quotations at 14). Persistent rumours that he would retire were denied,30Morning Post, 13 July 1837. but Balfour had already written a letter on 5 July announcing that family duties prevented him from continuing, at least for the present, although ‘occurrences may render it practicable, and even imperative, on me again to offer myself to the contest’.31Morning Post, 19 July 1837; Caledonian Mercury, 20 July 1837; Rosie, Thomas Balfour, 15, 20. He was criticised for delaying the announcement of his retirement until the last possible moment ‘when no opportunity remained either to the electors or to the Conservative party to supply his place with a candidate of kindred principles’.32The Times, 28 July 1837. In August, after the Whig Frederick Dundas had been returned unopposed, the loss of a Conservative seat was blamed on Balfour’s ‘strange indecision’.33The Times, 11 Aug. 1837; The Standard, 12 Aug. 1837. The Times also speculated that, because either his ‘purse was insufficient’ or ‘his foolish Scotch pride was such as could rather forfeit the seat pro tempore than give another conservative a favourable opportunity of supplanting him’, he preferred to see Dundas elected so that he could himself return to the seat more easily in due course, and observed that Balfour’s choice of ‘a Whig warming-pan’ rather than a Conservative candidate accounted ‘very much to his discredit’.34The Times, 19 Aug. 1837.

Balfour was disturbed by the criticism of his retirement, especially when it came from ‘soi-disant friends – political ones’.35Rosie, Thomas Balfour, 15. The Shetland Times published an article on his parliamentary record in August 1837, criticising his famine relief practices and hoping that the constituency would have a member who was ‘not quite such a drone or mute’ and who would be ‘capable of opening his mouth in a case of necessity’.36Ibid., 22-3. By September Balfour’s health had collapsed and there was speculation that this was a delayed result of his head injury sustained in the riding accident at Cambridge. His temper became more irritable and at times he became highly excited. When he had a breakdown and talked incoherently for 24 hours his father took him to Saughton Hall, a private asylum near Edinburgh. In January 1838 there was talk of him taking lodgings in Edinburgh and going abroad that April but he suffered a relapse and died on 30 March 1838, three days before his 28th birthday.37Ibid., 15-16; F.J. Grant, The Faculty of Advocates in Scotland 1532-1943 (1944), 10. He was unmarried but had been engaged for several years to Eleanor Edmeston, who instead married his younger brother David in 1844.38Rosie, Thomas Balfour, 11, 15, 16; Burke LG. He was survived by his father, who inherited Trenaby on John Balfour’s death in 1842. This, together with Shapinsay, passed to David on their father’s death in 1846.39Ibid., 16; HP Commons 1820-32, iv. 141; Burke LG.