John Elphinstone, 2nd Lord Balmerino

John Elphinstone, 2nd Lord Balmerino (died 28 February 1649) was a Scottish aristocrat, convicted in a celebrated trial of the 1630s which became a crux of the religious issue of the time.

Early life

He was the son of James, 1st Lord Balmerino, by his first wife, Sarah, daughter of Sir John Menteith of Carse. His father being under attainder when he died in 1613, the title did not devolve to him, but he was restored to blood and peerage by a letter under the great seal, 4 August 1613.

In 1643 he bought a magnificent mansion house in Leith which had been built in 1631. Guests in the house included Charles II in 1650. This survived until the 1950s when it sadly evaded the survey by the City Architect, Ebenezer James MacRae, as it was by then sandwiched between St Mary's Star of the Sea Church and tenements on the Kirkgate. It was consequently demolished as part of the Kirkgate clearances.

Parliamentary context and the trial He was a strenuous opponent of the ecclesiastical policy of Charles I in Scotland. In the parliament of 1633 he demonstrated his hostility to the act establishing the royal prerogative of imposing apparel upon churchmen. A majority of the members voted against the measure, but the clerk affirmed that the question was carried. When his decision was objected to, Charles, who was present, insisted that it must be held good unless the clerk were accused from the bar of falsifying the records. This being a capital offence, the accuser was liable to the punishment of death if he failed in the proof, and the decision was not further challenged.

He accompanied General David Leslie in his march into England in 1643. In July 1644 he was nominated one of the commissioners to England. When, after the disastrous campaigns of Argyll, the command of the covenanters was entrusted to Sir William Baillie, Balmerino was one of those nominated to advise him. He died on 28 February 1649, of apoplexy in his own chamber in Edinburgh. He was buried in the vaulted cemetery of the Logan family, adjoining the church of Restalrig, but according to Scot of Scotstarvet, the New Model Army soldiers of Oliver Cromwell disinterred the body in 1660 while searching for leaden coffins, and threw it into the street.

Family

He married Anne Ker, daughter of Sir Thomas Ker of Ferniehirst, and sister of Andrew and James, lords Jedburgh, and of Robert Car, Earl of Somerset. They had a son John, who succeeded him as third Lord.

Legacy Balmerino House survived for many centuries but was hidden behind St Mary's Star of the Sea Church, after Catholic Emancipation allowed a Roman Catholic church and convent to be built within the garden ground. The house survived until the 1950s when it was overlooked in the survey of the area by Edinburgh Corporation, owing to it being sandwiched between houses on the Kirkgate and the church and convent. It was swept away with the medieval houses of the Kirkgate and replaced by Council housing.