Robert Balfour, 5th Lord Balfour of Burleigh

Robert Balfour, 5th Lord Balfour of Burleigh (buried 20 March 1757) was a Jacobite from the Burleigh family of the county of Kinross, remembered chiefly for a murder of a man who had married a woman he felt attracted to.

Biography

Murder of Henry Stenhouse

Balfour, when a youth fell in love with a woman far inferior in rank, much to the annoyance of his family. He was sent to travel abroad in the hope that he would forget his attachment. Before he set out he declared to his lady-love that if in his absence she married he would kill her husband. Notwithstanding the threat, she did marry a Henry Stenhouse, schoolmaster at Inverkeithing, acquainting him beforehand of the hazard.

On Balfour's return his first inquiry was after the woman. On being informed of her marriage, on 9 April 1707 he proceeded on horseback with two attendants directly to the school at Inverkeithing, called Stenhouse out, deliberately shot him, wounding him in the shoulder, and quietly returned to Burleigh. Balfour was found guilty, and sentenced to be beheaded on 6 January 1709–10. But a few days prior to this he escaped from the Edinburgh Tolbooth by exchanging clothes with his sister, who resembled him. He skulked for some time in the neighbourhood of Burleigh, and is reputed to have concealed himself in a hollowed ash-tree

Death Balfour died, without issue, in 1757 and was buried at Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh. The attainder was reversed by Bruce's Restitution Act 1869 (32 & 33 Vict. c. 11 ) in favour of Alexander Bruce, 6th Lord Balfour of Burleigh.