secution as in the highest degree impolitic, and said it was sometimes 'great wisdom in a prince not to reject or disdain those who freely told him his duty.' The trial was a mere burlesque of the forms of justice. The excitement of the people became almost uncontrollable, and while protests against the sentence being carried out were made at crowded meetings, many vowed that if a pardon were not granted they would either set him at liberty or revenge his death on the judge and the jurors who voted against him. Traquair thereupon hastened to Charles and represented to him that the execution was unadvisable, and Laud concurring, Balmerino was reluctantly pardoned, but was ordered to be confined for life within six miles of his house at Balmerino. Afterwards he obtained full liberty, 'to the king's great grief,' says Spalding, 'for this his goodness' (Memorials, i. 61). Burnet states that his father told him 'that the ruin of the king's affairs in Scotland was in a great measure owing to that prosecution' (Own Times, ed. 1838, p. 14). Balmerino was one of those who attended the meeting of the lords called by Lord Lorne, afterwards Marquis of Argyll, at which they began to 'regrait their dangerous estait with the pryd and avarice of the prelatis' (Spalding, Memorials, i. 79), and resolved to make a determined stand against the introduction of 'innovations' in worship. Along with Loudoun and Rothes he revised the additions to the covenant in February 1638 (Rothes, Relation, p. 79). In the assembly of 1638 he resolved to lie 'well near mute' (Baillie, Letters and Journals, i. 125), but he served on several committees, and on 3 Oct. he signed the protest to the king's commissioner at Hamilton against his endeavours to induce the members of the assembly to sign the 'king's covenant' (Balfour, Annals, ii. 206; Gordon, Scots Affairs, ii. 127). Guthrie ascribes to Balmerino, along with Hope and Henderson, the pamphlet called 'An Informatione for Defensive Arms' (printed in Stevenson's 'History of the Church of Scotland,' ii. 686-95), maintaining the 'reason and necessity' of the covenanters to defend themselves against the king by force of arms. He was also one of the principal advisers of the covenanters in sending a letter to Louis XIII against 'the tyrannical proceedings of their monarch.' Of this Charles took special notice in his 'Large Declaration concerning the late Troubles in Scotland,' reproaching him for his ingratitude both to himself and to James VI, to whom he owed both his barony and his whole fortune. Balmerino was one of the ablest and most prominent supporters of Argyll in his policy against Charles. When the covenanters resolved to take up arms, he aided them with large sums of money, contributing at least forty thousand merks (Balfour, Annals, iii. 240). Along with the Earl of Rothes and others he proceeded on 22 March 1639 to Dalkeith to demand the delivery to them of the palace by the lord treasurer Traquair, and to bring the royal ensigns of the kingdom, the crown, sword, and sceptre, to the castle of Edinburgh (ib. ii. 322). At the opening of the famous Scottish parliament in August 1641, he was nominated president by the king and unanimously elected (ib. iii. 45). On 17 Sept. his name appeared among the list of privy councillors nominated by the king (ib, 67), and it was one of those approved of by the parliament (ib. 150). On 17 Nov. he was chosen an extraordinary lord of session. He accompanied General Leslie in his march into England in 1643 (Spalding, Memorials, ii. 298). In July 1644 he was nominated one of the commissioners to England (Balfour, Annals, iii. 206). When, after the disastrous campaigns of Argyll, the command of the covenanters was entrusted to Sir William Baillie, Balmerino was one of the committee of estates nominated to advise him (Spalding, ii. 462). He died on the last day of February 1649, of apoplexy in his own chamber in Edinburgh, having the previous evening supped with the Marquis of Argyll, and gone to bed apparently in good health (Balfour, Annals, iii. 388). He was buried in the vaulted cemetery of the Logan family, adjoining the church of Restalrig, but according to Scot of Scotstarvet, the soldiers of Cromwell disinterred the body in 1660 while searching for leaden coffins, and threw it into the street. By Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Ker of Fernihurst, and sister of Andrew and James, lords Jedburgh, and of Robert Car [q. v.], earl of Somerset, he had a son John, who succeeded him as third earl. Balmerino was the author of a speech on the army published in 1642.
John Elphinstone, third Lord Balmerino (1623-1704), lost most of his landed property by lawsuits, and was fined 6,000l. Scots by the parliament of 1662 for having conformed under the commonwealth. His successor (by his wife Margaret, daughter of John Campbell, earl of Loudoun), John Elphinstone, fourth Lord Balmerino, born 26 Dec. 1682, a distinguished lawyer, was a privy councillor 16 Aug. 1687; opposed the union; was elected a representative of the peers in 1710 and 1718; was expelled from his offices in 1714: and died at Leith 13 May 1736. His son Arthur is noticed above.
