The Orkney Balfours 1747-99

"In short, you will find this book to be much more that a family history, although it certainly delineates some splendid and memorable characters. It has, however, a wider significance. Because of Dr Fereday's scholarship and complete command of his incomparable source material, it is a book which will be of absorbing fascination to all those interested in the eighteenth century in general and in the history of Orkney in particular". William P.L. Thomson

William Balfour, 2nd laird of Trenaby in Westray, Orkney, lived for forty years after the failure of the last Jacobite rebellion and gradually achieved a remarkable recovery from the depths of misfortune. In 1746 he was a hunted fugitive, taking refuge in a cave when his house was burned. Thirty years later, in the service of Sir Lawrence Dundas of Kerse, he was an important man in the islands, being factor of both the Lordship estate in Shetland and the Earldom estate of his native Orkney. The story of his economic and political resurrection, and his eventual break with the Dundases of Kerse, gives us glimpses of an outstanding Orcadian, reveals the continued tension between Orkney lairds and their superiors and patrons, and shows how the islands were affected by national and international events.

The sons of William Balfour were even more successful than their father. John made a fortune in Madras and, after becoming 43rd laird of Trenaby, returned to Britain to be elected M.P. for Orkney and Shetland in 1790, under the patronage of Henry Dundas. Thomas married the sister of an earl, became a merchant laird in his own right and built a Georgia house overlooking Elwick, Shapinsay. David, a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, acted as a vital link between his brothers - being an agent for John, the capitalist in London, and Thomas, the most enterprising of Orkney's resident heritors.

The coming of war with Revolutionary France caused Thomas to raise two fencible regiments, which brought him more profit and prestige than his kelp-making, ship-owning and agricultural improvements. When his brother John ceased to be the islands' M.P., Colonel Thomas Balfour's pride and pretensions suffered: yet the fortune from the coast of Coromandel and Tanjore kept the Balfours a family of consequence in Orkney for the next one and a half centuries.