division sent from India to Egypt, under Sir David Baird, as commanding royal engineer. In 1806 he was attached to the special mission to Portugal of Lord Rosslyn and General Simcoe, to advise the Portuguese government on the defence of Lisbon, and in the latter part of the same year he accompanied Major-general Whitelocke to South America as commanding royal engineer. In 1808 he went in the same capacity to the Peninsula with the force under Sir Arthur Wellesley, and was severely wounded at the battle of Roliça, for his services at which battle he received the gold medal. He had been promoted captain on 1 March 1805, and he was further promoted major by brevet on 1 Jan. 1812, and in that year ordered to the Peninsula again. While Sir Richard Fletcher was the commanding royal engineer in the Peninsula, Major, or lieutenant-colonel, Elphinstone, as he became on 21 July 1813, remained in Portugal, but when that officer was killed before San Sebastian, Elphinstone, as senior officer of the royal engineers, asserted his right to be present at headquarters. Wellington would have preferred to keep Lieutenant-colonel (afterwards Field-marshal Sir) John Fox Burgoyne, who had long been with him, and knew his ways as commanding royal engineer, especially as he was in the army, though not in the corps of royal engineers, senior to Elphinstone, but he had to yield to the latter's demand and summon him to the front. Elphinstone therefore superintended the passage of the Adour as commanding royal engineer, and held that post at the battles of the Nivelle and the Nive, for which he received two clasps. He was then left by Wellington with Sir John Hope to form the siege of Bayonne, while Burgoyne accompanied the headquarters of the army in the pursuit after Soult. At the end of the war, when honours were freely bestowed on the leaders of the Peninsular army, Elphinstone was fortunate enough to be rewarded as commanding royal engineer with a baronetcy, and he was also made a C.B. Elphinstone did not again see service; he was promoted colonel on 2 Dec. 1824, and major-general on 10 Jan. 1837, and died at Ore Place, near Hastings, on 28 April 1846.
[Royal Military Calendar; Gent. Mag. July 1846.]
ELPHINSTONE, JAMES, first Lord Balmerino (1553?–1612), the third son of Robert, third lord Elphinstone, by Margaret, daughter of Sir John Drummond of Innerpeffray, was born about 1553. He was appointed a lord of session 4 March 1586, and in 1595 was one of the powerful commissioners of the treasury known as the Octavians. In 1598 he became secretary of state, and for the next five years was a member of all the more important commissions of the privy council. He was a great favourite with James, whom in 1603 he accompanied to London. On 20 Feb. 1604 he was created a peer, with the title of Lord Balmerino, the estates of the Cistercian abbey of Balmerino in Fifeshire being converted into a temporal lordship in favour of him and his heirs male. In the same year he was nominated one of the Scotch commissioners to treat about the union with England, and when the negotiations were at an end he was chosen by the privy council of Scotland to convey their thanks to James, a sum of 2,000l. being allowed him for the expenses of the journey. In March 1605 he was made president of the court of session, and while holding that office successfully opposed Dunbar. It was believed that James intended to appoint him secretary of state in England, but an end was put to his further promotion by his speedy disgrace. In 1599 a letter signed by James had been sent to Pope Clement VIII, requesting him to give a cardinal's hat to Drummond, bishop of Vaizon (a kinsman of Balmerino), and expressing high regard for the pope and the catholic faith. The Master of Gray sent a copy of this letter to Elizabeth, who asked James for an explanation. He asserted that the letter must be a forgery, and Balmerino, as secretary of state, also repudiated its authorship. When in 1607 James published his 'Triplici nodo triplex cuneus', Cardinal Bellarmine quoted at length the letter written in 1599 as a proof of James's former favour to catholicism. James sent for Balmerino, who then, it was alleged, confessed that he had written the letter, and had surreptitiously passed it in among papers awaiting the king's signature. He was accordingly put on his trial, when he refused to plead, but he acquitted the king of any knowledge of the letter written to the pope, which he said had been sent by himself as a matter of policy. The king confirming the verdict of guilty which the jury found, Balmerino was in March 1609 sentenced to be beheaded, quartered, and demeaned as a traitor. The sentence, however, was not carried out, for reasons which are made clear by an account of the affair privately drawn up by Balmerino. According to this document, James was by no means averse to correspondence with Clement, but had scruples about addressing him by his apostolical titles, which were therefore afterwards prefixed by Balmerino to the letter which James, who was aware of its contents, had signed without hesitation. When the matter was brought up again in 1606, severe
