Balfour, when a youth fell in love with a woman far inferior in rank, much to the annoyance of the family.
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.
[1] The defence was ingenious, but inadequate; Balfour argued there had been no intent to kill, that the wound was merely to the arm and hence plainly designed to frighten or correct, and that the deceased had lived for several days after the being shot before dying of a 'fretful temper'.
His next appearance was at the meeting of Jacobites at Lochmaben, 29 May 1714, when the Pretender's health was drunk, Lord Burleigh denouncing damnation against all who would not drink it.
Balfour's story is retold by writer Daniel Defoe in his 1724 Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain as part of the description of the town of Inverkeithing.