Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/190

 

 BELLENDEN, ADAM (d. 1639?),bishop of Dunblane and Aberdeen, was second son of Sir [q. v.] of Auchinoul, lord justice clerk, and brother of Sir [q. v.], also lord justice clerk. He studied at the university of Edinburgh, took the degree of M.A. there on 1 Aug. 1590, and continued in residence for some time after. He was on ‘the Exercise;’ obtained a ‘testimonial’ on 12 June 1593, was ordained 19 July following; was a member of the general assembly of the kirk of Scotland in 1602, and was one of the brethren ‘who met at Linlithgow 10 Jan. 1606 in conference with the imprisoned members previous to their trial for declining the authority of the sovereign in causes spiritual.’ At a later convention in the same place on the following 10 Dec. he proposed a protestation that it should not be held as a general assembly. In 1608 he was minister of the parish of Falkirk (Stirlingshire). He attended the convention at Falkland in 1609, and was ‘suspended’ 16 Nov. 1614. He was released; the sentence was taken off 18 Jan. 1614–15, and on 22 Feb. he was enjoined ‘to wait more diligently on his flock in preparing them for the communion.’ He ‘demitted’ his parish of Falkirk and his status as a clergyman of the presbyterian church of Scotland in July 1616. He was thereupon appointed to the bishopric of Dunblane (1616), although he had hitherto been violently opposed to episcopacy, and was one of the forty-two presbyterian ministers who signed a protest to parliament against its introduction (1 July 1606). He was consequently censured for accepting this preferment. In 1621 he still appears as bishop of Dunblane. He was succeeded there by Wedderburn in 1636, having been in 1635 translated to the bishopric of Aberdeen. In 1638 he was, in common with all the Scottish bishops, deprived of his see on the abolition of episcopacy in Scotland by the Glasgow assembly. He is believed to have retreated to England, and to have died there in 1638–9.

 BELLENDEN, or BALLENDEN, or BALLENTYNE, JOHN (fl. 1533–1587), poet, is generally supposed to have been a native of Haddington or of Berwick, and to have been born in the last decade of the fifteenth century. He matriculated as a student at the university of St. Andrews in 1508, as ‘of the Lothian nation.’ He proceeded from Scotland to Paris, and took the degree of D.D. at the Sorbonne. He was again in Scotland during the minority of James V. He brought over with him Hector Boece's ‘Historia Scotorum’ (Paris,1527), and, having gained access to the court of the young monarch, was admitted into high favour. He was appointed by the king to translate into the Scottish vernacular Boece's great work. This he did, and was engaged upon it from 1530 to 1531–2. His translation was delivered to the king in 1533, and appeared in 1536, and remains an interesting example of the Edinburgh press of the period. On the title-page of Boece, Bellenden is designated thus: ‘Translaitit laitly be Maister Johne Bellenden, archdene of Murray, channon of Ros’ (Moray and Ross). From various incidental expressions the folio must have been semi-privately printed for the king and nobles and special friends. The translation is a close yet original rendering. To it Bellenden added two poems of his own, one entitled ‘The Proheme to the Cosmographe,’ and the other ‘The Proheme of the History.’ He also wrote for it in prose an 'Epistil direckit be the Translatoure to the Kingis Grace.’ Some enemies apparently caused Bellenden to be dismissed from the royal service. He tells us in the first ‘Proheme’—

But he adds—

His office at court as ‘clerk of his comptis’ included undoubtedly the superintendence of his sovereign s education.

Contemporaneous with, or perhaps immediately following upon, the translation of Boece, Bellenden was similarly commanded by the king to translate Livy. In the treasurer's accounts we have these entries—‘1533 July 26. Item to Maister John Ballentyne, in part payment of the translation of Titius Livius, 8l.;’ ‘1533, August 24°. To Maister