Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/396

BAL BALNAVIS,, of Halhill, was born of poor parents at Kirkaldy early in the sixteenth century. After getting a brief and scanty education at St. Andrews, he went to Cologne, and in a free school of that city studied to great advantage. On returning to Scotland, he applied himself to Roman jurisprudence, and practised for some time in the courts of St Andrews, at that time the ecclesiastical metropolis. At an early period he embraced the principles of the Reformation; and, notwithstanding his change of religion, was appointed a lord of Session in 1538. He sat in the parliament of that year and some succeeding ones. In 1543 he became secretary of state under the regent, the earl of Arran, and was instrumental in passing Lord Maxwell's act, in spite of prelatic opposition—that act being that the whole Bible should be translated into the vulgar tongue. He was one of the commissioners appointed to treat for a marriage between Edward of England and the young Queen of Scots; but the match was broken off by the influence of the Cardinal Beaton, who saw in it the downfall of the popish faith. Balnavis was dismissed from office, and confined with the earl of Rothes and Lord Gray in Blackness castle, till the arrival of an English fleet in the frith of Forth. After the murder of the cardinal he was sent with the prisoners, after the surrender of the castle of St. Andrews, to Rouen, and kept there in close confinement. His sentence of forfeiture being reversed, Balnavis returned, and took a leading part with the reformers till the new faith was ultimately established. In 1563 he was appointed a second time a lord of Session; and the same year he was by the General Assembly nominated one of the commissioners to revise the Book of Discipline. The year following he accompanied the Regent Murray to York, as one of the Scottish commissioners in reference to the charges against Queen Mary for the murder of Darnley; and he was afterwards deputed to London on the same business. Died at Edinburgh in 1571—Mackenzie says, in 1579, a date as far wrong as that of his birth, 1520, given in the ''Nouvelle Biog. Univ''. Sir James Melvil calls him "a godly, learned, and wise, and long experimental counsellor." Mackenzie, on the other hand, styles him one of the "main sticklers and hectors" in the rebellion against Queen Mary. He wrote, at Rouen, a small treatise on "Justification," of which his fellow-prisoner, John Knox, thought highly. Among his works are some poems, published in Ramsay's collection, and "The Confessions of Faith, compiled by H. Balnavis of Halhill, and one of the Lords of Session and Counsell of Scotland, being a Prisoner within the Old Pallaice of Rouane, in the yeare of the Lord 1548," Edinburgh, 1584.—J. E.  BALOUFFIEAU or BALOUFFETEAU,, a notorious French sharper, who prosecuted his calling with great success under various aristocratic names in several countries of Europe, was the son of an advocate of the parliament of Bordeaux. The ministry of England and the king of France were among his dupes; the former paying for a denunciation of a pretended conspiracy £2000, and the latter 2000 crowns. He was gibbeted at Paris in 1828.—J. S., G.  BALOGH,, a Hungarian deputy, born in 1800. In all the Hungarian diets of which he was a member, he constantly appeared as a defender of the rights of the people. After a course of active patriotism, in which he encountered many obstacles, he was compelled to quit his country, and found, with the illustrious Kossuth, an asylum in Turkey.—G. M.  BALON,, a heresiarch of the fourteenth century, was educated in a monastery of Upper Armenia, in which country his zeal for the tenets of the Anabaptists excited such troubles as finally obliged him to seek refuge at the papal court of Avignon. He wrote a history of the kings and patriarchs of Armenia.  BALSAMO,, an Italian abbot and writer on agriculture, born at Termini in Sicily in 1763; died at Palermo in 1818. He was sent by the government of Naples into Lombardy, France, and England, to report on the state of agriculture in those countries. In England he made the acquaintance of Arthur Young, a memoir of whom he afterwards inserted in the Annals of Agriculture. He is the author of a great number of papers in that collection.—J. S., G.  BALTADJI,, grand vizier of the Ottoman empire, was born towards the middle of the seventeenth century. He was originally a soldier in the troop of Baltadjis, or bodyguard of the sultan. After his advancement to the viziership he commanded the army which the sultan sent into Russia to co-operate with Charles XII. of Sweden. The treaty of peace, however, which Baltadji concluded at Falezi with the minister of Catherine, gave such offence to Charles that he accused the grand vizier of treason, and required his dismissal from power. He was banished to Lemnos, where he died in 1712.—J. S., G.  BALTARD,, a French landscape painter, architect, and engraver, born in Paris 1765; died 1840; is the author of the work "Paris and its Monuments." His son , still living, continues both as an architect and an engraver, to add to the high renown of his father's name.—R. M.  BALTAZARINI, an Italian musician, called in France , the first famous violinist on record. He was sent from Piedmont by Marshal Brissac, in 1577, to Catherine de Medicis, and appointed by that princess her first valet de chambre, and superintendent of her music. In France he contributed greatly to the amusement of the royal family and nobility, by his ingenuity in contriving magnificent plans, machinery, and decorations for ballets, masques, and other dramatic entertainments. His success in this department obtained for him the quaint title of Beaujoyeux. In 1581, Henry III. having married his favourite minion, the Duc de Joyeuse, to Mademoiselle de Vaudemont, sister to his queen Louise de Lorraine, Baltazarini produced a ballet on the occasion, on the subject of Ceres and her Nymphs, which was performed at the Louvre, and printed under the following title: "Balet comique de la Royne, faict aux nopces de Monsieur le Duc de Joyeuse et Mademoiselle Vaudemont sa Sœur. Par Baltazar de Beaujoyeux, Valet de chambre du Roy et de la Royne sa mere. A Paris, par Adrian le Roy et Robert Ballard," 1582, 4to. The types and paper of this rare book (a copy of which is in the writer's possession) are equal in beauty to those of Elzevir in the next century. The music, which is clearly cut in wood, was not composed by Baltazarini, who only acted as ballet master on the occasion, but by Messrs. de Beaulieu and Salmon, of the king's band, whom his majesty had ordered to assist him in composing and preparing all that was "most perfect" in music for this festival. "And M. Beaulieu," says Baltazarini, "whom all professors regard as an excellent musician, has, on this occasion, even surpassed himself, assisted by Maistre Salmon, whom M. Beaulieu and others highly esteem in his art." This piece is interesting as the origin of the Balet Historique in France; where dancing has been long more successfully cultivated than elsewhere, and where it still holds a prominent place on the stage.—E. F. R. <section end="396H" /> <section begin="396I" />BALTEN or BALTON,, a Flemish painter, born at Antwerp 1540, died 1579; studied at the academy of his native city, imitating in his works the manner of Pieter Breughel the Elder. These works generally were small in size, but very highly finished and beautifully designed. In a picture of St. John in the wilderness, now at Vienna, by a curious whim of the Emperor Maximilian he was desired to replace by an elephant the figure of the preacher.—R. M. <section end="396I" /> <section begin="396J" />BALTIMORE,, Lord, was the founder of the colony of Maryland. His father, George, first Lord Baltimore, held important offices under James I., and obtained from that monarch extensive grants of land in Ireland and Newfoundland. Having become a Roman catholic, he was deprived of his offices, and induced to seek a sphere of action in founding across the Atlantic a colony, which should be governed on the principles of religious toleration. For this purpose he turned his attention to a settlement in Newfoundland; but that having fallen into the hands of the French, he induced Charles I. to make a grant of the tract of country which now forms the State of Maryland. He died before the charter was made out; it was therefore drawn up in the name of his son Cecil, who, with his heirs and successors, was invested with full powers in the new colony, on condition of paying to government "two Indian arrows of those parts every year on Easter Tuesday, and also the fifth part of all gold and silver mines which shall hereafter be discovered." About two hundred emigrants, chiefly Roman catholics, having landed in 1634, they proceeded to organize the colony, which was named Maryland, in honour of Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. The experiment was completely successful; a representative government was established, and all forms of belief being tolerated, except the Jewish religion, the new colony became an asylum for the persecuted. Lord Baltimore died in 1676. It does not appear he ever resided in, or even visited the colony, in which he took so deep an interest.—J. B. <section end="396J" /> <section begin="396Zcontin" />BALTIMORE,, an English traveller, who <section end="396Zcontin" />