Walter Balcanquhall
Walter Balcanquhall (c. 1586–1645) was a Scottish clergyman who supported the king and Charles I’s church policies. James I chose him to represent the Church of Scotland at the Synod of Dort.
He was the son of Rev. Walter Balcanquhall, a strong Presbyterian, and was born in Edinburgh around 1586. He studied at the University of Edinburgh, intending to enter the Church of England. He earned his MA in 1609, then went to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received his BD and became a Fellow in 1611. He served as one of James I’s chaplains and, in 1617, was Master of the Savoy in London. In 1618 James sent him to the Synod of Dort, and Oxford later awarded him a Doctor of Divinity. His letters from Dort to Sir Dudley Carleton survive.
In March 1624 he became Dean of Rochester, after Godfrey Goodman left to become Bishop of Gloucester. In 1639 he was named Dean of Durham. After George Heriot died in 1624, Balcanquhall helped found Heriot’s Hospital and drafted its statutes in 1627.
In 1638 he traveled back to Scotland as chaplain to the Marquis of Hamilton, the royal commissioner, but he was not warmly received. He wrote an apologetic account of court actions titled His Majestie’s Large Declaration concerning the Late Tumults in Scotland (1639).
On 29 July 1641 he and other relatives were denounced as “incendiaries” by the Scottish Parliament and treated harshly. He retreated to Oxford and later stayed with the royalist Sir Thomas Middleton at Chirk Castle, Denbighshire, where he died on Christmas Day 1645. Middleton had a monument made for him in Chirk parish church, with an epitaph written by John Pearson, then Bishop of Chester.
After his death, a later case (1651–1652) involved claims that valuable plate and vestments from Durham Cathedral had been hidden; Balcanquhall’s widow, Elizabeth, was questioned about whether she sent the items to Anthony Maxton, who had buried them in his garden.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 21:24 (CET).