BELLENDEN (BALLANTYNE or BANNATYNE), JOHN (fl. Scottish writer, was educated at the universities of St. Andrews and Paris. He was in the service of James V. from the king's earliest years, as clerk of accounts. At the request of James he undertook translations of Boece's Historia Scotorum, which had appeared at Paris in 1527, and the first five books of Livy. In 1533, he became archdeacon of Moray and a canon of Ross. He was a strenuous opponent of the Reformation, and is said by some authorities to have died at Rome, in 155o; by others to have been still living in 1587. His translation of Boece, entitled The History and Chronicles of Scotland, is remarkable for its freedom and vigour of expression.
The History was published in 1536; and, edited by Maitland, was reprinted in 182I. The translation of Livy, was not printed till 1822. Two mss. of the latter are extant, one, the older, in the Advocates' library, Edinburgh (which was the basis of the normalized text of 1822), the other (c. IS5o) in the possession of Mr. Ogilvie Forbes, of Boyndlie. An edition of the work was edited for the Scottish Text Society by Mr. W. A. Craigie (I go I, I go3) . The second volume of this edition contains also a complete reprint of the portions of the holograph first draft which were dis covered in the British Museum in 1902. Two poems by Bellenden —The Proheme to the Cosmographe and the Proheme of the History—appeared in the 1536 edition of the History of Scotland. Others, bearing his name in the well-known Bannatyne ms. col lection made by his namesake George Bannatyne (q.v.), may or may not be his. Sir David Lyndsay, in his prologue to the Papyngo, speaks vaguely of : Ane cunnyng Clark quhilk wrythith craftelie Ane plant of poetis callit Ballendyne, Quhose ornat workis my wit can nocht defyne.
The chief sources of information regarding Bellenden's life are the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, his own works and the ecclesiastical records.