James Balfour (1731–1809) was a Scottish priest in the Church of England who was an early missionary to Newfoundland. He was sent by the Bishop of London in 1764 to be a missionary in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, where he discovered a rowdy community sometimes reluctant to receive his ministry—he frequently complained in letters of the "barbarous lawless place," where music and dancing were engaged in on Sunday, fights (particularly between English and Irish) and break-ins were commonplace, and where common-law marriage was a frequent practice. In March 1769 he was even assaulted, seemingly at random. Nevertheless, Balfour eventually managed to make considerable headway in increasing the size of his congregation and in raising money to repair the local church.