Clan Boyd

History

Clan Boyd first appears in the Ayrshire district of Cunninghame in the thirteenth century. The surname's origin is disputed: it may come from the Gaelic buidhe, meaning fair or yellow-haired, or it may point back to the Isle of Bute. Tradition also links an early Boyd to Alexander III's campaign against Norse forces at Largs in 1263, though this episode is remembered more through family tradition than firm record.

The clan's documented rise begins with Sir Robert Boyd, who fought for Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314. Bruce rewarded him with lands at West Kilbride and Portencross, along with the lordship of Kilmarnock, where the family began building what became Dean Castle. His descendants held Kilmarnock as their seat for the next four centuries.

The family reached its height in the 1450s and 1460s. Robert Boyd was raised to the peerage as Lord Boyd around 1454 and later became Lord Chamberlain of Scotland. In 1466 he and his brother Alexander took charge of the boy king James III, making Robert governor of the realm. He helped arrange the king's marriage to Margaret of Denmark, a match that brought Orkney and Shetland to the Scottish crown. Overreach followed success: when Boyd's son Thomas was made Earl of Arran and married the king's sister, rivals moved against the family. In 1469 Robert was convicted of treason and fled to England, where he died soon after; Alexander was beheaded.

The Boyds recovered standing in the following two centuries. William Boyd, 10th Lord Boyd, was created Earl of Kilmarnock in 1661. That earldom ended abruptly in 1746, when William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock, was executed for his part in the Jacobite rising, and both the earldom and the older Lord Boyd title were forfeited.

The chiefly line continued through the female descent of the Kilmarnock estates into the Hay family, Earls of Erroll. A subsidiary title, Baron Kilmarnock, was created in 1831, and in the twentieth century a holder of that barony took the surname Boyd and was accepted as chief of the name. It was for this Lord Kilmarnock that today's Boyd tartan was designed in 1956, drawing on both the Hay and Stewart lines that had come together in the family.

That chiefly line ended with the death of Alastair Boyd, 7th Baron Kilmarnock, in 2009. His successor has chosen not to seek recognition as chief, leaving Clan Boyd armigerous. The House of Boyd Society, founded in 1988, now keeps the family's history and its scattered associated names together.