Lord Boyd of Kilmarnock, remained faithful to the Crown during the 'Civil War' period. This initially cost the Boyd family dear; after mortgaging many of his estates to meet his obligations to Charles I, he was heavily fined by Cromwell. He did though find time to modernise parts of Dean Castle and found a school in Kilmarnock. On the restoration of Charles II, Royal gratitude toward the Boyds was shown in the elevation of the tenth Lord Boyd, William, to the Earldom of Kilmarnock in 1661 and in 1672 further rights and privileges on the town of Kilmarnock. After an uneventful life for a member of his family, the 1st Earl of Kilmarnock died in 1692. His son the 2nd Earl, also William, died shortly after in 1699. The 3rd Earl, again William, supported the Hanoverian Monarchy against the first Jacobite rising in 1715. He was referred to in an old Jacobite song:
“The auld Stuarts back again, The auld Stuarts back again; Let howlet whigs do what they can, The Stuarts will be back again. Wha cares for a’ their creeshy duds, And a’ Kilmarnock sowen suds? We’ll wauk their hydes and fyle their fuds, And bring the Stuarts back again.”
When reviewing a muster at Irvine of 6,000 men raised to put down the Jacobite threat of 1715, the 3rd Earl was accompanied by his ten year old son William who “appeared in arms with the Earl his father and graciously behaved himself to the admiration of all the beholders.”
In 1717 the 3rd Earl died and was succeeded by young William, who was still only 13 years old. William was the 4th and last Earl of Kilmarnock.
William lacked parental discipline and scorned learning although he showed promise in the classics, philosophy and mathematics. He was disposed to “riding, fencing, dancing and music and was justly esteemed by men of taste a polite gentleman”. He did however show interest in the prosperity and trade of Kilmarnock by opening coalmines in the area. He married Lady Anne Livingstone, daughter and heiress of the Earl of Linlithgow and Callander. Her father was a strong Jacobite who had supported the 1715 uprising. However Boyd’s estates were dwindling, his business ventures were failing, and, short of money, he suffered the catastrophic loss of his family home, Dean Castle, in an accidental fire in 1735. Possibly his lack of funds or possibly out of support for his wife’s family (although she herself urged him not to), William made a last desperate gamble to regain some of the ground lost by his family, by throwing in his lot with Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) and the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. A very unusual step for any lowland Presbyterian, especially one whose family had shown keen support in the past for the Hanoverian Government and had two sons, James and William, already with commissions within the Government army. His youngest son Charles joined his father and the Stuart cause.
William Boyd served Prince Charles faithfully and with distinction, both as commander of a small regiment and as a member of his privy council during the campaign, but it was an association which was ultimately to bring the Boyd house of cards crashing to earth and with it the aspirations of a family who had helped shape events in Scotland for the past 400 years. In the rout that followed the disastrous defeat of the Jacobite forces at Culloden, it is reported that William mistook kilted Scots Dragoons serving in the Government army to be Highlanders on the Jacobite side, turned the wrong way and was captured. In a bizarre twist of fate, his son James served in the Scots Fusiliers on the Government side at Culloden and as his father was brought, dishevelled and bareheaded, into the Government camp, he was recognised by James, who broke rank and placed his own hat upon his father’s head. This was the last time that father and son would meet. His youngest son Charles managed to escape from Culloden Moor with the Prince and went into exile in France. After a brief imprisonment, where William wrote several letters of a calm and dignified nature to his family (some of which are retained in the collections at Dean Castle today), he was put on trial for treason in Westminster Hall on 28th June, 1746. His appearance at the trial was described by Horace Walpole:
“Lord Kilmarnock is tall and slender with an extreme fine person; his behaviour a most just mixture between dignity and submission; if in anything to be reprehended, a little affected, and his hair too exactly dressed for a man in his situation; but, when I say that, it is not to find fault with him but to show how little fault there is to be found”.
William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock was declared guilty by his peers and executed in London at Tower Hill on the 18th of August 1746. The Boyd titles were confiscated, but James, William’s eldest son, was able to reclaim the Kilmarnock estate as he had fought with the Government forces during the troubles. He had also inherited his father’s debt and the ruined shell of Dean Castle. James sold off the Castle and estate soon after to a family friend, the Earl of Glencairn, and through his mother he succeeded to the title Earl of Errol and took her family name ‘Hay’. The title of Lord Kilmarnock is still retained within that family, but it spelled the end for the Boyds of Kilmarnock.
