Clan Boyd
also Clan Boyd
Lord Boyd of Kilmarnock — Ayrshire's regents and rebels.
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Clan Boyd
Seat vacantChief
No chief yet. The seat awaits its first claimant — be the first to stake your name to Clan Boyd.
Current mission
No mission proclaimed. The chief, once seated, sets the clan’s public focus — a campaign, a contest, a piece of restoration, a year of remembrance.
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Stake your name →Motto
Confido
— I trust
What does the Boyd name mean?
From the Gaelic buidhe — yellow, fair-haired — and probably from a fair-haired ancestor, traditionally identified with Robert, a follower of King David I of Scotland in the 12th century. The Boyds were lords of Kilmarnock from the early 13th century; the chiefly seat at Dean Castle on the edge of modern Kilmarnock remains intact. Through the medieval period the Boyds were a senior Ayrshire family, briefly the most powerful family in Scotland after the regency of Robert, 1st Lord Boyd (c.1410–1465), during the minority of James III.
The history of Clan Boyd
Sir Robert Boyd (d. 1316) fought beside Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn and was rewarded with the lands of Kilmarnock and Bondington. Sir Thomas Boyd, 1st Lord Boyd, and his brother Alexander Boyd seized the person of the boy-king James III in 1466 and ran the kingdom for three years — a regency that ended in their judicial execution for treason when James reached his majority in 1469. The Boyds rebuilt their position over the next century and were created Earls of Kilmarnock in 1661, but William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock, was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1746 for his role in the Jacobite rising — the Earldom forfeited and the chiefly title not restored until the 20th century.
William 'Hopalong Cassidy' Boyd (1895–1972), the Ohio-born actor, made 66 Hopalong Cassidy films between 1935 and 1948 and effectively invented the early-television cowboy with the Hopalong TV series of 1949 — the first Western show on American television. William Boyd (b. 1952), the Accra-born novelist of A Good Man in Africa, Brazzaville Beach and Any Human Heart, is a contemporary literary Boyd of Scottish descent. Stephen Boyd (Belfast-born William Millar, 1931–1977), the actor of Ben-Hur and Fantastic Voyage, took the Boyd name on his arrival in Hollywood.
Notable bearers of the Boyd name
- William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock (1705–1746) — Jacobite commander, executed for the '45
- William 'Hopalong Cassidy' Boyd (1895–1972) — pioneering television cowboy
- William Boyd (b. 1952) — novelist (A Good Man in Africa, Any Human Heart)