William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock

Portrait of William Boyd, from The Newgate Calendar.

William Boyd (1704 – 18 August 1746), 4th Earl of Kilmarnock, was a Scottish nobleman.

William Boyd was educated at Glasgow. Like his father in the rebellion of 1715, William initially supported the Government side, but in the rebellion of 1745, owing either to a personal affront or to the influence of his wife or to his straitened circumstances he deserted George II and joined Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender.

Made a Privy Counsellor to Charles, he was appointed a colonel of guards and subsequently a general. He fought at Falkirk and Culloden, where he was taken prisoner, and was beheaded on Tower Hill on 18 August 1746.

Effigies of Earl of Kilmarnock Lord Balmerino with a scene of execution.

Before his execution, he wrote to a friend from prison about his indebtedness to the shoemakers of Elgin: "Beside my personal debts mentioned in general and particular in the State, there is one for which I am liable in justice, if it is not paid, owing to poor people who gave their work for it by my orders. It was at Elgin in Murray, the Regiment I commanded wanted shoes. I commissioned something about seventy pair of shoes and brogues, which might come to 3 shillngs or three shillings and sixpence each, one with the other. The magistrates divided them among the shoemakers of the town and country, and each shoemaker furnished his proportion. I drew on the town, for the price, out of the composition laid on them, but I was afterwards told at Inverness that, it was believed, the composition was otherwise applied, and the poor shoemakers not paid. As these poor people wrought by my orders, it will be a great ease to my heart to think they are not to lose by me, as too many have done in the course of that year, but had I lived I might have made some inquiry after: but now it is impossible, as their hardships in loss of horses and such things, which happeened through my soldiers, are so interwoven with what was done by other people, that it would be very hard, if not impossible, to separate them. If you'll write to Mr Innes of Dalkinty at Elgin (with whom I was quartered when I lay there), he will send you an account of the shoes, and if they were paid to the shoemakers or no; and if they are not, I beg you'll get my wife, or my successors to pay them when they can......"

On his coffin was a plate with the inscription,

Willielmus
Comes de Kilmarnock
Decollatus 18º die Augusti 1746.
Ætatis suæ 42º.

Execution of the Earl of Kilmarnock and Cromarty, and Lord Balmerino

Issues

• James Hay, 15th Earl of Erroll (1726–1778)

Ancestry

Family of William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock

16. James Boyd, 9th Lord Boyd 8. William Boyd, 1st Earl of Kilmarnock 17. Catherine Creyke 4. William Boyd, 2nd Earl of Kilmarnock 18. William Cunningham, 9th Earl of Glencairn 9. Lady Jean Cuninghame 19. Lady Anne Ogilvy 2. William Boyd, 3rd Earl of Kilmarnock 10. Thomas Boyd 5. Letitia Boyd 1. William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock 24. William Ross, 10th Lord Ross 12. George Ross, 11th Lord Ross 25. Margaret Forrester 6. William Ross, 12th Lord Ross 26. William Cochrane, 1st Earl of Dundonald 13. Lady Grizel Cochrane 27. Eupheme Scott 3. Lady Eupheme Ross 14. Sir John Wilkie 7. Agnes Wilkie

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)