Talk:Alexander Boyd, 3rd Lord Boyd

3rd Lord Boyd
There is some disagreement in the sources over who was the 3rd Lord Boyd. The article "Lord Robert Boyd Boyd" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition states it was a Robert Boyd. As does the Dictionary of National Biography Boyd, Robert (d.1590) (and a search of Google Books returns several others for a Robert).

However a popular web site called peerage.com states on Page 3062 that the third Lord was "Alexander Boyd, 3rd Lord Boyd"

This website notes
 * Alexander Boyd, 3rd Lord of Kilmarnock (a 06.1508)

Alexander is referred to by TSP as being the 3rd Lord but was apparently not recognised as such in his lifetime. On the basis that he was later accepted as 'de jure' Lord, we follow TSP but note that, as BE1883 does not, the numbering of the Lords is not hereafter agreed by the main source

Another website explains it the same way: Alexander Boyd, 3rd Lord of Kilmarnock; Alexander is referred to by TSP as being the 3rd Lord but was apparently not recognised as such in his lifetime. On the basis that he was later accepted as 'de jure' Lord, we follow TSP but note that, as BE1883 does not, the numbering of the Lords is not hereafter agreed by the main sources.)

However As both Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911 and the Dictionary of National Biography do agree on the numbering we (Wikipedia) should follow their lead as they reliable sources. If any other more modern authoritative sources contradict these two sources then the naming can be looked at again. -- PBS (talk) 05:32, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The 3rd Lord Boyd is of minor importance but Robert Boyd, 4th Lord Boyd was a major Scottish statesman around the time of Mary Queen of Scots, so it is important that he is numbered as he appears in WP:reliable sources. -- PBS (talk) 05:42, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

-- PBS (talk) 08:47, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Edmund Lodge The genealogy of the existing British peerage: with sketches of the family, p. 186 "split puts Robert as three but puts his son at five instead of four.
 * Peter Beauclerk Dewar (2001), Burke's landed gentry of Great Britain: together with members of the titled ... p. 86 supports the peerage.com

Since I wrote that last March, I came across more recent sources and it is their numbering I have adopted and noted in the article:


 * Notes that Considerable confusion exists as to the numbering of the Lords Boyd. In the Complete Peerage Balfour's Robert, 5th Lord Boyd is considered the 3rd Lord, though in the Dictionary National Bibliography, as in Douglas, "he is, for some cause, called the fourth Lord, though, if the attainder is not reckoned (whereby three persons, viz. (1) the Earl of Arran (living 1472); (2) James Boyd (died 1484), son and heir of the Earl of Arran; and (3) Alexander Boyd (living 1505), uncle and heir of the said James, were excluded from the succession), he would apparently have been sixth Lord", (Douglas see p. 399, note 6). Balfour states that it now known that the Earl of Arran died v.p., and that James was restored as Lord Boyd in 1482, therefore this Robert was apparently de facto fourth Lord. As, however, there is some doubt on the point, the present writer has determined to reckon them as if each head of the family since the original creation of 1454 had actually succeeded to the Peerage, as indeed but for the attainder of 1469 they would have done. Cokayne writing a decade after agreed with Balfour's numbering , as does Hewitt the author of the 21st century article "Boyd, Robert, fifth Lord Boyd (c.1517–1590)" in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

-- PBS (talk) 19:21, 13 January 2011 (UTC)