the errors of a young and popular man.

When only eleven years of age, Lord Kilmarnock, then Lord Boyd, had
appeared in arms for Government with his father; on which occasion he
conducted himself so gracefully as to attract the admiration of all
beholders.[319] His early prepossessions, granting that they may have
accorded with those of his father, were, however, soon dissipated when
he allied himself with a family who had been conspicuous in the Jacobite
cause. This was the house of Livingstone, Earl of Linlithgow and
Calendar; George, the fourth Earl, having, in 1715, been engaged in the
insurrection under Lord Mar, had been attainted, and his estate of one
thousand two hundred and ninety-six pounds yearly forfeited to the
Crown. Nor has this forfeiture ever been reversed; and the present
representative of the family, Sir Thomas Livingstone, of Westquarter and
Bedlormie, remains, notwithstanding an appeal in 1784 before Lord
Kenyon, then Attorney-General, a commoner.[320]

Lady Anne Livingstone, who was the object of the young Lord Kilmarnock's
choice, is reported to have been a woman of great beauty, and, from her
exertions in her husband's behalf, appears to have possessed a fine,
determined spirit. Although her father's title was not restored, she had
sufficient interest, in 1721, to obtain from the English Government a
lease of the forfeited estates for fifty-nine years, at the rent of
eight hundred and seventy-two pounds, twelve shillings per annum.[321]
This was, no doubt, a source of considerable pecuniary benefit to her,
and also of assistance, very greatly required by Lord Kilmarnock, who
was in impoverished circumstances. Honours, indeed, centered in him, but
were productive of no real benefit. By the grandmother of his wife, the
Lady Margaret Hay, sole surviving daughter of Charles the twelfth Earl
of Errol, he had a claim to that Earldom, which, coupling with its
dignity that of the hereditary High Constable of Scotland, descended in
the female line, and after the death of a brother in infancy,
constituted the Lady Anne Livingstone a Countess of Errol in her own
right. Thus, Lord Kilmarnock had, to borrow Horace Walpole's expression,
"four earldoms in him," Kilmarnock, Errol, Linlithgow, and Calendar; and
yet he is said to have been so poor, as "often to have wanted a dinner."
But to this mode of expression we must not entirely trust for accuracy.
With the inheritance of the Earldoms of Errol, and of Linli