[1] Boyd later studied at King's College School and at the Middle Temple, London, training as an English barrister.

Here he remained five years, maturing his pulpit style, and, writing under his initials of "A. K. H. B.," steadily gaining reputation in Fraser's Magazine with his Recreations of a Country Parson.

[citation needed] In April 1859, Boyd was appointed to the parish of St. Bernard's, in Stockbridge, Edinburgh, and found the presbytery exercised on the question of decorous church service, raised by the practice and advocacy of Robert Lee.

Boyd sympathised with the desire for a devout and graceful form of worship, and he was afterwards a member of the Churcli Service Society.

[citation needed] Boyd urged the question of an improved ritual in the services of the national church, and in 1866, on the initiative of his presbytery, a committee was appointed by the general assembly to prepare a collection of hymns.

[citation needed] Boyd married, in 1854, Margaret Buchanan, eldest daughter of Captain Kirk (71st regiment) of Carrickfergus in Ireland.