Earl of Arran (Scotland)

As part of Princess Mary's dowry, Thomas Boyd was given the Isle of Arran and its earldom, Baronies of Stewarton and Kilmarnock, and extensive lands in Ayrshire, Carrick, the Great Cumbrae, Roxburgh, Forfar, and Perthshire.

They fled to Denmark but Princess Mary, though reportedly very attached to her husband, returned to Scotland, where she presumably sought a pardon from her brother.

The baronage earldom of Arran supposedly originated during feudal times, with its caput at Lochranza Castle, which dates to the 13th century.

[9] In 1994, Lady Jean Fforde (granddaughter of the 12th Duke of Hamilton), who was the 20th Countess of Arran, disponed the feudal earldom together with the ruins of Lochranza Castle in order to pay for central heating for her island cottage.

She had been forced to surrender the family seat, Brodick Castle, to the National Trust of Scotland in lieu of death duties in 1960.

[10][11] In December 1994, the title and land were auctioned through the Manorial Society of Great Britain for a reputed £410,000 to millionaire businessman John de Bruyne.

[13] In 1995, when Swiss businessman Willi Ernst Sturzenegger purchased Lochranza Castle, acquiring the associated feudal lands that had been sold outside the Hamilton family, this transfer of property also included disposition of the baronage earldom.

Sturzenegger based his petition on his assertion that he owned "the Lands and Earldom of Arran in the County of Bute including inter alia the Castle of Lochranza the caput thereof".

[8] In 2015, the new Lord Lyon Joseph Morrow reversed the decision in a similar petition concerning the feudal lordship of Garioch, writing, "in Scotland anyone is at liberty to call themselves what they wish subject to it not being the intention to deceive another person.