[1] He had already been created a Baronet, of Menstrie, Clackmannanshire in the Baronetage of Nova Scotia on 12 July 1625, then Lord Alexander of Tullibody and Viscount of Stirling on 4 September 1630, then Earl of Dovan in 1639.

William Alexander, a military officer from New Jersey who was a major-general in the Continental Army during the American War of Independence, pursued a claim to succeed to the dormant earldom from 1756 to 1759.

The claim from senior male descent from the first Earl's grandfather was ultimately turned down by the House of Lords in 1762, although he was allowed to vote in the election of the Scottish representative peers.

Mary Hill, Marchioness of Downshire brought a petition before the House of Lords in 1832, claiming that she would be the rightful heir as the descendant of Judith Alexander, sister of Henry Fifth Earl of Stirling.

[5] The case and the associated forgery was one inspiration for the very popular three-volume novel Ten Thousand a-Year, by Samuel Warren (1807–1877).