Robert Boyd is depicted in the painting by Antonio Gisbert entitled Execution of Torrijos and his Companions on the Beach at Málaga.

In 1826 he rose to the rank of lieutenant and was posted as a volunteer to the 65th Native Infantry Regiment in the city of Mutra, India, later moving to Agra.

His cousin John Sterling, son of the influential editor of The Times, had organised a group of young intellectuals called "The Cambridge Apostles" who were engaged in collaborating with the Spanish general José María de Torrijos, exiled in London, in his conspiracy to overthrow the absolutist regime of the monarch Ferdinand VII.

Boyd decided to join the plans of the Spanish liberals and to earmark the inheritance for their cause, in addition to his own participation in the enterprise, letting Torrijos know "that his existence and his assets were the patrimony of liberty, which he did not consider the prerogative of certain peoples, but the beneficent goddess that should reign over all the earth".

[2] After the failure of the conspiracy and Torrijos's pronunciamiento, Boyd was eventually shot with the rest of his comrades on the beach of San Andrés on 11 December 1831.