Boyd, Mark Alexander (1553–1601)

Scottish scholar. He is best known for his exquisite sonnet ‘Fra Bank to Bank’. His Epistolae Heroides et Hymni are to be found in Arthur Johnston's Deliciae Poetarum Scotorum (1637). Among his prose and verse manuscripts are In Institutiones Imperatoris Commenta and L'Estat du royaume d'Escosse à present.

After a wild and unruly youth, Boyd left Glasgow College for France in 1581 and studied law in Paris, Orléans, and Bourges. In 1587 he served with Catholics against the Huguenots in the religious war for Henry III, but resumed studying in Toulouse in 1588. In 1592 he published in Antwerp Latin poems dedicated to James VI, and in 1595 he returned to Scotland, acting for a time as travelling tutor to the earl of Cassilis.