As Michael Lynch has pointed out, Home was a younger son of an established gentry family, like Sir John Maitland of Thirlestane, whose own tenure as Scottish chancellor and secretary of state had ushered in a new
lairdly ascendancy that threatened the established Scottish nobility.(76) As the Earl of Dunbar, his territorial acquisitiveness caused anxiety for both Scottish and English statesmen, despite the royal assurance that the earl merely required lands as bases from which to conduct the king's affairs.
The
lairdly class prophesied a reincarnation of Red Clydeside, the traditional hotbed of Glasgow radicalism, and the resulting desecration of their rich country estates; Tories hyperventilated about the barbaric breakup of their ancient kingdom.