After a lapse of more than twenty years a claimant for these honours appeared in the person of William Alexander; but his appeal to the House of Peers was rejected on the 10th of March 1762, and the Stirling Peerage was commonly supposed to have shared the common earthly fate, and to have died a natural death. But a new aspirant unexpectedly appeared. This gentleman, named Humphreys, laid claim not only to the earldom of Stirling, but also to the whole territory of Canada, in addition to the Scottish estates appertaining thereto; and, in order to substantiate his pretensions, put forward an assumed pedigree. In this document he declared himself to be the lineal descendant and nearest lawful heir of Sir William Alexander, who he said was his great-great-great-grandfather. From this remote fountain he pretended to have come, following the acknowledged stream until he reached Benjamin, the last heir-male of the body of the first earl, and, diverting the current to heirs-female in the person of Hannah, Earl William's youngest daughter, who was married at Birmingham, and whom he represented as his own ancestress. In 1824, having obtained formal license to assume the surname of Alexander, he procured himself to be served "lawful and nearest heir-male in general of the body of the said Hannah Alexander," before the bailies of Canongate, 1826. Then he assumed the title of Earl of Stirling and Dovan, and, in 1830, formally registered himself as "lawful and nearest heir in general to the deceased William, the first Earl of Stirling." According to the patent of 1633, which was confined to heirs-male, Humphreys had no claim either to the title or estates; but he based his pretensions upon a document which, he said, had been granted by Charles I., in 1639, to the Earl of Stirling, and which conferred upon him, without limitation as to issue, the whole estates in Scotland and America, as well as the honours conveyed by the original patent. This he attempted to prove in an action in the Court of Session, which was dismissed in 1830, as was also a similar action for a like purpose in 1833.