 George Bogle was the third son of a wealthy Glasgow merchant, George Bogle of Daldowie, one of the Tobacco Lords and Anne Sinclair, a gentlewoman directly descended from James I and James II of Scotland.His father had extensive connections in the Scottish landed, commercial, and governmental elite, as well as trading contacts across the British Empire.The Scots gentry to whom he belonged were in turn, in the 18th century, a key feature in the British state.