The story of the countess who was a driving force in the Clearances

But all important decisions about the course of her life had to be made by the lawyer guardians appointed under her father’s will. This was necessary because he had been William, Earl of Sutherland, who died a young man, aged 31, 1764. He owned one of the biggest landed estates in Scotland, covering the greater part of the county of Sutherland.

For the first time in five-and-a-half centuries, there was now no direct male heir to this patrimony. Elizabeth’s interests as an orphan were left in the care of tutors who gave their orders to a general commissioner of the Sutherland estates.

The succession to the title was disputed by several claimants but her tutors successfully defended her case in the House of Lords in 1771, tracing her descent from William, Earl of Sutherland, in 1275.

While the child Elizabeth was educated in London, she otherwise stayed mainly in Edinburgh. In 1785 she married George Leveson-Gower, known as Earl Gower from 1786.

In 1803, he succeeded his father as 2nd Marquess of Stafford. This family’s estates covered a large part of the English coalfields.

Their ownership was still expanding, now in both kingdoms. In Scotland they continued to make large acquisitions which, by the political conventions of the time, justified husband George in taking the title of Duke of Sutherland in 1833, shortly before his death. The huge Highland estate had been heavily tied up in mortgages. From the time she came of age, the Countess of Sutherland steadily eased out the people who held them so that she could make way for a more modern management regime.

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This new view of the political history of Sutherland emerged from the researches of the late Eric Richards, professor of history in Scotland and Australia, whose fundamental work, The Leviathan Of Wealth, transformed our understanding of the ducal couple and their activities.

The title of the book might seem to imply that George the husband was the driving force in the marriage and the business, yet Richards showed that the relationship with Elizabeth was the opposite. She was the one who introduced and enforced a philosophy of modernisation and improvement (as she thought of it).

In fact, her interest had awakened even before her marriage, as she contemplated what a rustic revolution she might do once she had a husband with enough wealth to provide the means.

This would be the climax of the public career she probably had in mind from the start. Like many noble women of the period, her looks were good, her mind was sharp and her interests were broad.

Her passport for Paris described her as “five feet in height, hair and eyebrows light chestnut, eyes dark chestnut, nose well-formed, mouth small, chin round, forehead low, face somewhat long”. She accompanied her husband in 1790 on his appointment as British ambassador to France, at the height of the Revolution. During two years there, Elizabeth wrote vivid descriptions of the political turbulence. She sent clothing to the imprisoned Marie Antoinette, an act which was reputed to be the last gesture of kindness anybody had shown to the doomed queen.

The Sutherlands had problems leaving France, finally departing in 1792, not long before war with Britain broke out. On their estate they raised a regiment, the Sutherland Fencibles.

Back in London, Elizabeth and her husband were closely connected with George Canning, a rising politician destined one day to be prime minister. He was one of her many male admirers, who regarded her as beautiful, intelligent, and charming.

Other women regarded her as rather overbearing. She became a leading hostess in London, where she gave sumptuous dinners attended by royalty, aristocrats and statesmen from Britain and abroad.

Privately, Elizabeth spent her time raising four children, sketching landscapes of the Sutherland coast and of Dunrobin Castle, corresponding with Sir Walter Scott and consuming snuff.

George Leveson-Gower

She dominated her family. One of her main aims was to maximise the personal fortunes of both her sons, George who became 2nd Duke of Sutherland, and Francis, created Earl of Ellesmere. Equally, she sought to make the best marriages for her daughters, Charlotte, who became Duchess of Norfolk, and Elizabeth, who became Marchioness of Westminster.

Through Elizabeth’s life, her Scottish estates were administered separately from the land belonging to her husband. But it was she who led the radical agrarian transformation which drew heavily on George’s great wealth. Ambitious building and industrial projects grew as small tenants were removed from the interior of the county to settlements along the coast.

The family employed professional managers, such as James Loch, a leading political economist, to undertake and shape the necessary massive changes (and to bear the brunt of the loud criticisms of the policy). The countess visited the county regularly and was fully apprised of the nature and consequences of the changes.

She was the target of great hatred all over the northern Highlands.

But the policy of clearance also had its supporters, who considered the changes necessary, inevitable and benevolent. She tried to counteract the adverse publicity surrounding the Clearances but with little success, in her own time or in ours.

Today, the clearest mark of modernity lies in the road network. Most travellers made their way north by rough road and bridge till the duke and duchess supplied a chain of ferries that made the passage to their seat at Dunrobin relatively comfortable.

With little sacrifice of comfort, the chain was extended on dry land northwards till it reached the smaller fishing harbours that stretched up to the River Helmsdale. The road finally reached Wick and Thurso, so allowing for an extension to run east and west as well as north and south – all now becoming a global tourist attraction.

The latest embellishment supplies a road running up and down the western coast, with resorts of a higher standard. It eventually joins a road connecting to Ullapool and Inverness so that the circuit itself becomes a tourist attraction. No doubt the Countess of Sutherland would have approved.

Despite strenuous political efforts, it has never proved possible to raise the population of Sutherland much above the relative levels reached in the days of the duke and duchess. The people live better with the aid of modern technology, but income per head is still below the figures in the rest of Scotland.

Brilliant ideas for the economy of the far north are still common enough. Matching success on the ground and public acclaim for the achievement remain much harder to find.