George Leveson-Gower, 1st Duke of Sutherland

George Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Duke of Sutherland

Sutherland sat as Member of Parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme from 1779 to 1784 and for Staffordshire from 1787 to 1799. The latter year he was summoned to the House of Lords through a writ of acceleration in his father's junior title of Baron Gower.

Ambassador during French Revolution

Between 1790 and 1792 he was

After his return to Britain he declined the posts of

The Leveson-Gower family owned extensive lands in Staffordshire, Shropshire and Yorkshire. In 1803 Sutherland also succeeded to the vast estates of his maternal uncle Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, which included the Bridgewater Canal and a major art collection including much of the Orleans Collection; both Gower and his uncle had been members of the consortium which brought it to London for dispersal. According to the will of the Duke of Bridgewater, these passed on the death of the first Duke of Sutherland to his third son Lord Francis Leveson-Gower (see below). This inheritance brought him great wealth. Sutherland is estimated to have been the wealthiest man of the 19th-century, surpassing even Nathan Rothschild. The precise value of his estate at death is unknown, as it was simply classed as 'upper value'. He was described by Charles Greville as a "leviathan of wealth" and "...the richest individual who ever died". Following the death of the Duke of York in 1827 he purchased the leasehold of Stafford House (now Lancaster House), which became the London residence of the dukes of Sutherland until 1912.

Development of Sutherland and Highland clearances

Sutherland and his wife remain controversial figures for their role in carrying out the Highland Clearances, where thousands of tenants were evicted and rehoused in coastal crofts as part of a program of improvement.^[7] The larger clearances in Sutherland were undertaken between 1811 and 1820. In 1811 Parliament passed an Act granting half the expenses of building roads in northern Scotland, on the provision that landowners paid for the other half. The following year Sutherland commenced building roads and bridges in the county, which up to that point had been virtually non-existent. Appalled by the poor living conditions of his tenants and influenced by social and economic theories of the day as well as consulting widely on the subject, he and his wife (to whom much of the proprietorial oversight of the estate had been delegated) became convinced that subsistence farming in the interior of Sutherland could not be sustained in the long-term. Much higher rents could be obtained from letting land for extensive sheep farms – so providing a much better income from the estate.^[8]

The Sutherland estate management had had plans for clearance for some years, with some clearance activity in 1772 when Lady Sutherland was still a child. However, a shortage of money stopped these plans from progressing to any greater degree – a situation that continued after her marriage to Leveson-Gower. However, when he inherited the vast wealth of the Duke of Bridgewater, plans could proceed – and Leveson-Gower was happy for large amounts of his wealth to be spent on the changes to the Sutherland estate.^{[1]: 38–39} Though unusual for the time, much of the oversight of the estate management was delegated to Lady Sutherland, who took a keen interest in the estate, travelling to Dunrobin Castle most summers and engaging in a continuous exchange of correspondence with the factor and James Loch, the Stafford estate commissioner.

The first of the new wave of clearances involved relocations from Assynt to coastal villages with the plan that farmers could take up fishing. The next eviction, in the Strath of Kildonan in 1813, was met with opposition and a six week long confrontation that was resolved by calling out the army and the estate making some concessions to those who were evicted.^{[9]: 168–172} In 1814, one of the estate's factors, Patrick Sellar, was supervising clearances in Strathnaver when the roof timbers of a house were set on fire (to prevent the house being reoccupied after the eviction) with, allegedly, an elderly and bedridden woman still inside. The woman was rescued, but died six days later.^{[10]: 197 [9]: 183} The local law officer, Robert Mackid, was an enemy of Sellar and started taking witness statements so that Sellar could be prosecuted. The case went to trial in 1816 and Sellar was acquitted.^{[10]: 181-182 [1]: 195} The publicity arising from the trial was not welcome to the Sutherlands.^{[10]: 183-187,203} Sellar was replaced as factor and further, larger clearances continued in 1818 to 1820. Despite efforts to avoid press comment, in 1819 The Observer newspaper ran the headline: "the Devastation of Sutherland", reporting the burning of roof timbers of large numbers of houses cleared at the same time.^{[10]: 200–280}

Monuments

There is a monument to Leveson-Gower in Shropshire. The Lilleshall Monument, built in 1833, is a 70-foot (21 m) high obelisk, a local landmark visible for some distance around which stands on top of Lilleshall Hill,^[11] within the original estates of the Leveson family acquired on the dissolution of Lilleshall Abbey. The tablet on the north face of the monument reads "To the memory of George Granville Leveson Gower, K.G. 1st Duke of Sutherland. The most just and generous of landlords. This monument is erected by the occupiers of his Grace's Shropshire farms as a public testimony that he went down to his grave with the blessings of his tenants on his head and left behind him upon his estates the best inheritance which a gentleman of England can bequeath to his son; men ready to stand by his house, heart and hand."^[12]

There is also a monument erected in the Trentham Gardens Estate, Trentham, Staffordshire.^[13] This colossal statue, designed by Winks and sculptured by Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey, surmounts a plain column of stone on a tiered pedestal. The monument was raised in 1834 at the instigation of the second Duke, a year after the first Duke's death.

In 1837

Sutherland married Elizabeth Sutherland, 19th Countess of Sutherland, daughter of William Sutherland, 18th Earl of Sutherland and the former Mary Maxwell, on 4 September 1785. They had four surviving children:

• George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 2nd Duke of Sutherland,(11 Aug 1786–1861)
• Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 13th Duke of Norfolk
  and had issue.
• Lady Elizabeth Mary Leveson-Gower (1797–1891), married Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Marquess of Westminster
  and had issue.
• Francis Leveson-Gower (later Egerton) 1st Earl of Ellesmere, (1800–1857)

Eleven years after becoming enfeebled by a paralytic stroke,^[3] Sutherland died at Dunrobin Castle in July 1833, aged 75, and was buried at Dornoch Cathedral.^[3] He was succeeded by his eldest son, George. The Duchess of Sutherland died in January 1839, aged 73, and was also succeeded by her eldest son, George.

The Bridgewater Estate was passed in trust in accordance with the Duke of Bridgewater's will, to the Duke's third son Francis.

Ancestry

Legacy

Due to his controversial role in the

There are several well-known Gaelic songs mocking the duke personally. Perhaps the most famous of these is Dùthaich Mhic Aoidh (Mackay Country or Northern Sutherland, a region hit hard by the Clearances), written by Ewen Robertson, who became known as the "Bard of the Clearances."[18]

References