Nobody pursued the clearance policy with more vigour and cruel

thoroughness than Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, and her

name is still reviled in many homes with Highland connections

across the world to this day.

Her husband was George Levenson-Gower, Marquis of Stafford

who was made 1st Duke of Sutherland in 1832. Both usually lived

 in London, rarely visited the Sutherland estate and neither of them spoke Gaelic.

The income from their Stafford estates alone brought in the huge

 sum of 300,000 pounds annually but despite this enormous

wealth, which is equivalent to several million pounds at today's

 values, they rushed through an ‘Improvement’ program for their

remote Sutherland estate.

They employed a lawyer called Patrick Sellar and a factor called

James Lock to carry out the actual ‘Improvements’ or, as the tenants would have it, ‘clear them’.

Both of these men hated the Gaels and they are still remembered

in the Highlands to this day due to their cruelty and barbarity.

towards the tenant farmers

The estate records show that evictions at the rate of 2,000 families in one day were not uncommon.

With no shelter remaining for the cleared families many starved and froze to death where their homes had once been.