Dance The Countess of Sutherland's Reel 1368

Sutherland is a county that lies in the far north of Scotland. The name means “southern land”, which is merely a matter of point of view, for to the Norse settlers of Orkney and the Shetlands it was, indeed, southern land.

Cutting a broad swath from northwest to southeast, Sutherland stretches from Cape Wrath, Britain’s bleak northernmost Atlantic headland, down across great mountains and desolate moorland to Dornoch Firth and the North Sea. Up to the northeast is Caithness and below on the southwest is Ross and Cromarty. For the most part this county was the heritable land of the Earls of Sutherland whose stronghold was ancient Dunrobin Castle at Golspie.

Originally of the Murray clan, the family used the name Sutherland until 1514 when an early Elizabeth succeeded her brother. As the countess was married to Adam Gordon of Aboyne, a brother of the Earl of Huntly, the family became known as Gordon, although they were styled Earls of Sutherland. it was John, 16th Earl, who reassumed the old name of Sutherland.

This dance, with its original music by Daniel Dow (1732–1783) honours Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland (1765–1839). The daughter of William, 18th Earl, who died in 1766, her title was not confirmed by the House of Lords until 1771 when the young countess was only six years old. Her claim was hotly contested by Sutherland of Forse and a Gordon claimant, but her successful case was defended by Sir David Dalrymple, later Lord Hailes, and when the results of the “Sutherland Case” were made known there was great jubilation in Sutherland and over five hundred of the tenants of Ban Mhorair Chataibh (The Great Lady of Sutherland) celebrated the event at Golspie.

The Sutherlands, at least from the time of the 16th Earl, were adherents of the government in London. John (1660–1733) was a commissioner for the Union of the Parliaments in 1707. He was Lord Lieutenant of the eight northern counties of Scotland and he took an active part in suppressing the Rising of 1715 when he raised the Sutherland men for King George I and garrisoned Inverness against the Jacobites.

Like his grandfather whom he succeeded, William, the 17th Earl (1708–1750), was a Scottish representative peer in Parliament and he stood firmly with the Hanoverians in the Rising of 1745. Dunrobin Castle itself was captured by the troops of Prince Charles Edward in 1746.

Thus, it is not to be unexpected that while the young countess was a native Highlander, her heart was English. It is paradoxical that though she expressed a certain contempt for the old Highland ways, she was also extremely sentimental about them as she showed in her many water colours. As a young woman her beauty was remarkable and an official document describes her at th age of twenty-seven as being “five feet high, hair and brows light chestnut, eyes chestnut brown, nose well made, mouth small, chin round, forehead low, face rather small”.

In 1785 the countess married George Granville Leveson-Gower, Earl Gower (1758–1833), an Englishman who became the 2nd Marquess of Stafford in 1803. Already a possessor of vast resources and one of the richest men in Britain, his wife’s properties earned him the unofficial title of “a leviathan of wealth”. In fact, the annual rent of fifteen thousand pounds paid to the countess by her Sutherland tenants was a mere pittance to Leveson-Gower and had a direct bearing upon his later activities.

From 1778 to 1784 and again from 1787 to 1798, Gower was a member of Parliament. From 1790 to 1792, he served as British ambassador to France. During this period the countess became a friend of Marie Antoinette and she took the risk of smuggling clothing to the French queen during the imprisonment of the Royal Family. In 1799 the earl became Postmaster-General and he remained in that post until 1810 when he turned his attention to his wife’s estates.

As an Englishman, the by-that-time Marquess of Stafford had no understanding or appreciation of the time-honoured clan system and its obligations, and through his actions the loyalty of the Sutherland men to the causes adopted by their earls was utterly betrayed. He was a zealous reformer intent upon doing what he deemed to be meet and right for the good of others, regardless of their own deisres. Though his motives may have been of the best in his eyes, the disgraceful Sutherland Clearances of 1810–1820, part of the general Highland Clearances that began in 1750 and lasted for a hundred years, brought indescribable misery and demoralisation down upon the people. To his mind the vast tracts of land, while dear to those who lived there no matter how meanly, were unproductive and as an “improver” he felt that it would be best for all concerned if the inhabitants of his wife’s lands were moved to the coast where he would finance industry for them. More productive sheep would take the place of unproductive people. The results of the uprootings were more inhuman than he could possibly imagine and he was subjected to bitter criticism which he was at pains to comprehend. He had built nearly five hundred miles of roads through the mountainous wilderness, bridges over rushing streams and chasms, and had instituted agricultural reform by doing away with the runrig system. He had only done what he thought was right which is the way of zealous improvers of the lives of other men.

It is, indeed, strange that the Marquess of Stafford was a liberal and it was for his support of the Reform Bill that he was created Duke of Sutherland in 1833. The countess was not at all pleased that the dukedom should be styled as Sutherland and from that day forward she demanded that she be called “Duchess-Countess”.

The picture of Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, may not always be a pleasing one, but she was a most remarkable woman. From her earliest childhood as the heiress to a contested title, through the stormy and often dangerous periods in her married life, to her fat and chronically ailing old age, she showed herself to be a woman of courage. Back in 1769 the second Sutherland Fencible Corps was raised and in her letter of approval the thirteen year old countess wrote: “I have no objection to raising a Sutherland Regiment; am only sorry that I cannot command it myself”.