Leveson-Gower, George

At the time he inherited the title of 2nd Marquess of Stafford he was probably the richest man in Britain and the lands his wife brought to him in Sutherland, added to his acreage in Stafford and Shropshire, certainly mde him the country's biggest landowner.

He brought William Young to Dunrobin as his first Commissioner at a time when he and the Duchess were, as she described it, 'seized with the rage of improvements' and so set the Clearances in train. There was no doubting his wife's ambitions for the estate. Perhaps his greatest ambition was to become a duke, something he achieved, if that is the word, only six months before his death, when William IV proposed a toast to the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland at a dinner party.

His grandson wrote of him, 'For that he was dull I think there can be little doubt .... Neither have I heard that he ever did anything or said anything that was worth remembering'. The former councillor Sandy Lindsay called him 'perhaps one of the most evil men there ever was. Like Stalin and Hitler, he destroyed people’s homes without cause'.

The statue to him atop Ben Bhraggie still generates much controversy.

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