On 4 September 1785, at the age of 20, she married George Granville Leveson-Gower, Viscount Trentham, at St Marylebone Parish Church, London.

[3] Under the terms of the marriage contract, control but not ownership of the Sutherland estate passed from Elizabeth to her husband for life.

[10]: 36 In 1803, when George Leveson-Gower inherited the huge fortune of the Duke of Bridgewater, funds were available for the Sutherland estate to proceed with a programme of improvement.

Despite the conventions of the day and the provisions of the entailment, Leveson-Gower delegated overall control of the estate to Lady Sutherland; she took an active interest in its management.

The degree of severity of famine is a matter of debate among historians now and also within the Sutherland estate management in their near-contemporaneous analysis of the clearances in 1845.

[e][10]: 52-70 Young had a proven track record of agricultural improvement in Moray and Sellar was a lawyer educated at Edinburgh University; both were fully versed in the modern ideas of Adam Smith.

However, in 1813, planned clearances in the Strath of Kildonan were accompanied by riots; an angry mob drove prospective sheep farmers out of the valley when they came to view the land, and a situation of confrontation existed for more than six weeks, Sellar failing to successfully negotiate with the protesters.

The whole process was a severe shock to Lady Sutherland and her advisers, who were, in the words of historian Eric Richards, "genuinely astonished at this response to plans which they regarded as wise and benevolent".

[7]: 180 ) Sellar had also made an enemy of the local law officer, Robert Mackid, by catching him poaching on the Sutherlands' land.

[7]: 181 As was normal practice, the roof timbers of cleared houses were destroyed to prevent re-occupation after the eviction party had left.

[10]: 195  Robert Mackid became a ruined man and had to leave the county, providing Sellar with a grovelling letter of apology and confession.

James Loch, the Stafford estate commissioner was now taking a greater interest in the Northern part of his employer's holdings; he thought Young's financial management was incompetent, and Sellar's actions among the people deeply concerning.

[10]: 215-217 [7]: 189 Lady Sutherland's displeasure with events was increased by critical reports in a minor London newspaper, the Military Register, from April 1815.

Alexander, after serving as a captain in the army, had been thwarted in his hopes of taking up leases on the Sutherland estate and now worked as a journalist in London.

[8]: 183-187,203 The (effective) dismissal of Sellar placed him in the role of scapegoat, thereby preventing a proper critical analysis of the estate's policies.

He categorically challenged the basic premise of the clearance: that the people from an inland region could make a living on their new coastal crofts.

Some tenants were considering moving off the estate, either to Caithness or emigrating to America or the Cape of Good Hope, which Suther encouraged by writing off their rent arrears.

Loch was anxious to move quickly, whilst cattle prices were high and there was a good demand for leases of sheep farms.

The public relations disaster that Loch had wished to avoid now followed, with The Observer newspaper running the headline: "the Devastation of Sutherland".

Suther defended his actions by explaining how cleared tenants in Kildonan had rebuilt their houses as soon as the eviction parties had left.

The Transatlantic Emigration Society provided a focus for resistance to the clearances planned in 1820, holding large meetings and conducting extensive correspondence with newspapers about the situation of Sutherland tenants.

Lady Sutherland felt that her family was being particularly targeted by critics of the clearances, so she asked Loch to find out what neighbouring estates had done.

Loch worried that this would spread to the Sutherland tenants, but no violent physical resistance occurred, with those cleared demonstrating (in the words of Eric Richards) "sullen acquiescence".

The much smaller clearance in the spring of 1821 at Achness and Ascoilmore met with obstruction and the military had to be called in to carry out evictions by force.

Some small-scale clearance activity continued for the next 20 years or so, but this was not part of the overall plan to resettle the population in coastal settlements and engage them in alternative industries.

[7]: 224 Lady Sutherland twice raised a volunteer regiment, the "Sutherlandshire Fencibles", in 1779 and 1793, which was later deployed in suppressing the Irish rebellion of 1798.

[3] Lady Sutherland and her husband had difficulty obtaining permission to leave Paris and did not finally travel to London until 1792.

She and her husband became close friends with George Canning who considered her beautiful, intelligent, and charming - a view not shared by members of her own class and sex, who thought her overbearing.

She placed a special emphasis on maximising the wealth of her sons and (as was common at the time) obtaining the best possible marriages for her daughters.