The Insulted People of Dornoch

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Date:1887

Description:This document illuminates two main points; firstly, that the ducal family of Sutherland regarded local political positions, both of MPs and political agents, as theirs to fill by right, according to their own, perhaps London-driven, priorities. Secondly, as this letter of protest shows, by 1887, this attitude was no longer feasible due to public opinion. The letter also refers to ‘the many promises made two years ago by his Lordship [Lord Stafford]’: this relates to the 1885 election campaign of by Lord Stafford, the sitting candidate for the Sutherland county seat, when for the first time in almost fifty years the seat was contested by a land reform candidate. In 1885, in an attempt to keep his seat, Lord Stafford reinvented himself as a political radical and made a number of promises to reform the Sutherland estate management – he kept his seat in 1885, but resigned it in 1886, so few of these promises were kept.

These pages have been researched and written by Dr. Annie Tindley, Lecturer in History at Glasgow Caledonian University.