Series 4 > Papers on Sutherland Estate Management 1802-1816 > Volume 9

204 SUTHERLAND ESTATE MANAGEMENT: CORRESPONDENCE
a rigid adherance to the Engineer’s specifications and a complete re¬
liance on and deferance to his authority. I trust Your Lordship will
not think that I have gone too far in thus laying before you what has
occurred to me upon these points, but the Manner in which Your
Lordship has been pleased to honour me with from time to time asking
my opinion and Young having often discussed the Matteer with me,
induced me to state them for Your Lordships Consideration. It is a
work of vast extent and in all work’s connected with the Sea the least
mistake or deviation from a plan may produce the most serious
Consequences.
I must have done or your Lordship will think I have been bit by
Sellar and am possessed with the same love of penmanship.
Is it Your Lordships wish that I should audit his Accounts ? I could
do them now with much ease and he could forward them in the Mail
from Elgin. He proposed instead to come with them himself.
Will it be too much to ask Your Lordship to desire Young to send
me the heads for the Memorial for a Tide waiter at Brora and the
particulars of the price for raising the Coals at Brora and I will send
him speedy answers to both . . . [travel plans].
William Young to Marchioness of Stafford
Rhives, 19 December 1813
Refering to my letter of 16th I have since had the honor to receive
Your Ladyships of nth Instant. We were all peace and quiet at the
Set on Wednesday and the Strathnaver Men who were dispossessed
from the Lot which Mr Sellar gets seemed satisfied so far as I coud
discover, not only as he promised to accomodate a good many of
them for three years, but in the meantime as I mark offLotts for them
in the lower end of the Strath where certainly their Children if not
themselves will soon take to Fishing. I heard of an attempt in the even¬
ing to way lay a poor Northumberland Man John Cleugh who took
the Polly Lot but they did not fall in with him; the Association1 are
however to investigate the matter tomorrow with a view to check
1 For the Sutherland Association for the Protection of Property see James Loch, An
account of the improvements on the estates of the Marquis of Stafford (London, 1820),
Appendix m. Loch states that the Association was founded in 1815, but this appears
to be an error.