While his own private life was blameless, Sunderland in the winter of 1697–98 became involved in scandal when his daughter Elizabeth's husband, Lord Clancarty, a leading Jacobite, escaped from the Tower of London. The marriage had been arranged between Sunderland and Clancarty's uncle Justin McCarthy, Viscount Mountcashel, when the young bride was but thirteen and her husband only three years older; it had proved a disaster which greatly damaged Sunderland's reputation. Clancarty escaped and found Elizabeth, whom he had not seen since 1684, persuading her to consummate the marriage at long last. Unfortunately, the servants alerted her brother Charles, who had Clancarty arrested. The resulting furore gravely embarrassed Sunderland, but seems to have merely amused the King, who dryly remarked that no-one wanted to speak to him of anything but "that little spark Clancarty". He gave the couple permission to move to Germany, where they settled in Altona, Hamburg, and there they lived out their lives. Elizabeth never saw her parents or her brother again.