née
Jean Maxwell of Monreith, daughter of Sir W. Maxwell, Bart., married in 1767 the Duke of Gordon. The most successful matchmaker of the age, she married three of her daughters to three dukes — Manchester, Richmond, and Bedford. A fourth daughter was Lady Mandalina Sinclair, afterwards, by a second marriage, Lady Mandalina Palmer. A fifth was married to Lord Cornwallis (see the extraordinary story told in the
Recollections of Samuel Rogers
, pp. 145-146). According to Wraxall (
Posthumous Memoirs
, vol. ii. p. 319), she schemed to secure Pitt for her daughter Lady Charlotte, and Eugène Beauharnais for Lady Georgiana, afterwards Duchess of Bedford. Cyrus Redding (
Memoirs of William Beckford
, vol. ii. pp. 337-339) describes her attack upon the owner of Fonthill, where she stayed upwards of a week, magnificently entertained, without once seeing the wary master of the house.
She was also the social leader of the Tories, and her house in Pall Mall, rented from the Duke of Buckingham, was the meeting-place of the party. Malcontents accused her of using her power tyrannically:—
"Not Gordon's broad and brawny Grace,
The last new Woman in the Place
With more contempt could blast."
Pandolfo Attonito.