"Jennie of Monreith" was the second daughter of Sir William  Maxwell, of Monreith in Wigtonshire. With her two equally beautiful sisters she was painted by Romney; but Jane, also known as "The Flower of Galloway", was the greatest beauty of the three. Yet it was not only by her beauty that she overshadowed her sisters, she was also much more animated and vivacious. However, it was her fearlessness that drew attention to her when, while she was still a child, she and her even younger sister, Eglantine, introduced pig-riding to Edinburgh. 
At seventeen she fell in love with a young army officer who was sent abroad and later reported dead. She was only eighteen when, on the 23rd of October 1767, she became the wife of Alexander Gordon, 4th Duke of Gordon, who at twenty-four was six years older. Shortly 
afterwards she received a letter from abroad in a well-known hand: the soldier was alive and well and anxious to marry her. 
The next twenty-two years passed uneventfully until, by 1790, her husband had established a strong relationship with Jean Christie and their union was always supremely happy. Also in 1790, her son raised a company of the Black Watch and dressed them, contrary to the law, in kilts, which had been outlawed since the battle of Culloden in 1745. 
His next step, when appearing at Court, was to wear a kilt in the Black Watch Tartan. To give her son support, she had a dress made with the same tartan and appeared at a Drawing Room function, creating a sensation. The Royal Family and the Whigs regarded the kilt as the sign of the Jacobites, while the better classes regarded it as the dress for savages. However, the king simply ignored her action and within a short period the tartan was the rage in London, to be followed by Paris. After the tartan she introduced reels and other Scottish dances into society. 
Her husband had raised three regiments and, in 1794, was ordered to raise yet another. This seemed almost impossible as most young men had already been enlisted; moreover, Culloden had not been forgotten. When only eleven young men had been found, the Duchess with her 
daughter Madeline volunteered as recruiting-sergeants. When their first attempts failed, mother and daughter placed a guinea between their lips, challenging the men to remove them with their own lips. Many then accepted the challenge and so the Gordon Highlanders came into being. 

At one stage she had negotiated to marry off one of her daughters to Eugene de Beauharnais; however, his step-father, Napoleon, prevented this marriage. On her return to England, the Countess of Erroll suggested that she should be sent to the Tower. When all her daughters were married, and her own marriage  a failure, she went to live in a small farmhouse in Kinrara. For her 
farm exploits she employed thirty labourers, but her own personal efforts were to care for the needy in the area. At the age of sixty-four she died during her stay at the Pulteney Hotel in 
Piccadilly. Her coffin was taken by a hearse drawn by six black Belgian horses to Kinrara where she was buried.
 

Source: Leo van de Pas