Eglantine Wallace

Eglantine Wallace, Lady Wallace (née Maxwell; died 28 March 1803), was an 18th-century Scottish playwright and political commentator. She was the younger sister of society hostess Jane Gordon, Duchess of Gordon and a controversial figure in her own right. Biography Eglantine was the youngest daughter of Sir William Maxwell, 3rd Baronet, of Monreith, Wigtownshire. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, she was "[a] boisterous hoyden in her youth, and a woman of violent temper in her maturer years." She was married on 4 September 1770 to Thomas Dunlop, son of John Dunlop of Dunlop and Frances Anna Wallace, the daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Wallace (1702–1770) of Craigie, fifth and last baronet. On his grandfather's death in 1770, her husband inherited Craigie, took the surname Wallace, and assumed the style of a baronet; however, the property was deeply indebted, and in 1783 he was obliged to sell all that remained of Craigie. It would seem to have been shortly after this that Eglantine obtained a legal separation, on the ground, it is said, of her husband's cruelty. It is probable that the difficulties were due to pecuniary embarrassment.