In 1762, King George iii of England (1738–1820) appointed the conservative John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (1713–1792), as his prime minister. His inclina- tions were pacific and conciliatory. Bute retained most of the ministers from the government of his predecessor and political rival, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1693–1768), and nominated only three new ministers. As his Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Minister of Finances of His Majesty, Bute selected Sir Francis Dashwood (1708–1781).1 He was the son of a businessman who had been made a baronet by Queen Anne (1665–1714) in 1707, and had married the daughter of Thomas Fane, 6th Earl of Westmor- land (1681–1736). Thanks to this wedding, Sir Francis – the Chancellor of the Exchequer – became in due course the 111th Baron le Despencer. Among the opponents of the new government, the most aggressive was John Wilkes (1725– 1797), a journalist and Member of Parliament. When Dashwood was nominat- ed as a minister, Wilkes was both offended and happy. Offended, because he believed he would have been better qualified for the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Happy, because he knew some details of the life of Dashwood that were little known. He thought that, in due course, he would be able to use them against the government.
Wilkes was an agitator who, for his offenses to the King and the govern- ment, went into exile and to prison, which made him popular in certain circles. He was not alien to selling his poisoned pen as a popular journalist for an ap- pointment, or just for a good sum of money. He was among Dashwood’s best friends for years, and participated in many of his activities. They included a literary club, which still exists today, the Society of Dilettanti, created by those who had taken at least one trip to Italy. Even more exclusive was the Divan Club, reserved for those, like Dashwood, who had also been to Turkey or had
1 For the biography of Dashwood see Betty Kemp [1916–2007], Sir Francis Dashwood: An
Eighteenth Century Independent, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967; Eric Towers, Dashwood: The Man and the Myth, Wellingborough (Northamptonshire): Crucible, 1986; Daniel Willens,
“The Hell-Fire Club: Sex, Politics and Religion in Eighteenth-Century England”, Gnosis:
A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions, no. 24, Summer 1992, pp. 16–22; Geoffrey Ashe, The Hell-Fire Clubs: A History of Anti-Morality, Stroud: Sutton, 2000; Evelyn Lord, The Hell-Fire Clubs: Sex, Satanism, and Secret Societies, New Haven (Connecticut), London: Yale University
at least something to do with that country. Finally, there was an institution of more dubious fame, although the first two had something to do with wine and women of ill reputation as well: the “abbey” of Medmenham. Wilkes began hinting that Medmenham was the gathering place of a group of Satanists. He dosed the revelations as an able journalist, while also offering his silence to the government in return for a prestigious position as Governor of Canada or ambassador in Constantinople.
In 1763, the moderate and peaceful Bute, who perhaps had also frequented Medmenham, was so disturbed by the polemics and insults of Wilkes that he resigned, on the pretext that the excessive pressures of his job were mak- ing him ill. The King appointed as his successor George Grenville (1712–1770), who personally took on the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. This was customary for Prime Ministers who, as opposed to Bute, were members of the House of Commons and not of that of Lords.
Dashwood received the royal appointment, prestigious but merely honor- ary, of Keeper of the Great Wardrobe. The role required, as its sole responsibil- ity, the disposition of clothing for the members of the royal family for corona- tions, wedding, funerals, and other ceremonies. Grenville also gave Dashwood a more delicate political appointment: to negotiate with the corruptible Wilkes and convince him to end his press campaign. Wilkes, however, refused the position that the new government, through Dashwood, offered him, prob- ably a diplomatic role in India, considering it not at the level of the great image he had of himself.
The government then decided to use harsher measures and discredit Wilkes, ending, although only temporarily, his political career in England, by reading to a scandalized Parliament some of the compositions of openly por- nographic nature found by Grenville’s agents in the house of the journalist. Wilkes, however, did not stop telling in public and private what he knew about Medmenham. Wilkes’ magazines included The North Briton, whose title was an allusion to the main object of his abuses, Bute, who was a “northern Briton”, a Scotsman. The magazine began to make references, although initially veiled, to the extraordinary story of the “friars” of Medmenham.
The abbey of Medmenham had been founded by the Cistercians and was transformed into a private house during the reign of Henry viii (1491–1547). The former abbey was located in Buckinghamshire, seven miles from West Wy- combe, where Dashwood had his country house. Dashwood had already been noticed in the village for his unorthodox religious ideas. He decorated the local Anglican church with pagan symbols and built in his residence a temple to Bacchus and one to Apollo. He also readapted his garden in a bizarre shape, which seemed to represent a female body.
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The owners of Medmenham at that time, the Duffield family, rented the abbey to Dashwood as a location “for a club”. The contract for the rent was concluded in 1751, and Dashwood began working on transforming what had become a house back into an abbey, in gothic style. He included artificial ruins in accordance with the taste of the era. The garden was decorated with statues of Venus and Priapus. The statue of the latter god, traditionally linked to male genitals, also exhibited, according to Wilkes, the motto Peni tento, non penitenti (“with a tense penis, not as a penitent”). On the entrance of the abbey there were, in the French of François Rabelais (1494–1553), the words “Fay ce que vouldras” (“do what thou wilt”).
According to reports that derived more or less directly from Wilkes, and almost certainly contained exaggerations and imprecisions, the members of the exclusive club that met in Medmenham called themselves “friars” or even “Franciscans”. Reportedly, they adopted the name of the Society of Saint Francis, with reference both to the Christian name of Francis Dashwood and to a parody of Franciscan friars, whom the members of the Society had met during their favorite journeys to Italy. The abbey included a great dining room, a library, a lounge and a mysterious “chapter house”, in addition to a good num- ber of bedrooms. The dining room was decorated with a statue of Harpocrates, the Egyptian god of silence, a reference to the secrecy of the Society. Refer- ences to both Harpocrates and the motto “do what thou wilt” would be found in Aleister Crowley’s writings, although there is no evidence that Crowley was particularly interested in Dashwood.
Wilkes had been a member of the group of “friars” of Medmenham, together with Charles Churchill (1731–1764), a minister of the Church of England and a collaborator of Wilkes in his anti-governmental journalistic campaigns. In 1764, Churchill launched a furious attack against John Montague, fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718–1792), a political ally of Dashwood and Grenville who had read to the House of Commons the pornographic prose found in Wilkes’ house. Sandwich, to whom is attributed, although not unanimously, the invention of the homonymous filled bread, was enrolled among the “friars” by Dashwood on the same level as Wilkes and Churchill. The latter described him as par- ticularly active in the nocturnal hunts for the “nuns”, i.e. women dressed as such who accompanied the “friars” to Medmenham. Until now, we are in the atmosphere of a libertine club: and there were other similar institutions in the 18th century. Anticlericalism and the ridicule of Catholic religious orders were also quite common in that era.
There are interesting anecdotes about Dashwood’s youthful trips to Italy. One of the most famous episodes, referred, or perhaps invented, by novelist Horace Walpole (1717–1797), took place in Rome on a Good Friday. The Roman
Catholic penitents visited the Sistine Chapel, collecting at the entrance a small whip to symbolically whip themselves as a sign of penance. “Sir Francis Dashwood, thinking this mere stage effect, entered with others, dressed in a large watchman’s coat, demurely took his scourge from the priest and ad- vanced to the end of the chapel, where, on the darkness ensuing, he drew from beneath his coat an English horsewhip and flogged right and left quite down the chapel and made his escape, the congregation exclaiming ‘Il Diavolo! Il Diavolo!’ and thinking the evil one was upon them with a vengeance. The con- sequences of this frolic might have been serious to him, had he not immedi- ately left the Papal dominions”.2
Dashwood then proceeded to Assisi, where he also made heavy jokes about the “superstition” of the pilgrims. In 1742, a portrait for the Society of Dilet- tanti depicted him in a friar’s cloak while staring devoutly not at a cross, but at a naked statue of Venus. Neopaganism, deism, and atheism were quite com- mon among the Dilettanti and other figures of the enlightened and libertine world of 18th-century London, where in the same era an “Atheist Club” also existed. The government, and the Anglican Church, did not complain that much, especially when, as Dashwood did, the nobles took care of restoring the chapels in their gentrified lands and generously provided maintenance for the clergy. The fact that, during these restorations, pagan symbols were sometimes included, and that among the clergy there were atheists and libertines was often overlooked. Dashwood, besides, was sufficiently interested in the Church of England to devote his time in his old age, together with Benjamin Frank- lin (1706–1790), to a revision of the Book of Common Prayer, “an odd activity for a supposed Satanist”. But as it was observed, both Dashwood and Franklin were Freemasons and “were trying to bring the Anglican Church in line with Masonic Deism”.3
What was less common, even in the world of 18th-century libertines, was the mysterious chapter house in the abbey at Medmenham. Nothing is known for certain about it. In 1763, the curious Walpole bribed a cook to gain entrance to the abbey during the absence of the owner, but found the chapter house well locked. In 1766, the chapter house was “cleaned” and nothing remained, although meetings of the “friars” continued for another twelve years until 1778, three years before the death of Dashwood. The latter abandoned the parties in
2 Horace Walpole, Memoirs and Portraits, ed. by Matthew Hodgart, New York: Macmillan, 1963, p. 130.
3 D. Willens, “The Hell-Fire Club: Sex, Politics and Religion in Eighteenth-Century England”, cit., p. 21. It is not probable, an often repeated legend arguing the opposite notwithstanding, that Franklin was ever part of the “friars” of Medmenham.
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the abbey only when he had reached 70 years of age. Wilkes wrote in one of his newspapers that, although he had been a “friar” of Medmenham, he never became part of the internal circle that was permitted to enter the chapter house. Or perhaps he did, but he preferred to state that he had nothing to do with the dubious celebrations that were held there.
The fact that the chapter house was stripped of all its ornaments in 1766 can probably be connected to the further scandal caused by the publication, in 1765, of the third volume of the second edition, extended with revelations from Wilkes, of the novel by Charles Johnstone (1719–1800), Chrysal; Or, the Adventures of a Guinea. The writer adopted the method of having a coin tell the story of different owners whose hands it had passed through. Johnstone was a lawyer coming from a Scottish family, but he was born and educated in Ireland.
In Johnstone’s novel, where he certainly invented a lot, the voices on the celebration of satanic rituals in the abbey were exposed in detail. Chrysal tells a story of an initiation ceremony, which supposedly occurred in 1762, where two “friars” were elevated from the “low order” to the “high order” of Dashwood’s society. The two candidates recited an “inverted” Anglican credo, a sort of de- monic parody of the profession of faith of the Church of England. The superior of the abbey then invoked Satan. The latter inspired the “friars” to choose for initiation in the “high order” only one of the candidates, who was immediately unbaptized “in the name of the Devil” and “in a way that will not be appropri- ate to describe”. The ceremony ended with a banquet where blasphemy and libertinage summoned, according to Johnstone, “the damned themselves”.
The ritual also included an evocation of the Devil, which had, however, a farcical element. An invocation to Satan was recited. However, a skeptic had brought a baboon with him, “dressed in the fantastic garb in which childish imagination clothes devils”. When the Devil was evoked, he walked the baboon into the room, terrorizing the candidate who knelt and declared: “Spare me, gracious Devil, I am as yet but half a Sinner; I have never been as wicked as I intended!”. Johnstone named no names but from the descriptions the London readers could recognize Wilkes as the author of the prank and Lord Sandwich as the terrorized sinner.4 Perhaps the episode had been invented by John- stone, but was based on tales according to which there really was a baboon in Medmenham, and Dashwood regularly gave him communion, it is not clear whether with a Catholic consecrated host or not.5
4 Charles Johnstone, Chrysal; Or, the Adventures of a Guinea, 2nd ed., London: T. Becket, 1765 (reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1976), vol. iii, p. 165.
Johnstone was an outsider and was never one of the “friars”. In 1795, a poem was published, The Confessions of Sir Francis of Medmenham and the Lady Mary His Wife, a posthumous work by John Hall-Stevenson (1718–1785). Hall-Stevenson, a member of a club called The Demoniacks, was a rich ec- centric and a political ally of Wilkes. Probably, he was not a member of the “friars”, but he had occasionally visited them in Medmenham. In the poem, written in a coarse and excessive style, he confirmed the previous accusations, and added that Dashwood had sexual relations with his mother and three of his sisters, although one of them was also a lesbian. These authors were the sources of around twenty subsequent writings, which from the first decades of the 19th century until present times have narrated in satanic terms the story of the “ friars” of Medmenham.
In most of these writings, the society of Dashwood was also given the name of Hell-Fire or Hellfire Club. Wilkes and Churchill had already referred ironically to the activities of the “friars” with that name, but back then it was quite clear to what it was supposed to allude. A well-known young libertine and member of the House of Lords, Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton (1698–1731), had been accused of having founded a Hell-Fire Club in 1719. It met on Sundays, at the Greyhound Tavern near St. James’ Square in London. The club, closed by a royal edict in 1721, had created a significant scandal, but had never been accused of practicing satanic rituals. It was limited to mock- ing religion and morals, and conducting debates against the doctrine of the Trinity. If we believe the critics, some young women of dubious repute could be persuaded there to remove their clothes, with consequences that can easily be imagined.
The Duke of Wharton, who was a member of the Hell-Fire Club but probably had not founded it, had been stopped by the King from being further associated with the group. He had then unleashed his passion for secret societies, becom- ing between 1722 and 1723 the fifth Grand Master of the London Grand Lodge, founded in 1717 and at the origins of modern Freemasonry, before converting to Catholicism and dying as an exile in Spain. It is interesting to note how, in the following campaigns that would try to connect Freemasonry and Satan- ism, the anti-Masonic camp would completely miss the fact that a member of the infamous Hell-Fire Club was one of the first Grand Masters of the Grand Lodge of London. But in fact the Hell-Fire Club of the Duke of Wharton did not practice Satanism.
More or less in the same period, perhaps inspired by the London club, an artist, Peter Paul Lens (1682–1740), congregated a dozen friends in another club in Dublin, The Blasters, known both to Johnstone and to philosopher Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753), who denounced it violently as Satanist. It was
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connected to a Hell-Fire Club operating in Dublin.6 Both were mostly groups of revelers and religious dissidents. Among the various Hell-Fire Clubs, how- ever, the Irish ones were the most suspected of having conducted rituals in honor of the Devil or to have at least toasted to him.7
In fact, the Hell-Fire Clubs, with this or similar names, constituted a spe- cies inside a genus, which originated in the 17th century and developed in the 18th in England, Scotland, Ireland, and then in the American colonies. Young non-conformists assembled in clubs around three kinds of interests: anticleri- calism, sexual libertinage, and the desire to protest against the puritan spirit of the epoch through actions that were intended as provocations, such as beating randomly chosen people walking in the streets. In 1712, the beatings of passers-by by a group called the Mohocks, a corruption of the name of the Native American tribe Mohawk, intended as a symbol of free and wild behav- ior, triggered the repressive intervention of the London authorities.8 The most recent scholarly interpretations debunked the legends connecting these clubs to Satanism and saw in them a form of male bonding, where young bored rich people took on libertine and provocative behaviors inspired by Enlightenment radicalism. The name of the Devil was often willfully used, but no one believed he really existed.
Apart from adversaries, the name of Hell-Fire Club or Hellfire Club was never used for Medmenham. The subsequent literature became rather creative when it came to naming members. Besides Dashwood, Wilkes, Churchill, Sandwich, and perhaps Bute, other names mentioned as members were: the brother of the founder, John Dashwood-King (1716–1793); William Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Harrington (1702–1772); Thomas Potter (1718–1759), son of an Archbishop of Canterbury and member of the Parliament; the brothers Arthur (1727–1804, another member of the Parliament), Robert (1728–1789, a law professor in Ox- ford) and Henry Vansittart (1732–1770), the Governor of Bengal, from whom the infamous baboon was brought to Medmenham. Further names included