On our City of London walks we thread our way through a warren on back alleyways that line Cornhill and stand before the George and Vulture, a lovely old Dining establishment where Sir Francis Dashwood founded his notoriously Nefarious Hell Fire Club.
It gives us the chance to tell a little of the story of this band of gentlemen on our Historical London walks. Although it was at the George and Vulture that they were founded it is with the village of West Wycombe that they are most associated.
West Wycombe is a delightful, though tiny, village, comprised of a single high street of timber and flint buildings, on the outskirts of which sits the magnificent seat of the Dashwood family, the beautifully Palladian West Wycombe Park.
On the summit of the steep conical hill across the road from the house, is the immense Dashwood Mausoleum, behind which towers the strange golden ball that sits uneasily atop the church of St Lawrence. Meanwhile, hewn out of the hillside beneath are a series of caves, reached via an entrance that has been fashioned to resemble a gothic church and which adds to the overall ambiance of eccentricity with which the overall estate seems imbued.
The person responsible for all this was Sir Francis Dashwood (1708-1781), a man whose name has become a byword for hedonistic debauchery, and who is today best remembered as a leading light in the most infamous of all the so-called “Hell Fire” clubs.
These secret societies had become popular with wealthy young aristocrats in the first half of the 18th century and in 1721 it was considered to necessary to pass a Royal edict condemning “Young People who meet together in the most impious and blasphemous manner.. and corrupt the minds and morals of one another”.
Ironically, Dashwood’s organisation, which is now perhaps the only one to be universally remembered, and which operated between the 1740’s and 1760’s, never actually called itself the ‘Hell-Fire-Club’, preferring instead to be known as the “Knights of St Francis”.
John Wilkes (1725 – 1797), the radical politician, and an enthusiastic member, described their gatherings as “A set of worthy, jolly fellows, happy disciples of Venus and Bacchus, got together to celebrate women in wine”.
The select central core of just thirteen “apostles”, led by Sir Francis Dashwood, included Lord Sandwich, John Wilkes, the painter William Hogarth, poets Charles Churchill, Robert Lloyd and Paul Whitehead, whilst American, Benjamin Franklin, was reputed to have been an occasional visitor.
Although their early meetings probably took place at the homes of various members, including West Wycombe Park, Sir Francis began casting around for a base that would provide the necessary seclusion for the clubs activities.
He settled on the ruins of the old Cistercian abbey at Medmenham, six miles from West Wycombe, which he restored to opulent splendour and inscribed above archway over the entrance the clubs motto Fay ce que voudras (Do as you wish). Thereafter the society would also be known as “The Monks of Medmenham”.
Despite the fact that these self -styled monks certainly indulged in a goodly amount of sexual frolicking, and did include mock religious services in their rituals, there is no evidence to suggest that, as has been frequently claimed, they ever practiced Satanism.
The rumour that they did, was probably begun by their enemies in the late 18th Century, and gathered momentum throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries.
There is, however, a delightful, though spurious, tale that at one of the meetings, John Wilkes concealed a baboon, which he had dressed as the Devil, in a chest beneath his seat.
At an appropriate moment, he jerked a cord which opened the chest and the creature jumped onto Lord Sandwiches shoulders who, believing that he had conjured up the Devil, cried out “Spare me gracious Devil: spare a wretch who never was sincerely your servant. I sinned only from vanity of being in the fashion; thou knowest I never have been half so wicked as I pretended: never have been able to commit the thousandth part of the vices which I boasted of…”.
The animosity felt by Lord Sandwich for John Wilkes would lead him to pursue a vendetta against him that would see Wilkes expelled from the House of Commons and ultimately, lead to his being jailed for three years.
At the height of the Wilkes scandal, Sandwich is supposed to have exclaimed at him, “Upon my soul Wilkes, I don’t know whether you’ll die upon the gallows or of the pox” “That depends, my lord,” replied Wilkes “on whether I first embrace your lordships principles or your lordships mistresses”.
But their feud also dragged in other members, including Sir Francis himself and, by 1766, he had effectively disbanded the Knights of St Francis” and thereafter they would be nothing more than a vague, albeit infamous memory, around whom all manner of salacious gossip would gather.
