Hellfire Club
"Hellfire club" was a term used to describe several exclusive
The first official Hellfire club was founded in London in 1718, by Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton and a handful of other high-society friends. The most notorious club associated with the name was established in England by Francis Dashwood,[5] and met irregularly from around 1749 to around 1760, and possibly up until 1766.[6] The term was closely associated with Brooks's, established in 1764. Other groups described as "Hellfire clubs" were set up throughout the 18th Century. Most of these arose in Ireland after Wharton's had been dissolved.[7]
Duke of Wharton's club
At the time of the London gentlemen's club, when there was a meeting place for every interest, including poetry, philosophy and politics,[11][12] Wharton's Hellfire Club was, according to Blackett-Ord,[13] a satirical "gentleman's club" which was known to ridicule religion, catching onto the contemporary trend in England of blasphemy.[11][14] The club was more a joke, meant to shock the outside world, than a serious attack on religion or morality. The supposed president of this club was the Devil, although the members themselves did not apparently worship demons or the Devil, but called themselves devils.[15] Wharton's club admitted men and women as equals, unlike other clubs of the time.[14] The club met on Sundays at a number of different locations around London. The Greyhound Tavern was one of the meeting places used regularly, but because women were not to be seen in taverns, the meetings were also held at members' houses and at Wharton's riding club.[16][14][17]
According to at least one source, their activities included mock religious ceremonies and partaking of meals featuring such dishes as "Holy Ghost Pie", "Breast of Venus", and "Devil's Loin", while drinking "Hell-fire punch".[16][18] Members of the club supposedly came to meetings dressed as characters from the Bible.[18]
Wharton's club came to an end in 1721[14] when George I, under the influence of Wharton's political enemies (in particular, Robert Walpole) put forward a Bill "against 'horrid impieties'" (or immorality), aimed at the Hellfire Club.[2][19] Wharton's political opposition used his membership as a way to pit him against his political allies, thus removing him from Parliament.[19] After his Club was disbanded, Wharton became a Freemason, and in 1722 he became the Grand Master of England.[20]
Sir Francis Dashwood's clubs
Sir Francis Dashwood and the Earl of Sandwich are alleged to have been members of a Hellfire Club that met at the George and Vulture Inn throughout the 1730s.[21] Dashwood founded the Order of the Knights of St Francis in 1746, originally meeting at the George & Vulture.[22]
The club motto was Fais ce que tu voudras (
Francis Dashwood was well known for his pranks: for example, while in the Royal Court in
Meetings and club activities
Sir Francis's club was never originally known as a Hellfire Club; it was given this name much later.
On moving into Medmenham Abbey, Dashwood had numerous expensive works done on the building. It was rebuilt by the architect
Records indicate that the members performed "obscene parodies of religious rites" according to one source.[35] According to Horace Walpole, the members' "practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed; and the nymphs and the hogsheads that were laid in against the festivals of this new church, sufficiently informed the neighbourhood of the complexion of those hermits." Dashwood's garden at West Wycombe contained numerous statues and shrines to different gods; Daphne and Flora, Priapus and the previously mentioned Venus and Dionysus.[36]
A Parish history from 1925 stated that members included "Frederick, Prince of Wales, the Duke of Queensberry, the Earl of Bute, Lord Melcombe, Sir William Stanhope, K.B, Sir John Dashwood-King, bart., Sir Francis Delaval, K.B., Sir John Vanluttan, kt., Henry Vansittart, afterwards Governor of Bengal, (fn. 13) and Paul Whitchead the poet".[37] Meetings occurred twice a month, with an AGM lasting a week or more in June or September.[38] The members addressed each other as "Brothers" and the leader, which changed regularly, as "Abbot". During meetings members supposedly wore ritual clothing: white trousers, jacket and cap, while the "Abbot" wore a red ensemble of the same style.[39] Legends of Black Masses and Satan or demon worship have subsequently become attached to the club, beginning in the late Nineteenth Century. Rumours saw female "guests" (a euphemism for prostitutes) referred to as "Nuns". Dashwood's Club meetings often included mock rituals, items of a pornographic nature, much drinking, wenching and banqueting.[40]
Decline of Dashwood's Club
The downfall of Dashwood's Club was more drawn-out and complicated. In 1762, the
Paul Whitehead had been the Secretary and Steward of the Order at Medmenham. When he died in 1774, as his will specified, his heart was placed in an urn at West Wycombe. It was sometimes taken out to show to visitors, but was stolen in 1829.[5][26]
The West Wycombe Caves in which the Friars met are now a tourist site[46] known as the "Hell Fire Caves".
In
Hellfire Clubs in contemporary life
Phoenix Society
In 1781, Dashwood's nephew Joseph Alderson (an undergraduate at Brasenose College, Oxford) founded the Phoenix Society (later known as the Phoenix Common Room), but it was only in 1786 that the small gathering of friends asserted themselves as a recognised institution.[48] The Phoenix was established in honour of Sir Francis, who died in 1781, as a symbolic rising from the ashes of Dashwood's earlier institution. To this day, the dining society abides by many of its predecessor's tenets. Its motto uno avulso non deficit alter 'when one is torn away another succeeds' is from the sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid and refers to the practice of establishing the continuity of the society through a process of constant renewal of its graduate and undergraduate members, but also refers to the alchemical kabbalistic process that a life snatched via sacrifice is a life given back via a spirit at the command of its master. The Phoenix Common Room's continuous history was reported in 1954 as a matter of note to the college.[49]
See also
- The Beggar's Benison
- Diogenes Club, fictional gentleman's club in the Sherlock Holmes universe
- Hellfire Caves, the still-existing underground network of caves and tunnels in the chalk hills above West Wycombe, in which meetings of Dashwood's club took place
- Montpelier Hill, 18th century meeting place of the Irish Hell Fire Club
- Secret society
References
Notes
- ^ Hellfire Holidays: Damnation, Members Only, Tonyperrottet.com 2009-12-15, accessed 18 December 2009
- ^ a b Ashe p.48.
- ^ a b Blackett-Ord p. 46
- ^ a b Ashe p. 111.
- ^ a b
"Paul Whitehead". The Twickenham Museum.
"The Monks of Medmenham Abbey" (the Hell-Fire Club, founded by Francis Dashwood) of which he became the secretary and steward
- ^ a b c Ashe.
- ^ Ashe p. 60.
- ^ Ashe p. 52
- ^ Blackett-Ord p.70
- incomplete short citation]
- ^ a b Blackett-Ord p. 43
- ^ Ashe p. 46
- incomplete short citation]
- ^ a b c d Ashe p. 48
- ^ Blackett-Ord p. 44-6
- ^ a b Blackett-Ord p. 44
- ^ Willens
- ^ a b Ashe p. 49
- ^ a b Blackett-Ord p. 70
- ^ Ashe p. 62
- ISBN 9780750924023.
- ^ Mike Howard. "The Hellfire Club". Archived from the original on 10 October 2009. Retrieved 10 January 2010.
- ^ Alamantra
- ^ Ashe p. 115
- ^ Ashe p. 113
- ^ a b c d Simon, Robin (3 November 2008). "High politics and Hellfire: William Hogarth's portrait of Francis Dashwood". Gresham College. Retrieved 11 January 2010.
Infamous rake (and Chancellor of the Exchequer), Sir Francis Dashwood was the founder of the Hellfire Club
- ^ Coppens
- ^ Ashe p. 120
- ^ City of Blood, Cities of the Underworld – History Channel 2 (H2), 2008
- ^ Ashe p. 121
- ^ Ashe p.111
- ^ Ashe p. 112
- ^ Ashe p.118
- ^ Medmenham Abbey – Home of the Notorious Secret Society ‘Hellfire Club’
- ^ The Thames Path: National Trail from London to the river's source
- ^ Ashe p. 114
- ^ Parishes: Medmenham Pages 84–89 A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 3
- ^ Ashe p. 125
- ^ Ashe p 125
- ^ Ashe p. 133
- ^ Ashe p. 155
- ^ a b Ashe p. 157
- ^ Ashe p. 158
- ^ Ashe p. 177
- ^ Ashe p. 167
- ^ "Hell-fire Caves United Kingdom | the Temple Trail".
- ^ Gatrell, Vic, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London, Walker and Company, 2006, pg 313
- ^ See also A Century of the Phoenix Common Room, Brasenose College, Oxford, 1786–1886, records edited by F. Madan, Oxford, 1888.
- ^ 'Brasenose College', A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 3: The University of Oxford (1954), pp. 207–219. British-history.ac.uk
Bibliography
- Alamantra, Frater. "Looking into the Word" in Ashé Journal, Vol 3, Issue 1, Spring 2004. Retrieved 24 March 2009.
- Ashe, Geoffrey. The Hell-Fire Clubs: A History of Anti-Morality. Great Britain: Sutton Publishing, 2005.
- Blackett-Ord, Mark (1982). The Hell-Fire Duke. Windsor Forest, Berks.: The Kensal Press.
- Lord, Evelyn (2008). The Hell-Fire Clubs: Sex, Satanism and Secret Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300116670.
- ISBN 0-7432-9640-0.
- Suster, Gerald. The Hell-Fire Friars. London: Robson, 2000.
- Willens, Daniel. "Sex, Politics, and Religion in Eighteenth-Century England" in Gnosis, Summer 1992.