Hellfire Club
It is thought that William Hogarth may have executed murals for this building; none, however, survive. In 1762 the Earl of Bute appointed Dashwood his Chancellor of the Exchequer, despite Dashwood being widely held to be incapable of understanding a bar bill of five figures .It was decorated again with mythological themes, phallic symbols and other items of a sexual nature. 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. Meetings occurred twice a month, with an AGM meeting lasting a week or more in June or September. The downfall of Dashwood s Club was more drawn-out and complicated. The membership of Sir Francis club was initially limited to twelve but soon increased.
When he died in 1774, as his will specified, his heart was placed in an urn at West Wycombe. The Hellfire Club was a name for several exclusive clubs for high society rakes established in Britain and Ireland in the 18th century, and was more formally or cautiously known as the Order of the Friars of St.
Medmenham was finished by 1766. Paul Whitehead had been the Secretary and Steward of the Order at Medmenham. Francis of Wycombe . The very first Hellfire Club was founded in London in 1719, by Philip, Duke of Wharton and a handful of other high society friends. The club motto was Fais ce que tu voudras (Do what thou wilt), a philosophy of life associated with François Rabelais fictional abbey at Thélème and later used by Aleister Crowley. Lord Wharton, made a Duke by George I, At the time of the London s gentlemen s club , where there was a meeting place for every interest, including poetry, philosophy and politics, Despite rumours of devil worship and other dark arts being practised during the meetings, there is no evidence to prove this.
Of the original twelve, some are regularly identified: Dashwood, Robert Vansittart, Thomas Potter, Francis Duffield, Edward Thompson, Paul Whitehead and John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. Sir Francis club was never originally known as a Hellfire Club; it was given this name much later. According to a number of sources their activities included mock religious ceremonies and partaking in meals containing dishes like Holy Ghost Pie, Breast of Venus, and Devil s Loin, while drinking Hell-fire punch Wharton s club came to an end in 1721 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. Francis Dashwood was much more of a trickster than his predecessor Wharton.
(Dashwood resigned the post the next year, having raised a tax on cider which caused near-riots). He was well known for his pranks: for example, while in the Royal Court in St Petersburg, he dressed up as the King of Sweden - a great enemy of Russia.
It was sometimes taken out to show to visitors, but was stolen in 1829. The Caves in which the Friars met are now a tourist site known as the Hell Fire Caves. 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. The Hellfire Club has appeared in literary works by the following authors: . Underneath the Abbey, Dashwood had a series of caves carved out from an existing one.
