The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Wednesday 11 August 2004

Hell-Fire and the Hanoverians

In many ways, George III was a very lucky monarch. He had some of the most intelligent minds of his age, of any age, as friends and advisors. Lord North, George Grenville, William Pitt the Elder and Younger - these were very able men, and served his Majesty well as Privy Councillors and Ministers of the Crown.Yet George could have had one other brilliant courtier - an American one, Benjamin Franklin. Had the King ever met with him, and heard from his lips all the familiar complaints about taxation without representation, etc., and heeded his wise counsel on what to do (and not do) about it, the American Revolutionary War might have been averted. And Franklin certainly intrigued with the King's intimates for the opportunity to be presented at Court, so it was not for lack of trying that his wisdom was passed up.

Sir Francis Dashwood (1708 - 1781) was a fabulously rich nobleman, a Whig MP, a friend of George III, and the founder of the notorious Hell-Fire Club. This informal organization resembled other gentlemen's clubs popular in Britain at the time. The usual activities of such groups of idle young bucks were prodigious drinking, brawling in the streets, practical jokes, vandalism, inciting the masses to riot in favor of one Parliamentary candidate and against another, and sexual carousing with prostitutes. But the main difference between the Hell-Fire and the other clubs, and the one which ensured its infamy down through history, was that the Hell-Fire practiced Satanism.

One theory of Satanism, according to the late Daniel P. Mannix, in his work The Hellfire Club, is that Satan "is the natural leader of all rebels who rise against the injustices of King, church, and society..." The conception of church and state as one unit, as typified by the "divine right of kings," was so prevalent that to be cynical about one automatically meant being cynical of the other. Thus did devil worship appeal to a man who was a natural rebel and a prototypical libertarian.

Hell-Fire Francis, as he was known, conducted his black magic in Medmenham Abbey, a medieval ruin on the bank of the Thames, some six miles from his country estate at West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. There he officiated at Black Masses, which resembled the Catholic Mass but made a perverse mockery of it. After he performed the dark rituals, supposedly with pornographic vessels and lewd parodies of the sacraments, the Hell-Fire members, robed as monks and wearing masks and hoods to disguise their identities, feasted, drank, recited bawdy poems to each other, and participated in sexual orgies with women they called "nuns." Accounts of these festivities vary, but can be found in some detail in Mannix' book.

No one ever really admitted what took place on those dark-shrouded nights at Medmenham. Rapes of virgins, animal and human sacrifice, opium-smoking, blasphemy, sodomy, bestiality were all rumored. No club records were left behind, so none since then really know what happened during the Hell-Fire rites. But all of it may have been greatly exaggerated; as we shall see. Sir Francis had many enemies in the government, who had the King's ear.

Nowadays, in our more tolerant times, such a man would be considered an eccentric, or even a harmless lunatic, and would probably be laughed out of the Commons if he ever managed to sit there in the first place. Sir Francis was likely the Hugh Hefner of his day: more mythmaker than action-man. He was known as a prankster; on a tour of the Sistine Chapel in Rome he dressed up as the devil and terrorized penitents with a horsewhip. On a second visit to Italy in 1739, he is said to have met the Young Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and admired him. So Dashwood's Gothic brand of Satanism, like his unorthodox political views, may have been just a huge jest, in poor taste but certainly not illegal, like farting at the Pope. Sir Francis was certainly a larger-than-life partygoer, a dilettante with a bent for satire and costume drama, Druidic ritual and Halloween make-believe. It is hard to assume, looking back to his time, that the boatloads of young women he hired for club evenings, whether whores or virgins, did not know what they were getting into. An excursion upriver late at night with strange men and plenty of booze could only end in one thing, much as it would today.

So the fabled Hell-Fire orgies were probably voluntary on the part of all participants. No one was killed or injured during the rituals, apparently, the women and Sir Francis' servants were presumably paid well to keep their mouths shut, and so the Hell-Fire raged merrily on, for several decades. No matter what went on when the club met, for years it was left alone by King and Parliament to pursue its morbid religious and sexual fantasies. Why so, in an age when religion was taken deadly seriously? No doubt because those who acted out their whimsies at Wycombe were important men indeed. As George III's reign began, they virtually ran the country.

Hell-Fire A-listers had included his father, Frederick, the Prince of Wales, nicknamed "Poor Fred," who usually sided with Dashwood's Whigs against his own royal father, King George II. Poor Fred died first, in 1751, and so never became King. But the Hell-Fire Club continued to enjoy royal favor, nonetheless. When George II died in 1760 his grandson, Poor Fred's son, ascended the throne as George III. He was not a member of the Hell-Fire Club, but he appointed three of its leading members to his government: his first Prime Minister, Lord Bute; his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dashwood himself; and the Earl of Sandwich, who became his First Lord of the Admiralty.

A future Lord Mayor of London, the son of a former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Hogarth the artist, Laurence Sterne the novelist, and possibly Horace Walpole were also Hell-Fire members. It is said that visiting European royals were given guest memberships in the club when they came to Britain. The members' roster is unknown, even today. But it may also have included the name of Ben Franklin.

Franklin had been appointed Joint Deputy Postmaster General for the Colonies in 1753. As America's unofficial ambassador to England before the Revolution, he witnessed the coronation of George III on September 22, 1761. In his capacity as colonial agent, Franklin travelled to and lived in Britain frequently for over 20 years. This must have been fairly routine and even boring bureaucratic duty, and he must have yearned to rise higher in the government, even to move in Court circles, much as he would later, though at the Court of Versailles. While enjoying the intellectual life and culture of London, pursuing his scientific interests, and trying in vain to get the King's ear, in order to present his case for the growing American discontent with British colonial policy, Franklin did make a few friends in high places. Unfortunately, they were mostly members of his Majesty's Loyal Opposition.

Franklin, an ambitious man, would have seen attending Hell-Fire meetings as an opportunity to "network," as we say today. It is certain that he was acquainted with many known Hell-Fire members. It is also certain that many in the Hell-Fire Club, being liberal-minded Whigs, were extremely sympathetic to the Americans' grievances, and some, including Dashwood, gave financial support to the colonials.

Franklin had begun corresponding with Dashwood in the 1750s, when the latter was Postmaster General of Britain and Franklin had just been appointed to his own office. Franklin was often in England at the same times as the Hell-Fire Club met, and since only club members were allowed at Wycombe during the meetings, he must have been asked to join. According to the Web site www.controverscial.com, in 1773 (or 1772, according to Mannix ' Old Style date perhaps?) Franklin was a guest at Wycombe and wrote to a friend: "I am in this house as much at my ease as if it was my own and the gardens are a paradise. But a pleasanter thing is the kind countenance, the facetious and very intelligent conversation of Mine Host, who having been for many years engaged in public affairs, seen all parts of Europe and kept the best company in the world, is himself the best existing. The exquisite sense of classical design, charmingly reproduced by the Lord le Despenser [Sir Francis' subsequent title] at West Wycombe, whimsical and puzzling as it may sometimes be in its imagery, is as evident below the earth as above it."

So, in all likelihood Franklin did take part in the Satanic rites, and no doubt thoroughly enjoyed himself. Though sophisticated man that he was, he probably took the Hell-Fire follies with a very large grain of salt. As a Deist, not an Episcopalian (as C of E congregants in America are called), he was doubtless more tolerant of errant religious practices than most men of his time. And he certainly had sexual appetites. He fathered several illegitimate children, and adopted one of them as his legal heir. The illegitimate son of that son became Franklin's secretary.

But Franklin's rumored association with the Hell-Fire Club did him, and indirectly America, in. For John Wilkes, the famous political agitator, joined up. A born rabble-rouser, anti-monarchist, and champion of the common man, Wilkes is not to be confused with John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin, whose namesake he was. Wilkes, Member of Parliament for Aylesbury, delighted in baiting the King's Friends in Parliament, as George III's political clique was called.

Other Whigs grumbled politely about the power and arrogance of the King's Friends. Wilkes wrote scurrilous anti-royalist verse, in print he called the King an idiot, he paid mobs to demonstrate in the streets of London against the King and even attack him in his coach. Other Whigs amiably disagreed with George's colonial policy. Wilkes published pro-American tracts calling openly for revolution. The Hell-Fire Club had its secret, members-only orgies at Wycombe. Wilkes spread vicious gossip about the sex lives of the King's Friends, and made sure all London knew about their orgies. Wilkes even savaged a fellow Hell-Fire member: he implied that Lord Bute had been the lover of George III's mother. Mannix suggests that it was John Wilkes who sent the King over the edge into madness. Wilkes seems in general to have carried republicanism to such an extreme, it would probably be called terrorism today.

Inevitably there was a royal backlash. With all the rebelliousness coming out of America in the late 1760s and early 1770s, the King and his ministers were in no mood to let one of their own MPs fan the flames. John Wilkes was arrested and imprisoned for a short time in the Tower. Despite the growing public sympathy for him, and the King's lessening popularity in consequence, the King's Friends were able to use Wilkes' membership in the Hell-Fire Club (and probably Bute's everlasting hatred) against him. After many hijinks and political manoeuvres on both sides of the aisle, Wilkes was officially declared an outlaw for high treason against the King, blasphemy, and circulating indecent literature. He had gone too far at last. Benjamin Franklin, finding the political situation worsening, desperately tried to get an audience with King George, to let the American point of view be heard before Wilkes dragged it into the muck.

It was too late. Wilkes' many enemies saw to it that lurid and probably grossly exaggerated details of the Hell-Fire Club's meetings were circulated. From the royalist broadsides of the time comes its wicked reputation today. The members were ruthlessly "outed." The Church of England got into the political arena and denounced the club as sacrilegious. There was a public outcry, that such evil and possibly Popish rites could be performed, even secretly, in England. Protestant religious fervor grew, and anyone in public life who was remotely connected with the club was branded a blasphemer, a secret Catholic, a republican, a traitor to the Crown, and worse. Sound familiar?

Wilkes fled to exile in France. According to Mannix Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, asked him, "Just how far can an Englishman go in insulting the King and still live?" Wilkes replied, "That, madam, is what I'm attempting to find out."

Likewise the Americans. Dashwood and Lord Sandwich found out, too. They had to resign from his Majesty's government. And because of its sudden notoriety, the Hell-Fire Club had to move from the abbey at Medmenham to a hidden warren of Gothic catacombs Sir Francis created at his nearby estate, some 30 miles north-west of London. Unconventional as always, he also laid out a formal garden in the shape of a naked woman, complete with obscene statuary.

It was there that Dashwood arranged for Lord North, Prime Minister now, and Lords Bute and Sandwich, King's Friends yet still Hell-Fire members, to meet Franklin and hear his impassioned arguments for the American Colonies. But they would not listen, perhaps because of the reappearance of the royal gadfly. John Wilkes had returned from exile, got himself arrested again, played merry hell with the King and the King's Friends even in prison, and kept up a brave correspondence with American patriots. Eventually he was released on a technicality and got up to even more royal mischief, supposedly introducing the Duke of Cumberland, George III's brother, to a lady named Anne Luttrell Horton at a Hell-Fire Club meeting. Mannix says she was one of the "nuns." The Duke married her in secret, which precipitated from his furious elder brother the Royal Marriages Act, still in force today, forbidding the marriage of a member of the royal family under age 25 without the sovereign's consent.

Wilkes eventually became Lord Mayor of London, though the King's Friends bitterly opposed him. He caused even more trouble right up to the outbreak of war, by organizing public protests against each new royal oppression in America. But despite Wilkes' rise to power, and Dashwood's continued friendship, Ben Franklin never got an audience with the King.

Instead, in January 1774 he was brought before the Privy Council on trumped-up charges of treason, humiliated by royal officialdom, and stripped of his office of deputy postmaster general. The reason was his supposed theft of the Hutchinson Letters, written by Massachusetts' Governor to the King's Friends, asking for troops to suppress the American rebellions. Mannix suggests that Franklin may have got these letters, or got wind of their contents, from the Hell-Fire Club members in his Majesty's government. When Franklin alerted his fellow Americans, they knew British troops would be coming no matter what they did, and so they committed an open act of defiance. This was the famous Boston Tea Party.

And after that, Franklin, despite last-minute support from Hell-Fire Francis and William Pitt, was forced to leave England. It was his collusions with the King's Whig opponents and those Colonies favoring open rebellion that did him in, of course. But it also might have been caused by the petty revenges of the King's Friends, and by extension the King, on any and all friends of John Wilkes, even on those royal courtiers in the Hell-Fire Club. Wilkes was soon driven from office by his own sexual excesses, and like Franklin no longer had influence in Britain. Dashwood, though by now elevated to the peerage as Lord le Despenser, was also gone, denounced as a Hell-Fire sinner. With these men's downfall went the cause of the Colonies. There were few left in the British government with any sympathy for the Americans. And so, through arrogance, misunderstanding and prejudice, both political and religious, the King and his American subjects moved ever closer to the war that would sunder them.

Francis Dashwood died a few years later, unrepentant and eccentric as ever. By then most of the members of his infamous Hell-Fire Club were also dead, as was the club itself. Its records had been burned by its secretary, the poet Paul Whitehead, before he died in 1774. John Wilkes became an ardent monarchist, though he managed one last royal joke during a card game, saying, "My eyesight is now so bad that I can't tell a king from a knave." He passed on in 1797, penniless and virtually forgotten. George III lived on till 1820, witnessing yet another Anglo-American war in 1812, and maddened as we now know not by Wilkes, but porphyria. Benjamin Franklin died in 1790, beloved of his new nation.

Did members of the Hell-Fire Club help foment the American Revolution? Undoubtedly, by treating the two Kings they served as butts for their jokes, and by supporting the cause of American freedom against the monarch. If King George had paid more attention to his Whig opposition, and what such Hell-Fire freethinkers in his government as Sir Francis could have told him about the American mood, might the war have been prevented? Surely. If Franklin had lucked into a royal audience, might he have persuaded the King to ignore firebrands like Wilkes and do the right thing by America? Perhaps. We may never know if those questions were asked, but we know they were not answered, in the turbulent 1770s.

Hell-Fire Francis' estate at West Wycombe, with its elegant landscaped grounds and eerie grottos, is now a tourist attraction, with its own Web site (www.hellfirecaves.co.uk, complete with flying bats!), run by his descendant and the National Trust. It was visited by Daniel Mannix in the course of researching his fascinating book, to which I am indebted for information. There are also many other Web sites which shed more light on the curious association of Dashwood, Franklin, and the Hell-Fire Club.

www.blather.net/archives3/issue3no1photos.html has a portrait of Sir Francis and pictures and maps of the Wycombe caves, along with a 1999 article by Dave Walsh which lists other (rare) reference sources. He does not have a high opinion of Mannix' work. It does treat the subject rather sensationally, and has no bibliography or index.

But no matter what you think of Sir Francis Dashwood and his macabre antics, you can only wonder how different British and American history might have been, had King George III's government had a little more Hell-Fire in it.

- Mel Whitney