The Hellfire Club was a mock Satanic club started by Sir Francis Dashwood, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The order was actually the called Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe. Francis was a baronet of a place called West Wycombe.
John Wilkes, an MP, was one of the most colorful members. He eventually ended up being expelled from the Hellfire Club after an amusing incident that seemed to be the start of his rivalry with the Earl of Sandwich, a man Wilkes disliked and considered a hypocrite. Sir Henry Vansittart, a member and governor of India, had sent a baboon from India to be a mascot for the Hellfire Club. The creature arrived at the abbey (the Club's first headquarters) when Wilkes was there alone, so he took the baboon back to his home before the other monks had seen it and had a tailor make up a devil costume for it complete with horns and tail. He then snuck the creature back to the abbey. With the help of some of the menservants, he hid the baboon in a chest inside the chapel and fixed a spring to the lid and tied a string to it and ran the string under the carpet and cut a hole in the carpet for the end of the string to be at his ready. Then Wilkes left the abbey.
Later, when Dashwood, Sandwich and the other monks, Wilkes having arrived with them after most of them had been drinking and were already half-bombed, were paying mock reverence to Dashwood’s pseudo-host intoning the devil to appear to them to receive his adoration in person, Wilkes reached down to the secret hole in the carpet, took up the end of the string and gave it a good tug. The spring on the trunk lid sprang, the lid flew open and the baboon in its devil costume jumped out onto the altar. The monks were so shocked that they had not seen where it came from, the beastly devil seemed to suddenly materialize on the altar, screeching loudly. The shocked monks screamed, Dashwood collapsed to the floor in fright, and everybody began to run.
As fate would have it, the baboon leapt from the altar onto Sandwich’s back. The terrified lord ran about aimlessly trying to dislodge what he was convinced was the devil come to claim his soul. “Spare me, gracious devil!” screamed Sandwich, “You know I never committed a thousandth part of the vices of which I boasted. Take somebody else, they’re all worse than I am. I never knew that you’d really come or I’d never have invoked thee!” The creature leapt out a window and was gone. When people recovered their wits, some of the more levelheaded monks declared that the devil was really a monkey in an outfit. The others slowly realized they had been had. Dashwood was furious as was Sandwich and several others. They found the string and the chest and knew the servants must have been in on it if not the out and out perpetrators. They were brought in and confessed but named Wilkes as the one who had put them up to it. Wilkes then admitted he had masterminded the prank. Dashwood, now recovered, began to laugh and said that it had been a great joke. The others were not so forgiving. They voted Wilkes out of the Hellfire Club. Wilkes and Sandwich would spar in Parliament over various issues over the years, never having liked one another. Wilkes remained friends with Dashwood however. Sandwich never quite lived down his embarrassing blubbering display in the chapel that fateful night and he never forgave Wilkes for putting him in that precarious position. Not that Wilkes gave a fig about what Sandwich thought about anything.
Dashwood had long been a Freemason, having been inducted into the order while a young man in Florence. One of the rooms at the underground complex was done up as a Masonic lodge room. His Masonic affiliation was one of many things he held in common with Ben Franklin. Both men were fond of keeping mistresses and Franklin also had several illegitimate children. One of Franklin’s sons served as governor of the New Jersey colony and was already two years in prison for his Loyalist leanings when the Declaration of Independence was signed. Despite the fact that Dashwood appears no more lacking in moral character than Franklin and despite his brave support of Franklin while the latter was in England as well as nearly bankrupting himself supporting the colonist’s cause, Dashwood today is remembered as a depraved occultist while Franklin is remembered as a great statesman.
Because Wilkes had been more vocal in his support of the colonies than Dashwood, he is better remembered today and was memorialized in such place-names as Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania founded in 1769 where Wilkes University is located. Wilkes County, North Carolina is also named for John Wilkes as is Wilkesboro, the main city of Wilkes County. Wilkes County, Georgia is also named for Wilkes as is Wilkes Street in Alexandria, Virginia. American Admiral Charles Wilkes was his grand-nephew. Fox & Wilkes Books is also named for him. Colonists were so enamored with him that they often named their newborn sons Wilkes or John Wilkes including the parents of the man who would later assassinate Abraham Lincoln (Booth was actually a distant relative).
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