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Riots, Revelries, and Rumor: Libertinism and Masculine Association in Enlightenment London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Jason M. Kelly
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 2006 , pp. 759 - 795
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2006

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References

1 The other men present that night were Simon, Viscount Harcourt; Gustavus Hamilton, Viscount Boyne; William Strode; Sewallis Shirley; James Gray; and William Denny. The only man at the tavern not a member of the Dilettanti was John Murray. Arthur Smyth to Joseph Spence, 7 February 1734/5, ms. letter, opposite 394 in Huntington Library Rare Books 131213. Timbs, John (Clubs and Club Life in London [London, 1872], 24)Google Scholar quotes Horace Walpole, who suggested that William Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's younger brother, was also present. However, he was surely mistaken in this assumption, because none of the participants or their friends ever mentioned Stanhope. Furthermore, both the textual and visual sources only recognize eight participants. Middlesex to Spence, 9 February 1734/5 (ms. letter, opposite 395 in Huntington Library Rare Book 131213), specifically stated that there were eight participants. John Murray's brothers, William and George, were ardent Jacobites. Murray's participation in the celebrations no doubt lent an air of controversy to the assembly.

2 The church canonized Charles I on 19 May 1660 at the Convocation of Canterbury and York.

3 Grub-Street Journal, no. 267 (6 February 1734/5): 1r.

4 Middlesex to Spence, 9 February 1734/5.

5 Gentleman's Magazine, 5 February 1734/5, 105. For some supplementary information, see London Magazine; or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, February 1734/5, 97.

6 Public Advertiser, no. 8806 (22 January 1763): 2r. On Darly, see West, Shearer, “The Darly Macaroni Prints and the Politics of the ‘Private’ Man” in Eighteenth-Century Life 25, no. 2 (2001): 107–82CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

7 The Medmenham brotherhood has been a subject of scholarly, fictional, and even conspiratorial discussion for over two centuries. The best, but still imperfect, accounts include Dashwood, Francis, The Dashwoods of West Wycombe (London, 1987)Google Scholar; Frith, Wendy, “Sexuality and Politics in the Gardens at West Wycombe and Medmenham Abbey,” in Bourgeois and Aristocratic Cultural Encounters in Garden Art, 1550–1850, ed. Conan, Michel (Washington, DC, 2002), 285–309Google Scholar; Kemp, Betty, Sir Francis Dashwood: An Eighteenth Century Independent (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Ross, Teresa Miller, “Franklin, Dashwood, and the Mad Monks of Medmenham” (PhD thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1977)Google Scholar; and Peakman, Julie, Lascivious Bodies: A Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century (London, 2004), 103–28Google Scholar.

8 Cobbett, William and Howell, Thomas, Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings, vol. 19 (London, 1809–26), 1166–68Google Scholar.

9 Brewer, John, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cash, Arthur, The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty (New Haven, CT, 2006)Google Scholar; Clark, Anna, Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution (Princeton, NJ, 2004)Google Scholar; Wilson, Kathleen, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture, and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar; Rudé, George, Wilkes and Liberty: A Social Study of 1763 to 1774 (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar.

10 Historians have recently begun to revise their assumptions about popular literacy in the early modern period, emphasizing a more widespread literacy and a close relationship between print and oral culture. See, e.g., Barry, Jonathan, “Literacy and Literature in Popular Culture: Reading and Writing in Historical Perspective,” in Popular Culture in England, c. 1500–1850, ed. Harris, Tim (New York, 1995), 69–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Fox, Adam, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

11 Clark, Peter, British Clubs and Societies, 1580–1800: The Origins of an Associational World (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

12 Merry, Sally Engle. “Rethinking Gossip and Scandal,” in Toward a General Theory of Social Control, vol. 1, ed. Black, Donald (Orlando, FL, 1984), 275Google Scholar; Stewart, Pamela J. and Strathern, Andrew, Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumors, and Gossip (Cambridge, 2004), 38–39Google Scholar.

13 Gluckman, Max, “Psychological, Sociological and Anthropological Explanations of Witchcraft and Gossip: A Clarification,” Man 3, no. 1 (1968): 20–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 In so doing, gossip and rumor can also serve as a means of resistance to imposed political, social, and cultural structures. See, e.g., Guha, Ranajit, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi, 1983)Google Scholar; Rudrangshu Mukherjee, “‘Satan Let loose upon Earth’: The Kanpur Massacres in India in the Revolt of 1857,” Past and Present, no. 128 (1990): 92–116; Turner, Patricia A., “Ambivalent Patrons: The Role of Rumor and Contemporary Legends in African-American Consumer Decisions,” Journal of American Folklore 105 (1992): 424–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Gossip and rumor seem to have played an important role in the formation of class consciousness as well as the maintenance of the “moral economy” in the eighteenth century. See Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966)Google Scholar, and “The Moral Economy of the Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” in Customs in Common (London, 1993), 185–258Google Scholar. The work of other eighteenth-century scholars suggests similar implications. See such varied examples as McCreery, Cindy, “Keeping up with the Bon Ton: The Tête-à-Tête Series in the Town and Country Magazine,” in Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations, and Responsibilities, ed. Barker, Hannah and Chalus, Elaine (London, 1997), 207–29Google Scholar; Gelles, Edith B., “Gossip: An Eighteenth-Century Case,” Journal of Social History 22, no. 4 (1989): 667–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Darnton, Robert, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, MA, 1982)Google Scholar; Rudé, George, Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1971)Google Scholar.

16 Paine, Robert P. B., “What Is Gossip About? An Alternative Hypothesis,” Man 2, no. 2 (1967): 278–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Ibid., 280–81.

18 See, e.g., the early critique of both Gluckman and Paine in Wilson, Peter J., “Filcher of Good Names: An Enquiry into Anthropology and Gossip,” Man 9, no. 1 (1974): 93–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Abrahams, Roger D., “A Performance-Centered Approach to Gossip,” Man 5, no. 2 (1970): 290–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bergmann, Jörg R., Discreet Indiscretions: The Social Organization of Gossip, trans. Bednarz, John Jr. (New York, 1993)Google Scholar; Bleek, Wolf, “Witchcraft, Gossip, and Death: A Social Drama,” Man 11, no. 4 (1976): 526–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, NY, 1959)Google Scholar.

20 Spacks, Patricia Ann Meyer, Gossip (New York, 1985)Google Scholar.

21 Gowing, Laura, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar; Hindle, Steve, “The Shaming of Margaret Knowsley: Gossip, Gender and the Experience of Authority in Early Modern England,” Continuity and Change 9, no. 3 (1994): 391–419CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Capp, Bernard, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family, and Neighborhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 For the significance of masculinity to the field of gender studies, see Tosh, John, “What Should Historians Do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain,” History Workshop Journal 38, no. 1 (1994): 179–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Important studies of masculinity in the early modern period include Cohen, Michèle, Fashioning Masculinity: National Identity and Language in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carter, Philip, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society: Britain, 1660–1800 (London, 2001)Google Scholar; Hitchcock, Tim and Cohen, Michèle, eds., English Masculinities, 1660–1800 (London, 1999)Google Scholar; Fletcher, Anthony, Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven, CT, 1995)Google Scholar; Foyster, Elizabeth A., Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (London, 1999)Google Scholar, Trumbach, Randolph, Sex and the Gender Revolution, vol. 1 (Chicago, 1998)Google Scholar.

23 On the ambiguities of this performance, see Goffman, Presentation of the Self, 17–21.

24 Breitenberg, Mark, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination.

25 Turner, Victor, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

26 See Clark, Scandal. These moments are what Clifford Geertz has described as incongruities “between the cultural framework of meaning and the patterning of social interaction”; see “Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), 142–69, 169Google Scholar.

27 For examples, see Clifford, James, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, 1988)Google Scholar; Clifford, James and Marcus, George E., eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley, 1986)Google Scholar; Marcus, George E. and Fischer, Michael J., Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1999)Google Scholar.

28 Almon, John, The Correspondence of the Late John Wilkes (London, 1805), 1:viiGoogle Scholar.

29 See, e.g., Brewer, John, “The Number 45: A Wilkite Political Symbol,” in England's Rise to Greatness, 1660–1763, ed. Baxter, Stephen B. (Berkeley, 1983), 349–80Google Scholar.

30 Barker, Hannah, Newspapers, Politics and English Society, 1695–1855 (London, 2000)Google Scholar, and Harris, Bob, A Patriot Press: National Politics and the London Press in the 1740s (Oxford, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Compare Black, Jeremy, The English Press in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1987)Google Scholar.

31 “An Epigram on the Calves-head Club Jan. 30, 1734,” Grub-Street Journal, no. 271 (6 March 1734/5): 1r–2v. Interestingly, the poem published in 1734/5 was reprinted in London at the height of the Terror in 1794 in The Poetical Farrago: Being a Miscellaneous Assemblage of Epigrams and other Jeux d’Esprit, vol. 2 (London, 1794), 17Google Scholar.

32 Reflections upon Mr. Stephen's Sermon Preach’d before the Honourable House of Commons at St. Margaret's Church in Westminster, 30 January 1699/700 (London, 1700), 11Google Scholar.

33 Bergice, Daniel, A Lecture Held Forth at the Calves-Head Feast before a Society of Olivarians and & Round-Heads (London, 1692), 4Google Scholar.

34 The Loyal Calves-Head Club: or, Commonwealths-Men, Who Meet Every Night at the Sign of the Tatler, Newgate-Street; To Settle Affairs of Church and State, Just as before in Forty Eight (n.p., n.d.).

35 [Swift, Jonathan], T—l—nd's Invitation to DISMAL, to Dine with the Calves-Head Club (London, 1712)Google Scholar.

36 [Ward, Ned], The Secret History of the Calves-Head Club: or, the Republican Unmasqu’d, 2nd ed. (London, 1703), 10Google Scholar.

37 Edmund Ludlow sat as a judge at Charles I's trial and signed the death warrant. Brown, Thomas, A Continuation or Second Part of the Letters from the Dead to the Living (London, 1703), 234–44Google Scholar.

38 The True Effigies of the Members of the Calve's Head Club (London, 1734/5).

39 For example, see Brown, Letters from the Dead to the Living; Browne, Peter, A Discourse of Drinking Healths (Dublin, 1716), 161Google Scholar; Trapp, Joseph, The Character and Principles of the Present Set of Whigs, 2nd ed. (London, 1711), 22, 42Google Scholar.

40 Both Oppé, A. P. (The Drawings of William Hogarth [New York, 1948], 35–36)Google Scholar and Paulson, Ronald (Hogarth's Graphic Works, 3rd ed. [London, 1989], 35)Google Scholar are doubtful of John Ireland's attribution of the original drawing to William Hogarth (Windsor Castle Print Room). Stylistically, the drawing is questionable. However, the subject matter and “impolite” conversation piece setting is Hogarthian.

41 See Solkin, David, Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven, CT, 1992), 78–105Google Scholar.

42 There is a second version of this print, sold by George Foster at the White Horse in St. Paul's Church Yard, which included a poem. This poem was also printed in The Bee, or Universal Weekly Pamphlet 9, no. 106, January 1734/5, 39Google Scholar.

43 Nevertheless, the association with Satan did not disappear in 1734/5, as exemplified by a poem reading: “To pious charles, and regal state, / These sons of Hell, to shew their hate; / The Martyr's blood now represent / By wine—the devil's sacrament” in Grub-Street Journal, no. 270 (27 February, 1734/5): 2r.

44 The literature on libertinage in later Stuart England is much more developed than that of the mid-eighteenth century. See Bryson, Anna, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cryle, P. M. and O’Connell, Lisa, eds., Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, Liberty, and License in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 2004)Google Scholar; Mowry, Melissa M., The Bawdy Politic in Stuart England, 1660–1714: Political Pornography and Prostitution (Hampshire, 2004)Google Scholar; Trumbach, Randolph, “Erotic Fantasy and Male Libertinism in Enlightenment England,” in The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800, ed. Hunt, Lynn Avery (New York, 1993), 253–82Google Scholar, and Sex and the Gender Revolution; Turner, James, Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London: Sexuality, Politics, and Literary Culture, 1630–1685 (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar; Rachel Weil, “Sometimes a Scepter Is Only a Scepter: Pornography and Politics in Restoration England,” in Hunt, Invention of Pornography, 125–53. Bryson, Mowry, and Turner aptly demonstrate that libertinism, both in rhetoric and practice, served to bolster both masculine and elite privilege. However, there were dangers inherent to the libertine lifestyle, which could lead to popular critique and even crowd action. This point is exemplified no better than in the Bawdy House Riots of 1668.

45 For a complete list of prints, see Stephens, Frederick George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum (London, 1978), 86–90Google Scholar. See also Grub-Street Journal, no. 266 (30 January 1734/5): 3, and Read's Weekly Journal: or, British Gazetteer, 8 February 1735, 3.

46 Print runs and readership numbers are difficult to ascertain. The above numbers rely on Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics, 39–160. See also Aspinall, Arthur, Politics and the Press, 1780–1850 (London, 1949)Google Scholar, and “Statistical Accounts of the London Newspapers in the Eighteenth Century,” English Historical Review 63, no. 247 (1948): 201–32Google Scholar; Hannah Barker, Newspapers, Politics and English Society; Jeremy Black, English Press; Haig, Robert Louis, The Gazetteer 1735–1797: A Study in the Eighteenth-Century Newspaper (Carbondale, IL, 1960)Google Scholar; Kaufman, Paul, Libraries and Their Users: Collected Papers in Library History (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Watt, Tessa, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar.

47 Ingamells, John (A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701–1800 [New Haven, CT, 1997], 292)Google Scholar quotes Lord Essex about Denny (State Papers Foreign, The National Archives [TNA]: Public Record Office [PRO] 92/37), “He is able to give some Lights as to the Pretender and the several Factions and Dispositions of the people about him; and I dare say, if it be so, besides the Satisfaction he will find in doing thereby his Duty as a faithfull Subject to the King, He will not be a little prompted to it, by the ill usage he has met with from that whole party during his confinement at Rome, which has raised in him a strong resentment against them.”

48 Rogers, Nicholas, Whigs and Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpole and Pitt (Oxford, 1989), esp. 46–59Google Scholar; Turner, Raymond, “The Excise Scheme of 1733,” English Historical Review 42, no. 165 (1927): 34–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Smyth to Spence, 5 February 1734/5. Dening, Greg, Mr. Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar.

50 Middlesex to Spence, 9 February 1734/5.

51 In fact, there was another bonfire down the street.

52 Smyth to Spence, 5 February 1734/5.

53 Smyth to Spence, 7 February 1734/5.

54 Anna Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility, 269. Clark, Anna (“The Chevalier d’Eon and Wilkes: Masculinity and Politics in the Eighteenth Century,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 32, no. 1 [1998]: 19–48)CrossRefGoogle Scholar has argued that this ideal increasingly disappeared after the 1770s.

55 Middlesex to Spence, 9 February 1734/5.

56 [Budgell, Eustace], “Verses Occasioned by the Calves-Head Club, Jan. 30, 1734–5,” in The Bee, or Universal Weekly Pamphlet 9, no. 106 (January 1734/5): 39Google Scholar.

57 Ibid.

58 This was not the last time that Hogarth would use wigs to humiliate members of the Dilettanti. See his print The Five Orders of Perriwigs as They were Worn at the Late Coronation Measured Architectonically (London, 15 October 1761).

59 On the fop, see Philip Carter, “Men about Town: Representations of Foppery and Masculinity in Early Eighteenth Century Urban Society,” in Barker and Chalus, Gender in Eighteenth-Century England, 31–57.

60 On the Dilettanti's association with the establishment of a Royal Academy, see Francis Milner Newton to Society of Dilettanti, 31 January 1755, Society of Antiquaries, Society of Dilettanti Letter Book (SDLB), fols. 122–29, and Society of Antiquaries, Society of Dilettanti: Society Minutes (SDSM), 6 March 1774.

61 On the importance of association and the “public good,” see Golinski, Jan, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar; Stewart, Larry, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar.

62 Walpole to Horace Mann, 14 April 1743, in Horace Walpole's Miscellaneous Correspondence, vol. 18, ed. Lewis, W. S. (New Haven, CT, 1980), 211Google Scholar. Despite Walpole's disgust at the Dilettanti, he still subscribed to the opera. See William Fauquier to George Gray, 7 March 1743, SDLB, fol. 37. Opera was Middlesex's passion, and he used the Society of Dilettanti's love for things Italian to encourage all members to subscribe to the 1743 season, a cost of £20 paid up front. Not all members were as enthusiastic as Middlesex. See, e.g., William Denny to Gray, 25 March 1743, SDLB, fol. 33, and Lewis Watson, second earl of Rockingham to Gray, 27 March 1743, SDLB, fol. 51. On Middlesex's opera schemes, see Taylor, Carole, “From Losses to Lawsuit: Patronage of the Italian Opera in London by Lord Middlesex, 1739–45,” Music and Letters 68, no. 1 (1987): 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is evidence that the group may have considered an alternative direction. The opera scheme to which Walpole alluded gave Margaret Cecil, Lady Brown a completely different impression of the group. In fact, her relationship with the Dilettanti members and their plans to support the Italian opera in London was so positive that at least one member of the Society, William Fauquier, flirted with the idea of proposing her for membership. He wrote to the secretary of the Society in 1743, “I think Ly Brown is such a well wisher to the Society that she might to be chose a Member, excus’d of the Forfeits [monetary penalties for missing group meetings] for not attendance”; Fauquier to Gray, 7 March 1743, SDLB, fol. 37. Nothing became of his proposition, probably because the men considered their meetings off-limits to an aristocratic woman. Coffeehouses and taverns could be spaces of violence or drunkenness, hardly the territory of women who did not wish to be associated with prostitution or poverty. This, in fact, was implied by Fauquier's assumption that she could not attend the meetings and thus needed to be “excus’d of the Forfeits.”

63 On the significance of understanding politeness and sociability in the eighteenth-century public sphere, see Berry, Helen, “Rethinking Politeness in Eighteenth-Century England: Moll King's Coffee House and the Significance of ‘Flash Talk,’” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 11 (2001): 65–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carter, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society; Cowan, Brian, “What Was Masculine about the Public Sphere? Gender and the Coffeehouse Milieu in Post-Restoration England,” History Workshop Journal 51 (2001): 127–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Klein, Lawrence E., “Coffeehouse Civility, 1660–1714: An Aspect of Post-Courtly Culture in England,” Huntington Library Quarterly 59, no. 1 (1997): 31–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “Liberty, Manners, and Politeness in Early Eighteenth-Century England,” Historical Journal 32, no. 3 (1989): 583–605CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar.

64 As will become evident in my discussion below, I disagree with West, Shearer, “Libertinism and the Ideology of Male Friendship in the Portraits of the Society of Dilettanti,” Eighteenth-Century Life 16, no. 2 (1992): 76–104Google Scholar, on several accounts. I find little evidence to suggest that the Dilettanti were republicans, especially when one considers the membership of the group throughout the century. Certainly the members supported various factions, but at no time did the Dilettanti or its members give any hint of antimonarchical sympathies. While “libertines” may have believed in some form of religious freedom, the archival evidence does not reveal a “theme of atheism” among the Dilettanti as West suggests (86). For example, the fact that Dashwood dressed as a monk does not prove that he was an atheist. In fact, he worked with Benjamin Franklin to revise the Book of Common Prayer (Bodleian MS D.D. Dashwood [Bucks] C.5 B12/2). His garb probably suggests an anti-Catholicism that was typical of the age.

65 There is no definitive list of members. See, e.g., Ross, “Franklin, Dashwood, and the Mad Monks of Medmenmham,” 58. My article discusses only those men for whom there is definitive evidence of membership.

66 The publisher was Matthew Darly, who later supported Wilkes in his bid for Parliament; see The Battle of the Quills: or, Wilkes Attacked and Defended (London, 1768), 50–51Google Scholar.

67 Berry, “Rethinking Politeness,” 67.

68 Temple to John Wilkes, 12 October 1754, The Grenville Papers: Being the Correspondence of Richard Grenville Earl Temple, K.G., and the Right Hon: George Grenville, vol. 1, ed. Smith, William James (London, 1852), 125–27Google Scholar.

69 de Brosses, Charles, Lettres d’Italie du Président de Brosses, vol. 2 (Paris, 1986), 445Google Scholar. It is possible that this is the earliest reference to what would eventually become the Medmenham Monks. On 5 October 1745 (Bodleian MS D.D. Dashwood [Bucks] C.5 B11/1/5, 1r), George Bubb Dodington wrote to Dashwood about a small group that met at Dashwood's residence, “I must confess, I never mett with more Improvement, as well as Entertainment, in so small a Company; & do verily believe, there are as many Sallies of true Witt, & Humour in Them, as most of the Societies in Town, which most pretend to Both can boast of.”

70 SDSM, 4 January 1741. For an analysis of Knapton's Dilettanti paintings as a group, see Redford, Bruce, “‘Seria Ludo’: George Knapton's Portraits of the Society of Dilettanti,” British Art Journal 3, no. 1 (2001): 56–68Google Scholar, and West, “Libertinism and the Ideology of Male Friendship.”

71 The Society moved its room to the Star and Garter Tavern in May 1757. See SDSM, 1 May 1757.

72 Reprinted in A Select Collection of the Most Interesting Letters on the Government, Liberty, and Constitution of England, vol. 2 (London, 1763), 37Google Scholar. This was an extension of [John Wilkes], Public Advertiser (2 June 1763).

73 Walpole, Horace, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, vol. 1, ed. Jarrett, Derek (New Haven, CT, 2000), 114Google Scholar.

74 Select Collection of the Most Interesting Letters, 37.

75 Boswell, James, Life of Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford, 1980), 91Google Scholar.

76 Wilkes to Temple, 6 October 1762, in Letters between Duke of Grafton … and John Wilkes, vol. 1 (London, 1769), 22–23Google Scholar.

77 Temple to Wilkes, 6 October 1762, Grenville Papers, 1:478.

78 Johnstone, Charles (Chrysal; or, Travels of a Guinea, vols. 3–4 [London, 1764])Google Scholar referred to the role servants had in spreading gossip about Medmenham.

79 Walpole, Memoirs of George III, 114.

80 Public Advertiser, no. 8806 (22 January 1763): 2r.

81 Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics, 143.

82 This is estimating a print run of 500 prints, with twenty readers per print.

83 Cicero, Orationes in Catilinam 1.1.2.

84 Secrets of a Convent (London, 1763)Google Scholar.

85 Wilkes and Churchill were scathing in their attacks on Whitehead's abandonment of principal for patronage. See North Briton, no. 44 (2 April 1763).

86 Anna Clark, “The Chevalier d’Eon and Wilkes,” 29.

87 The print is also critical of Whitehead, who, despite critiquing the courtiers in earlier poetry, accepted a post from Dashwood.

88 John Wilkes, North Briton, no. 44 (2 April 1763), 219.

89 Ibid. Whitehead became deputy treasurer in 1761 and deputy keeper of the wardrobe in 1763, following the fall of Bute and Dashwood's new position as master of the wardrobe.

90 Cobbett and Howell, State Trials, 981, 989–90.

91 Public Advertiser, no. 8905 (20 May 1763): 1r.

92 Public Advertiser, no. 8909 (25 May 1763): 1v.; repr. in Saint James's Chronicle; or, the British Evening-Post, no. 347 (26 May 1763): 2r.

93 Public Advertiser, no. 8914 (2 June 1763) 1v.; repr. in Saint James's Chronicle; or, the British Evening-Post, no. 351 (4 June 1763): 1r.

94 This tactic was noted by The Annual Register … for the Year 1764 (London, 1765), 19, 24Google Scholar. The anthropologist Johnson, Paul Christopher (Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé [Oxford, 2002])CrossRefGoogle Scholar has recently demonstrated how effective this technique—what he calls secretism—is in generating more rumor. He writes: “Secretism I define as not merely reputation, but the active milling, polishing, and promotion of the reputation of secrets. Secretism is freely and generously shared. Secretism does not diminish a sign's prestige by revealing it, but rather increases it through the promiscuous circulation of its reputation. … It is through secretism, the circulation of a secret's inaccessibility, the words and actions that throw that absence into relief, that a secret's power grows, quite independently of whether or not it exists” (3).

95 Wilkes to Temple, 9 July 1763, Grenville Papers, 2:75.

96 Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, 31. In Wilkes to Temple, 26 July 1763, Grenville Papers, 2:81, Wilkes claimed that he had no intention of publishing the Essay on Woman.

97 Sandwich to George Grenville, 5 November 1763, Grenville Papers, 2:154.

98 See, e.g., Public Advertiser, no. 9062 (18 November 1763): 1r, and no. 9070 (28 November 1763): 1r–2v. Several pamphlets published in late 1763 summarized the copious correspondence in the newspapers. These include Kidgell, John, A Genuine and Succinct Narrative of a Scandalous, Obscene, and Exceedingly Profane Libel (London, [1763])Google Scholar, two editions; [Almon, John], A Letter to J. Kidgell, Containing a Full Answer to His Narrative (London, 1763)Google Scholar, three editions; see also An Expostulatory Letter to the Reverend Mr. Kidgell (London, 1763)Google Scholar, three editions; and A Priest in Rhyme (London, [1763])Google Scholar. Cash, Arthur H. (An Essay on Woman by John Wilkes and Thomas Potter [New York, 2000], 61, 69–73)Google Scholar and Hamilton, Adrian (The Infamous Essay on Woman, or John Wilkes Seated between Vice and Virtue [London, 1972], 246)Google Scholar convincingly argue that Sandwich printed a “government edition” of the Essay on Woman for circulation in the House of Lords.

99 In addition to manuscript literature, Medmenham housed printed works, including Le Cabinet d’Amour et de Venus (Cologne, n.d., British Library, CUP.800.a.48) and others still in the collection of the Dashwood family. See Cash, Essay on Woman, 28 n. 62.

100 The book was property of John Campbell, Baron Sundridge of Coombank, a heretofore unknown member of the club.

101 P[aul] W[hitehead] and T[homas] P[otter], [et al.], “Eros in Monachium or the Medmenham Garland Cull’d from the Franciscan Originals” (William Andrews Clark Memorial Library MS E71M1), 1v. The poetry ranges from Charles Churchill's accomplished interpretation of the Song of Solomon to Wilkes's own “Solomon's Song. A la Mode de Hudibras.”

102 Ibid., 60v.

103 Harvey, Karen, Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture (Cambridge, 2004), 60–68Google Scholar.

104 Ibid., 223.

105 On the debate over attribution, see Cash, An Essay on Woman.

106 Ibid., 97.

107 Walpole, Memoirs of George III, 206.

108 Ibid., 207.

109 St. James's Chronicle, no. 428 (29 November–1 December 1763): 2r.

110 St. James's Chronicle, no. 436 (17–19 December 1763): 2r.

111 St. James's Chronicle, no. 435 (15–17 December 1763): 2r.

112 Ibid.

113 Public Advertiser, no. 9072 (30 November 1763): 2r. The spurious 1763–64 versions of the Essay on Woman include: Essai sur la femme ([Amsterdam], [1763]); An Essay on Woman, in Three Epistles ([London], [1763]); An Essay on Woman, a Poem by J. W. Senator ([London], [1763]); An Essay on Woman ([London], 1764).

114 Public Advertiser, no. 9073 (1 December 1763): 2r, and see also no. 9078 (7 December 1763): 2r, and no. 9083 (13 December 1763): 2r.

115 Walpole, Memoirs of George III, 207.

116 Ibid.

117 See, e.g., “A Letter from Paris,” London Magazine; or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, February 1764, 256–57.

118 Churchill, Charles, The Candidate (London, 1764), 33Google Scholar.

119 Johnstone, Chrysal.

120 Ibid., 231.

121 Ibid., 233. Walpole, Horace (Journals of Visits to Country Seats [July 1759–September 1784] [1928; repr., New York: Garland, 1982], 50)Google Scholar also spoke of “nuns” in his description of “Mednam abbey near Marlow” in 1763.

122 Johnstone, Chrysal, 234.

123 Ibid., 240.

124 Ibid., 240–41.

125 Ibid., 241–42.

126 Ibid., 242–43.

127 Walpole (Journals of Visits to Country Seats, 50) believed the order banished Wilkes for his attack on Dashwood in North Briton.

128 See, e.g., A Letter of Advice from Alma Mater to Her Beloved Son Jemmy Twitcher (London, 1764)Google Scholar; Almon, John, ed., New Foundling Hospital for Wit (London, 1768–84)Google Scholar; [Stevenson, John Hall], Makarony Fables (London, 1768)Google Scholar; and Town and Country Magazine 1 (1769): 122Google Scholar.

129 See Ogborn, Miles, Spaces of Modernity: London's Geographies, 1680–1780 (New York, 1998)Google Scholar.

130 SDSM, 4 February 1778.

131 Society of Antiquaries, Society of Dilettanti Committee Minute Books, 6 March 1764.

132 Society of Dilettanti, Ionian Antiquities, vol. 1 (London, 1769), iiGoogle Scholar.

133 Clarke, Michael and Penny, Nicholas, The Arrogant Connoisseur: Richard Payne Knight, 1751–1824 (Manchester, 1982)Google Scholar; Knight, Richard Payne, A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus and Its Connection with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients (London, 1786)Google Scholar; Messmann, Frank J., Richard Payne Knight: The Twilight of Virtuosity (The Hague, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rousseau, G. S., “The Sorrows of Priapus: Anticlericalism, Homosocial Desire, and Richard Payne Knight,” in Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment, ed. Rousseau, G. S. (Chapel Hill, NC, 1987), 101–53Google Scholar.