Editing Hellfire Club (section)

===Decline of Dashwood's Club===
The downfall of Dashwood's Club was more drawn-out and complicated. In 1762, the [[John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute|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". (Dashwood resigned the post the next year, having raised a [[Cider Bill of 1763|tax on cider]] which caused near-riots).<ref>Ashe p. 155</ref> Dashwood now sat in the [[House of Lords]] after taking up the title of [[Baron Le Despencer]] after the [[John Fane, 7th Earl of Westmorland|previous holder]] died.<ref name="Ashe p. 157">Ashe p. 157</ref> Then there was the attempted arrest of [[John Wilkes]] for [[seditious libel]] against the King in the notorious issue No. 45 of his ''[[The North Briton]]'' in early 1763.<ref name="Ashe p. 157"/> During a search authorised by a [[General warrant]] (possibly set up by Sandwich, who wanted to get rid of Wilkes),<ref>Ashe p. 158</ref> a version of ''The Essay on Woman'' was discovered set up on the press of a printer whom Wilkes had almost certainly used. The work was almost certainly principally written by Thomas Potter, and from internal evidence can be dated to around 1755. It was scurrilous, blasphemous, libellous, and bawdy, though not pornographic – still unquestionably illegal under the laws of the time, and the Government subsequently used it to drive Wilkes into exile. Between 1760 and 1765 ''Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea'' by the Irish author [[Charles Johnstone]] was published.<ref>Ashe p. 177</ref> It contained stories easily identified with Medmenham, one in which Lord Sandwich was ridiculed as having mistaken a monkey for the Devil. This book sparked the association between the Medmenham Monks and the Hellfire Club. By this time, many of the Friars were either dead or too far away for the club to continue as it did before.<ref>Ashe p. 167</ref> Medmenham was finished by 1766.

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.<ref name="Twickenham"/><ref name="Simon"/>

The [[Hellfire Caves|West Wycombe Caves]] in which the Friars met are now a tourist site<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://thetempletrail.com/hell-fire-caves/|title = Hell-fire Caves United Kingdom &#124; the Temple Trail| date=7 August 2013 }}</ref> known as the "Hellfire Caves".

In [[Anstruther]], [[Scotland]], a likeminded sex and drinking club called [[The Beggar's Benison]] was formed in the 1730s, which survived for a century and spawned additional branches in [[Glasgow]] and [[Edinburgh]]. Honorary membership was extended to the Prince of Wales in 1783. Thirty-nine years later, while the Prince (by now King [[George IV]]) was paying a royal visit to Scotland, he gifted the club a snuff box filled with his mistresses' pubic hair.<ref>Gatrell, Vic, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London, Walker and Company, 2006, pg 313</ref>