With secret societies based around philosophy, politics, Freemasonry and Rosicrucian mysticism all the rage in the early 18th century England, two aristocrats, Philip Wharton, the first Duke of Wharton and George Lee, the Earl of Lichfield, decided to found one dedicated to their own, more sophomoric tastes.

In 1719, the duo – already considered upstarts for their allegiance to the Jacobite - who sought to restore the House of Stuart to the British throne - established the Hell Fire Club at London’s Greyhound Tavern. In keeping with their name, the Club and its, naturally, secretive membership set about putting on comical religious rituals that mocked the Church of England and imbibing large quantities of alcohol on a bi-monthly basis.

Their literal fun and games lasted two years, until, in 1721, Parliament issued an edict banning “certain scandalous clubs or societies” – a motion brought by Wharton’s political enemies and enforced exclusively upon his Hell Fire Club. Not to rest on their laurels, both founding members devoted themselves exclusively to the more stoic, not to mention influential, Grand Lodge of Freemasonry with Wharton becoming that society’s Grandmaster one year later. The death of the Hell Fire Club, however, was to be only temporary.

On the pagan holiday of Walpurgisnacht in 1749, yet another libertine aristocrat, Sir Francis Dashwood, who had previously presided over a quasi-Masonic secret society known as the Dilettanti and himself a friend and ally of Charles Edward Stuart, resurrected the Hell Fire Club – and set about making it more extravagant, blasphemous and depraved than the first had ever been.

Needing a headquarters for his new operation, Dashwood leased a 12th century abbey on the Thames and began retrofitting it to his purposes. After tunneling a series of tunnels beneath the site, away from prying eyes, he installed idols of Venus and Dionysus next to murals celebrating pagan mythology and phallic carvings. The Hell Fire Club had been reborn, but needing suitable cover for his society, Dashwood publicly “christened” his order the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe.

To locals, his club was benevolent, if somewhat eccentric, part-time Christian brotherhood that boasted an impressive roster of members that, at various times, included John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich and former Dilettanti member, painter William Hogarth, parliamentary reformer and known radical, John Wilkes (whose legacy resulted in the naming of John Wilkes Booth) and an intellectual and inventor then best known for his “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” Benjamin Franklin.

Behind closed doors, Club members rallied around their motto of “Fais ce que tu voudras” (or “Do What Thou Wilt,” as later adopted by Aleister Crowley), regularly indulging their forbearer’s taste for the overindulgence of alcohol and coupling it with orgiastic excess, exploration of the ancient Greeks’ Eleusian mysteries and highly stylized, arcane rituals.

After a decade in existence, word of the Club did indeed spread, as unaffiliated, yet identically named branches cropped up throughout England, Scotland and Ireland. Despite the attempts at secrecy, exaggerated rumors of Dashwood’s supposed Satanic pastimes freely circulated throughout the upper echelons of English society and the Club more or less disbanded by 1760.

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Nonetheless, the gossip had little impact on Dashwood himself. The following year he became a Member of Parliament and, from 1765 until his death in 1781, served as Post Master General of the United Kingdom. All the while he stayed in touch with former members of his brotherhood; in 1773, he anonymously co-published an abridged edition of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer with Benjamin Franklin, after the two supposedly agreed that church services were too long.

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