[256] It is said that demon worship and mock celebrations of the rites peculiar to monastic orders were the most reputable of the ceremonies. Over the principal entrance to the Abbey Sir Francis Dashwood had placed the motto from Rabelais' Abbey of Theleme, "_Fay ce que voudras_." "Dashwood shall pour from a Communion cup Libations to the Goddess without eyes, And hob and nob in cyder and excise." Churchill: _The Candidate_. Without setting up any defence of these compositions, it may in extenuation be said that the circulation was limited to twelve or thirteen copies, which were distributed among members of the club, that it was printed at Wilkes's house, and that the latter took the greatest care to prevent the workmen from carrying away any sheets. Disgraceful as the amusement was, at least it could be pleaded it had no evil effect upon the circle of vicious men who inspired it; but it gave the Government a handle against their uncompromising foe of which they were not slow to take advantage. In spite of all precautions, one of the printers had stolen some sheets of the "Essay on Woman" and this fact, which came to the knowledge of John Kidgell, then chaplain to the Earl of March, was by him imparted to a minister, who incited the clergyman to publish a pamphlet giving an account of Potter and Wilkes's _jeu d'esprit_. This in itself was an unworthy proceeding, but a greater folly threw this into the shade, for, when it was decided to bring to the notice of Parliament the stolen copy of the "Essay," the person chosen to raise the matter in the House of Lords was Lord Sandwich, than whom, Mr. Justin McCarthy has rightly said, "no meaner, more malignant, or more repulsive figure darkens the record of the last century."[257] This was a bad blunder, for Sandwich, as a member of the Franciscan brotherhood at Medmenham, had received a copy of the production, had read it with amusement, and had expressed his approval; and, even apart from this, was notorious for profligacy even among his immoral associates--rumour has it he was expelled for blasphemy from the Beefsteak Society, and Horace Walpole has stated that "very lately, at a club with Mr. Wilkes, held at the top of the play-house in Drury Lane, Lord Sandwich talked so profanely that he drove two harlequins out of the company."[258] "Hear him but talk, and you would swear Obscenity itself were there, And that Profaneness had made choice, By way of trump, to use his voice; That, in all mean and low things great, He had been bred at Billingsgate; And that, ascending to the earth Before the season of his birth, Blasphemy, making way and room, Had mark'd him in his mother's womb."[259] [257] _History of the Four Georges._ [258] Walpole: _Memoirs of George III_. [259] Churchill: _The Duellist_.