Andy Arthur - ThreadinburghVery loyal and very well-oiled: the thread about the Edinburgh Revolution Club
Today’s Auction House Artefact is a 1753 medal from the Edinburgh Revolution Club. This club was not the sticky-floored nightclub on Chambers Street, but a club for Loyalist, Unionist, Protestant and Whig gentlemen to indulge in drinking and singing in the 18th century city and following its thread gives us an insight into prevailing sentiment amongst the upper tier of society at that time. Apparently these medals were the last objects ever struck at the old Edinburgh Mint.
Medallion of the Edinburgh Revolution Club. Front reads “Meminisse Iuvabit”, abbreviated from Virgil’s Aeneid it means, “one day, perhaps, it will be pleasing even to remember these things”.The Revolution the club refers to is of course the “Glorious” one of 1688. This is why the medal has on its reverse “In Commemoration of the Recovery of Their Religion and Liberty By King William & Queen Mary anno 1688“. In a particularly Scottish context, the events of 1688 precipitated a short-lived Jacobite uprising (the first of a number of these) and it displaced Episcopalianism and re-established Presbyterianism in the Kirk. The front of the medal shows an imperious looking King William III (of Orange), being adored by the seated ladies of Justice and Religion, having chased away the Medusa-headed tyranny and knocked the mitre off of Popery; i.e. he has deposed Catholicism, King James and the House of Stuart.
The club claimed to have been founded by “a number of Scots Gentlemen who attended [the Prince of Orange] from Holland” in 1688, but the first reporting of its activities is not until 1746 – apparently a revival by descendents of the founders. It is quite probable that this was a reaction amongst the powered class in the city after the final failure of the 1745 Jacobite uprising that had briefly held the city. The club’s first annual soiree was on 4th November 1747 when it met on the birthday of William. Proceedings started with a suitably Presbyterian sermon by the Rev. Alexander Webster at the New Kirk (the most senior of the kirks in the subdivided St. Giles) before adjourning to the Duke’s Head tavern to drink “many loyal and revolution toasts“. The Newcastle Courant reported the attendance was so high that not everyone could fit in the establishment. The fourth of November would become the annual climax of the club’s activities.
“A Sleepy Congregation”: 1785 caricature engraving by John Kay. The Rev Dr Alexander Webster preaches to his congregation within St Giles.The corpus of the club selected itself from applicants who had written to its committee by “leaving a letter at the bar of the Royal Exchange Coffee House“. By 1748 it had 230 members who constituted a who’s who of power and class in the city (and indeed Scotland); “persons of the first distinction and some ministers” – nobility, gentlemen, senior military officers, judges in the court of Session and Exchequer, the Lord Provost and Magistrates. Club members were issued with a “diploma” which they were expected to carry “In their pockets” to all meetings. (Apparently they had trouble with unwelcome interlopers.)
Diploma of the Edinburgh Revolution Club. © Battle of Falkirk Muir (1746) Trust via https://www.falkirkmuir1746.scot/PersonalItemsIn 1750 it is reported to have been holding its functions in the Assembly Rooms, which were at that time on the West Bow. As had been established, on the anniversary of King William’s birthday some 300 members met there for the usual array of toasts and patriotic songs.
(Old) Assembly Rooms, West Bow, James Skene, 1817. © Edinburgh City LibrariesIf you didn’t know the words, the club published their own song book, “A Collection of Loyal Songs“, yours for 6 pence. This included such ditties as “Great William of Nassau, who sav’d us from Rome” (to the tune of “The Nun to the Abbess“); “Your glasses charge high, ’tis in brave William’s Praise” (music by Mr Handel); “Plaid-Hunting” (tune, “Packington Pounds“) and a variant of Rule Britannia.
Frontispiece, “A Collection of Loyal Songs for the Use of the Revolution Club”. Edinburgh, Printed by A. Donaldson and J. Reid, 1761. Price six pence.1755’s meeting was advertised: “in commemoration of our happy deliverance from popery and slavery by King William of glorious and immortal memory, and of the further security of our religion and liberties by the settlement of the crown upon the illustrious house of Hanover.” All the newspaper reporting of the club’s activities went something like that…
“Drinking a Toast”, Thomas Rowlandson. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandIn 1758, in addition to the Fourth of November function, they had a second bash – meeting on January 24th to celebrate the birthday of King Frederick II of Prussia (“The Great”) and to celebrate his recent victories in the Third Silesian War. And on 26th April they had another knees up, this time for the birthday of the Duke of Cumberland, at the house of John Clearihue, Vintner. Bearing in mind this club contained all the movers, shakers and powerful men of the city you can get an idea of some of the prevailing local attitudes to the events of the ’45 a decade before…
In the 1760s and 1770s, the committee of the club met annually in John’s Coffee House. This was one of the premier such establishments in the city, a place where much commercial and legal business was conducted and which had a prime spot in the northeast corner of Parliament Square.
John’s Coffee House, from “The Parliament Close and Public Characters of Edinburgh, Fifty Years Since” © Museums and Galleries EdinburghAt the 1773 November celebration, in the chair was Sir James Adolphus Oughton, Commander-in-Chief of the Army in “North Britain” and a big wheel in the masons (like many men in the Revolution Club and powerful positions in the city in general). Sir James proposed in future that “to retain and cherish in the minds of the people a just sense of the important advantages derived to them from the Glorious Revolution” that future meetings should once again begin with a sermon at the kirk before a ceremonial procession to the knees-up. While all were in favour of this idea and agreed to do it next year, it seems they forgot about the going to church bit as the Caledonian Mercury reported that they hadn’t bothered and instead had gone straight to the Assembly Hall for the drinking and singing.
Sir James Adolphus Oughton, possibly by John Downman, 1778. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandSomething revolutionary in 1776 clearly rattled the Club, it implored members “in and about town to take at this critical juncture this opportunity to testifying their well known attachment to his Majesty’s family and government“. I can’t think what that might have been but it might have had something to do with colonial matters… This year saw a swelling of the membership after dwindling attendances in previous years. A letter written to the Caledonian Mercury reported that on the “sound of a trumpet“, the club would now toast:
“Fame, let thy TRUMPET sound; Tell all the world around, GREAT GEORGE is KING.”
Events continued in the manner to which it was accustomed, and was at its peak in the year 1788 to celebrate the centenary of its namesake revolution. A great banquet was thrown in the Hall of Parliament House on the 22nd December (price 5/-), with 3-400 members in attendance. It was noted with some degree of irony that the last great banquet held in that hall was in 1680 for the then Duke of York, later King James VII – the very man the Revolution Club celebrate the deposing of! (that £1400 publicly-funded shindig left the city heavily in debt). The Club drank a huge array of toasts, from the King and all his relations all the way down to the Students of the University, the prosperity of the British Fisheries and finally to the “Land of Cakes“, that is, Scotland. House of Hanover? House of Hangover more like!
The great banquet in Parliament Hall thrown for King George IV in 1842. Drawn and engraved by William Home Lizars. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandAfter that sesh to end all seshes, things went back to a more normal pace. In 1790 it was the Earl of Hopetoun in the chair and they were meeting in the newly completed Merchant Company Hall on Hunter’s Square. But while it seemed otherwise to be in good health, after 1793 it completely disappears from the newspapers. An interesting publication in 1792 might give us an insight into things. On the face of it it seems suitably sycophantically loyal;
His Majesty’s Proclamation of the Twenty First of May 1792, To which is Added an Address to the Revolution Club, by Gibbie Burnet”.Gibbie Burnet, or “Gossiping Gibbie“, was Gilbert Burnet, one of King William III’s closest Scottish advisers. The problem was he had been dead for almost 80 years… His name here was being used as a satirical nom de plume and the address was actually a very clever and excoriating attack on the Club, and Hanoverian and Orange loyalty in Scotland in general, stimulated by suggestions at this time of raising public monuments to King William III in the country. The attack took the form of an invitation to the Revolution Club, indeed a challenge, to put their money, where their mouths, their songs and their toasts were, and finance a monument to William – and to build it in the middle of Glencoe!
“Glencoe, 1692.” John Blake MacDonald, Royal Scottish Academy of Art & ArchitectureIt rattled off a long list of government atrocities and failures in Scotland since 1688 (both Scottish and British; Orange and Hanoverian) and dared the club to put them on the public monument alongside the name of its hero William; the Darien Scheme; the ejection of Catholics (Mary and William may appear in the background enjoying the scene); the costly failures of the British Army in Flanders. You can read the full thing for yourself here . While this single publication may not have ended the Club, it’s a clear indication that the wind of public attitudes to the events of the preceding 100 years were somewhat changeable…
Suggested inscription for the Revolution Club’s King William III monument in GlencoeAfter that the club seems to disappear from the records. No more meetings advertised or reported… Which is slightly odd as before then it has left a not inconsiderable trove of medals and diplomas, e.g. the one below from 1775. Who knows why it folded; perhaps it was something to do with the flight to the New Town around this time by the great and the good of the city? Perhaps it was a case of an older social order dying out and a new one taking its place. Perhaps having a “Revolution Club” sounded like a bad idea in the context of what happened in America in 1776 and France in 1789… or perhaps they were just sick of all the drinking and singing…
Edinburgh Revolution Club medal, 1775. Back says “Unanimity, Stability & Freedom”, hands shaking over an anchor and a “liberty cap” atop a pole or pike.Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
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