Medmenham

Medmenham, a village of Buckinghamshire, near the Thames, 3 miles SW. of Marlow. Here stood a Cistercian abbey (1204); and here, soon after the middle of the 18th century, Sir Francis Dashwood, afterwards Lord le Despencer (1708-81), founded his mock brotherhood of 'Franciscans,' whose motto was the familiar inscription on Rabelais' abbey of Thelema, 'Fay ce que voudras,' and two of whose twelve members were John Wilkes and Paul Whitehead the poet. Pop. of parish, 336. See W. Fraser Rae's Wilkes, Sheridan, Fox (1874).