Kit-Cat Club - Possible Earlier Objectives

Possible Earlier Objectives

However, John Vanbrugh's modern biographer Kerry Downes suggests that the club's origins go back to before the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and that its political importance for the promotion of Whig objectives was much greater before it became known. Those objectives were a strong Parliament, a limited monarchy, resistance to France, and the Protestant succession to the throne. On the possible role of an early Kit-Cat grouping in furthering these goals through armed invasion by William of Orange and through the Glorious Revolution itself, Downes cites Whig historian John Oldmixon, who knew many of those involved, and who wrote in 1735 of how some club members "before the Revolution met frequently in the Evening at a Tavern, near Temple Bar, to unbend themselves after Business, and have a little free and cheerful Conversation in those dangerous Times". Horace Walpole, son of Kit-Cat Robert Walpole, refers to the respectable middle-aged 18th century Kit-Cat club as "generally mentioned as a set of wits, in reality the patriots that saved Britain", implying that the nexus was nothing less than the force behind the Glorious Revolution. Secret political groups with dangerous agendas tend to be poorly documented, and this sketch of the prehistory of the Kit-Cat Club can hardly be regarded as proven.