Father Noah

Ebenezer Sibly needed cash to set up his business, and in 1790 he was hired to manage a parliamentary election in Ipswich, in Suffolk. He had no political experience and no connections to Suffolk. However, by this time he was a senior freemason with ties to Thomas Dunckerley, an influential Provincial Grand Master for many English counties. This chapter re-examines and offers a revisionist interpretation of the connections between Sibly and Dunckerley. With Dunckerley’s connivance, Sibly set up a fraudulent lodge. He used ritual, public performance, and promise of financial benefit to swear an ever-growing number of freemen into membership. He then presented his employer, the candidate Sir John Hadley D’Oyly, as the choice of the lodge. D’Oyly was duly elected. Sibly stayed in town long enough to help secure D’Oyly’s interest and then took the lodge money and left town. The following year he was burned in effigy.