… who knew Stepney at Cambridge, and to Joseph Addison and Richard Steele (1672-1729), whose friendship began at Charterhouse school and who joined the Club c.1704-5. 7 . Mentioned as ‘the Patriots that saved Britain’ by Horace Walpole, … patron. He tried to heal a rift within the Whigs over foreign policy by hosting a meeting of the Club at Newcastle House in March 1717. The Club, however, failed in this case to forge political cohesion through sociability, instead … Club in The Spectator can both be seen as fictional variations upon their own experiences at Kit-Cat dinners (and in coffee-houses), which in turn were imitated by many clubs that these journals’ readers established across Britain and the …