Round Table Groups - Society of The Elect

Society of The Elect

Historian Carroll Quigley claimed that the Round Table Groups were connected to a secret society, which South African diamond baron Cecil Rhodes is believed to have set up with similar goals. Rhodes was believed by some to have formed this secret society in his lifetime. This secret society is supposed to have been named the Society of the Elect.

Rhodes first formalised his idea with William T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, when he and Stead agreed on the structure of the secret society. This proposed secret society had an elaborate hierarchical structure, based on that of the Jesuits, which comprised: at the top, the position of "General of the Society"—a position modelled on the General of the Jesuits—to be occupied by Rhodes, with Stead and Lord Rothschild as his designated successors; an executive committee called the "Junta of Three", comprising Stead, Milner and Reginald Baliol Brett (Lord Esher); then a "Circle of Initiates", consisting of a number of notables including Cardinal Manning, Lord Arthur Balfour, Lord Albert Grey and Sir Harry Johnston; and outside of this was the "Association of Helpers", the broad mass of the Society. One of the puzzles surrounding this meeting is whether the "Society of the Elect" actually came into being. Carroll Quigley claims in Tragedy and Hope (1966) that Rhodes's "Society of the Elect" was not only "formally established" in 1891, although its first inception existed several years prior (1889), but that its "outer circle" known as the "Association of Helpers" was "later organised by Milner as the Round Table".

In several of his wills, Rhodes left money for the continuation of the project. However in his later wills, Rhodes abandoned the idea and instead concentrated on what became the Rhodes scholarships, which enabled American, German and English scholars to study for free at Oxford University.