eleutherarch

plural eleutherarchs

1. gothicliteratureThe leader of the eleutheri.

   Bruhle introduced him to me as the principal of the university, and the Eleutherarch.

   1813, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff, London: T. Hookham, jun., and E.T. Hookham, page 173

   1 more example

   He slept with Horrid Mysteries under his pillow, and dreamed of venerable eleutherarchs and ghastly confederates holding midnight conventions in subterranean caves.

   1818, Thomas Love Peacock, chapter 2, in Nightmare Abbey, Hookham, published 2003

2. The leader of a secret society, usually mysterious and sinister

   In contrast to Godwin's Burkean Falkland, however, Ludloe turns out to be a conspirator, a kind of revolutionary eleutherarch straight out of the pages of Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy.

   2000, Nigel Leask, “Irish Republicans and Gothic Eleutherarchs: Pacific Utopias in the Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone and Charles Brockden Brown”, in Huntington Library Quarterly, volume 63, number 3, pages 347-67