[Parliamentary Act]. An Act to Permit Persons Professing the Jewish Religion, to be Naturalized by Parliament

(ANGLO-JUDAICA)

n.p

London

1753

Initial letters within richly historiated woodcut borders

Albert M. Hyamson, Bibliography of Pamphlets Relating to the Jew Bill of 1753 in: TJHSE, Vol. VI (1908-1910), pp. 178-188, no. 4

In the year 1609 the naturalization of any foreigner settled in England was made contingent on receiving the Sacrament. Although this was deliberately directed against Catholics, it incidentally would later affect Jews following their Re-Admission to England in 1653. This disability was lifted by the Whig Government of Henry Pelham in the present Act of 1753, however the Bill was of limited advantage as only those Jews of wealth had the ability to set in motion the machinery necessary to obtain naturalization. Moreover, although the measure was unanimously accepted by the House of Lords, it became a pawn in that years’ general election campaign. Taking full advantage of the prejudices that the grant of naturalization aroused, Tory opposition fueled the unpopularity of the Act with a broadsheet campaign that warned of an England over-run with Jews. The Whig Government was forced by public opinion to give way and the pro-Jewish legislation was duly repealed in the same year that it was enacted. See J. Picciotto, Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History (1956), pp. 73-86; and A. Hyamson, The Sephardim of England (1951), pp.127-8