CHAPTER 15

Coda: the end of Handel's Israelite oratorios

Why did Handel produce no Israelite oratorio after Jephtha? The

obvious answer is that he was growing blind and exhausted; yet this
did not prevent the production, when his sight was completely
extinguished, of a 'new' work. The Triumph of Time and Truth (1757)
was a compilation (perhaps by a collaborator) of earlier com-
positions fitted to a text provided by Morell. The libretto and most
of the music derived from Handel's // trionfo del tempo, but for the
public it was a new oratorio.1 Why did Morell and Handel choose a
non-biblical text at this juncture? Morell had to fit new words to the
music, and though some were ready made (the translation by
George Oldmixon in the 1737 libretto of// trionfo), he could have
found Old Testament ones to adapt that would have done as well.
That he was not averse to making up more texts from the Old
Testament is evident from his doing so after Handel's death: his
Nabal (1764) and Gideon (1769) are characteristic Israelite librettos,
which he fitted to existing music by Handel. The collaborators had
had much more success with their Israelite oratorios up to 1753 than
with their one full-length oratorio on another theme (Theodora was a
box-office disaster). If Handel was the one who resisted another
Israelite topic, one must ask why, his health being (in view of The
Triumph of Time and Truth) an insufficient reason. It is plausible that
the reason was the 1753 Jew Bill furore.
On 3 April 1753 Lord Halifax introduced to Parliament a Bill,
supported by the government, 'to permit persons professing the
Jewish religion to be naturalised by Parliament', which would make
it possible for foreign Jews living in Britain to apply for naturali-
sation. It met with increasing opposition during its successive read-
ings, but not enough to prevent its being enacted. However,
vehement objections to it meanwhile developed outside Parliament,
and by the third reading the opposition had seen it as a possible
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 The end of Handel's Israelite oratorios 347
means of unseating the government in the forthcoming election.2
What had begun life as a very minor legislative means of increasing
British revenue and commerce grew into a national rumpus which
its historians describe as 'a violent politico-religious controversy',
'An agitation . . . which has few parallels in English history', and
'Among the most remarkable popular movements in eighteenth-
century England', in which 'England was thrown into paroxysms of
excitement'.3 The Jew Bill (as it was known to contemporaries,
though during most of the upheaval it was already on the statute
book) became the chief topic of political discussion for over six
months. It generated over sixty pamphlets (mostly hostile to the
measure) and twenty-five prints (all hostile), new editions of old
tracts made relevant to the occasion, daily newspaper reports,
comments and attacks, and copious constituency Instructions to
Members of Parliament (Perry mentions over four closely printed
pages of addresses and answers in the Gentleman's Magazine for
November). 4 A casual reader of history thinking it was a storm in a
teacup would be misinterpreting the mood of the time.5
The first organised opposition came from City merchants, and
was based on their belief in a static economy and a finite amount of
available wealth; they produced an image of bread being taken out
of Englishmen's mouths. But they did more. Their petition, pre-
sented during the bill's third reading, shrewdly introduced the idea
that it would 'tend greatly to the dishonour of the Christian religion
[and] endanger our excellent Constitution' before advancing any
economic objections, and the economic objections easily roused
conservative fear of the growing power of financiers.6 By the end of
the same day opposition speeches had included such remarks as 'God
have mercy upon such of the natives as shall continue Christian;
for I am sure our rulers the Jews would have none', and by the
following October Archbishop Herring was writing that 'faction,
working upon the good old spirit of High Church, has made wild
work in the nation'.
The administration, perhaps unaware of the Bill's reflection of
Whig economic, political and religious latitudinarianism, had failed
to anticipate that it could be used to rouse the hostility to these
principles shared by (as it transpired) the majority of the nation,
whether country Tories, landed Whigs, High Churchmen, City
merchants, small traders, or the eighteenth-century equivalent of
Little Englanders, once they felt their identity and self-interest was

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 348 The Patriot libretto
threatened. The opposition propagated wildly exaggerated versions
of the Bill, alleging it proposed to naturalise all foreign Jews (in fact
it only allowed them to seek naturalisation, a long and expensive
process). The government had decided on repeal by the time Parlia-
ment reconvened, but by then the issue had assumed such import-
ance that it prompted a remarkable debate in the House of
Commons in which the events of the previous forty years were
rehearsed, with opposing interpretations of their bearing on the
present state of the nation. During the recess anxious politicians had
referred to the Sacheverell case, when government resistance to
public pressure had lost it the election, and the Excise crisis, when
repeal averted election defeat - the latter precedent being followed,
with similar results, in 1754.7
The nationwide opposition to the Jew Bill was to immigration and
naturalisation as such, and expressions of antisemitism reflected or
did duty for a wider and more ingrained xenophobia (there is only
one recorded instance of an actual an ti-Jewish demonstration). 8 But
animosity to Jews was the trigger, Jews were the butt, and during
1753 'Jew' came to mean 'enemy of the Church and constitution', as
in the slogans 'No Jews; Christianity and the Constitution' and 'No
Jews; no Jacobites; New Interest and Christianity for ever'. The
identification of Jews with any threat to Church and state is
especially clear in the prints. Vox Populi, Vox Dei shows a 'mob of
Jews and Deist's' led by Samson Gideon (a highly respected and
utterly loyal London Jew) and the late Lord Bolingbroke (byword
to his opponents for Jacobitism and treachery, and recently revealed
as heretically sceptical of the validity of Scripture 9 ), who threaten
the cross, which is protected by 'the Eye of Providence'. Another
print, A Prospect of the New Jerusalem (London), calls the Bill 'Some
Popish Plot to bring in the Pretender'. The pamphlet The Crisis, or,
an Alarm to Britannia's True Protestant Sons (1754) pointed out that
'Jew' and its equivalents had simply become a cant term for any-
thing one disapproved of in politics:
In the mouth of a Jacobite, Judaism is another name for the revolution of
1688, a limited monarchy, the Hanover legacy, and the royal family ... In
the mouth of a pretended patriot and flaming bigot, Judaism is a Whiggish
administration and House of Commons, a Protestant Bench of Bishops,
liberty of conscience and an equitable toleration.10

The eighteenth-century British reader was perfectly well able to

distinguish between Old Testament Israelites and contemporary

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 The end of Handel's Israelite oratorios 349
Jews (not least in that the former could not be accused of having
killed Christ), but while this passage from The Crisis provides yet
another instance of Jews (though in this case modern Jews) being
used as a metaphor for the modern English, it also suggests that the
figure of the Jew, of any period, was far too politically loaded in
1753-4 to be capable of a neutral or favourable implication or of a
non-political meaning. The popular press disregarded historical
distinctions in its zeal to blacken modern Jews and hence the
government: Cranfield gives several instances of the London Evening
Post's references to alleged atrocities by Jews in the Middle Ages,
rehearsed to 'demonstrate' the tribe's permanently evil character.11
Israelite oratorios may have been curbed because of hostility to
Jews as both literal and metaphorical beings.12 But the deterrents
were more germane even than this. The Old Testament itself, it was
suggested, should be purged of Israelite references. The letter from
C
B. B.' in the Gentleman's Magazine for September 1753 now sounds
like one of the more absurd of the many bizarre utterances of the
crisis, but as the writer points out, what he recommends had the
precedent of no less an authority than Isaac Watts (as we saw in
chapter 9):
I have long observed the impropriety of a Christian congregation adopting
the Jewish phrases in their worship of the Almighty. There is without doubt
no composition in the world so full of strong and elevated expressions as the
Psalms, so suitable to raise the mind to adore the divine being, and to
render us truly sensible of his great goodness and mercy; his continual
providence over them that keep his statutes, and his dreadful visitations on
the wicked [quotes Psalm XXXI1.11]. But as many passages are peculiar
to the Jews, either by way of figure, or in plain words, it is wish'd, by those
that reflect, that they were omitted, or so altered as to be fitted to the state
of the Christian church. As some seasons are more favourable to reform
than others, I am willing to hope that the present disposition of the people
against the Jews, might be successfully laid hold of, that while we are
opposing the favour that seems intended for them, we may not be praying
for their establishment and prosperity, in the very words which they
themselves use; and addressing the Almighty in such terms as can only be
proper for a Jewish synagogue. These are so frequent in the Psalms that it is
scarce necessary to give an instance: - [quotes a selection of verses, for
example 'Stand up, O Lord God of Israel, to visit all the heathen' and 'O
pray for the peace of Jerusalem, they shall prosper that love thee'].
Dr Watts long since purged and improved the singing psalms, so that
they are all now Christian hymns, and may be used with great profit and
delight; and, why may not the reading psalms be so improved and rendered
Christian?13

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 350 The Patriot libretto

The Psalms are used far more often than any other book of the Bible
in the Israelite oratorios; if they were now to be censored or bowd-
lerised to exclude references to the nation and land of Israel, how
could the librettists draw on them for choruses? Worse, if the success
of the biblical Jews was anathema, how write an Israelite oratorio at
all?
Modern commentators have deduced from Handel's remark
about Theodora (that the Jews would not come to it because the story
was Christian), and from the presence of some leading Jews among
his subscribers, the supposition that a substantial part of his oratorio
audience was Jewish.14 If this is the case, it could help to explain
why, despite the ferocity of anti-Jewish feeling, Handel's 1754
season (and subsequent seasons) included revivals of Israelite ora-
torios, though no new ones.15 Some of Handel's post-1753 revisions
of his Israelite oratorios were surprisingly drastic, apparently unmo-
tivated by the usual practical considerations of cast, length and
popularity, and have puzzled modern commentators.16 A musicol-
ogist might like to examine them again to see whether they bear out
the suggestion that, like the Excise Bill at the beginning of Handel's
oratorio career, the Jew Bill had a decisive effect on his work.

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