The Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753 is an…
March 1754 CE
The Jews had shown particular loyalty to the government during the Jacobite rising of 1745.
Their chief financier, Sampson Gideon, had strengthened the stock market, and several of the younger members had volunteered in the corps raised to defend London.
Possibly as a reward, Henry Pelham in 1753 had brought in the Jew Bill of 1753, which allowed Jews to become naturalized by application to Parliament.
It had passed the Lords without much opposition, but on being brought down to the House of Commons, the Tories made protest against what they deemed an "abandonment of Christianity."
The Whigs, however, had persisted in carrying out at least one part of their general policy of religious toleration, and the bill had been passed and received royal assent (26 Geo. II., cap. 26).
The public had reacted with an enormous outburst of anti-Jewish vitriol, and the Bill is repealed in the next sitting of Parliament, in 1754.
While the Sephardim chiefly congregate in London as the center of international commerce, Jews immigrating from Germany and Poland settle for the most part in the seaports of the south and west, such as Falmouth, Plymouth, Liverpool, Bristol, etc., as pawnbrokers and small dealers.
From these centers it has become their custom to send out hawkers every Monday with packs to the neighboring villages, whereby connections are made with some of the inland towns, where they have begun to settle, such as Canterbury, Chatham, and Cambridge, Manchester, and Birmingham.
Traders of this type, while not of such prominence as the larger merchants of the capital, come in closer contact with ordinary English people and may have helped to allay some of the prejudice which had been manifested so strongly in 1753.
The Marriage Act 1753, full title "An Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage", popularly known as Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act (citation 26 Geo. II. c. 33), is the first statutory legislation in England and Wales to require a formal ceremony of marriage.
It comes into force on March 24, 1754.
The Act has been precipitated by a dispute about the validity of a Scottish marriage, although pressure to address the problem of clandestine marriage had been growing for some time.
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