When George Frideric Handel touched English shores late in the year 1710, he arrived in a country that was in an alarming condition of social change and political turmoil. The composer immediately thrust himself into London's public life on its highest levels. He acted in a diplomatic as well as a musical capacity upon arriving there, emerged as the leading figure in one of the key cultural activities of the upper classes, and in so doing participated directly in the fast-moving changes that were taking place in English life.

What was going on in British politics at the turn of the eighteenth century was novel and forward-looking, but very dangerous. Britain was the first Western nation in which political dispute became public, uncensored, and driven by parties. Despite the triumph of Parliament over the Crown in 1688–89, the country remained deeply divided constitutionally, threatened by the prospect of a new civil war, and shaken by openended ideological conflict which was publicly promoted in uncontrolled pamphleteering. If anything, people from other countries saw the English as the wild men of Europe. But in many respects the political activities that began in this period marked the start of modern, ideologically defined political parties. While we must be careful not to cast this history in the terms of mid-Victorian Peelites and Conservatives, a new political order was being established in England at the turn of the eighteenth century.