Which town is mentioned in the first verse of the hymn O Come, All Ye Faithful?
O Come, All Ye Faithful with "Bethlehem" a common Jacobite cipher for England and "Regem Angelorum" a pun on "Angelorum" (Angels) and "Anglorum" (English). Wade had fled to France after the Jacobite rising of 1745 was crushed. From the 1740s to 1770s the earliest forms of the carol commonly appeared in English Roman Catholic liturgical books close to prayers for the exiled Old Pretender. In the books by Wade it was often decorated with Jacobite floral imagery, as were other liturgical texts with coded Jacobite meanings. In performance, verses are often omitted – either because the hymn is too long in its entirety or because
O Come, All Ye Faithful Duke of Leeds, in 1795, heard it sung at the Portuguese embassy in London. However, the translation that he heard differs greatly from the Oakeley-Brooke translation, and was over forty years after John Francis Wade had published the hymn in 1751. The Sacred Harp hymn tune "Portuguese Hymn", in 9 11 11 meter with 7 7 10 refrain ("Hither Ye Faithful, Haste with Songs of Triumph"), is slightly different from the usual tune. O Come, All Ye Faithful "O Come, All Ye Faithful" (originally written in Latin as ) is a Christmas carol that has been attributed to various authors,