The song soon developed an independent life of its own, separate from the masque of which it had formed a part. First heard in London in 1745, it achieved instant popularity. It quickly became so well known that Handel quoted it in his "Occasional Oratorio" in the following year. Handel used the first phrase as part of the Act II soprano aria, "Prophetic visions strike my eye", when the soprano sings it at the words "War shall cease, welcome peace!" Similarly, "Rule, Britannia!" was seized upon by the Jacobites, who altered Thomson's words to a pro-Jacobite version.