It is perhaps interesting to quote a little more for context, and perhaps for spreading a little light on why the Henrys, father and son, found themselves in India. Roth starts his Address:
"There is a widespread impression that, in the centuries-long interval between the fall of Jerusalem and (shall I say?) the Balfour Declaration, the Jews entirely lost the martial qualities that had once distinguished them...But it is necessary for me to point out that to consider the military ability of the Jew negligible, is not only erroneous but is in diametrical opposition to the facts..."
Roth goes on to discuss at some length and in detail the history of restrictions, prohibitions and methodical exclusions Jews experienced from the Roman Empire and Middle Ages onwards, but finds exceptions everywhere - including in the Crusades, the Barons' Wars, the Armada, the Civil War, the "Glorious Revolution", Napoleonic Wars and so on, including a number of officers who had fought on the HMS Victory. However, most of these soldiers and sailors "had to abandon their Judaism" to do so".
It was only after the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1829 that it became at last legally possible for a Jew to obtain a commission in the armed forces of the Crown: for naval and military officers below the rank of Rear Admiral and Major-General were specifically exempted from the necessity of making the new Declaration "upon the true faith of a Christian" which assisted in holding up Jewish political emancipation for another generation.
I have not been able to discover who was the first person to avail himself of the privileges that were now opened. Captain Lionel Gomez da Costa, who died of wounds at Lucknow in 1857 and was universally considered to be a man of outstanding gallantry, and Edmund Helbert Ellis, Ensign in the Bombay Native Infantry, who died in 1851 at the age of 22, are the first professing Jews of whom I have certain knowledge who obtained military commissions in the regular army, though it is hardly possible that they had no predecessors.
Indeed, Jews were by now beginning to figure with increasing frequency on the army list, a notable military tradition being built up by some families which merged in the end in the general community. It will be noticed, incidentally, that the Indian army seems to have exercised an especial attraction for them - possibly because social prejudice was less strong or because it may have recognised, as the Horse Guards did not as yet, the possibility (apart from the legality) of professing Judaism in the army...
Meanwhile, under more favourable conditions (though even now it was impossible for them to make public profession of Judaism), members of the communal proletariat were trickling in greater numbers in the ranks. It is less easy to trace them after this lapse of time, but occasionally one comes across unmistakable names...
A number fought in the Crimea - Sergeant Isaac Jacobs of the 62nd Foot; Lehman Cohen of the 52nd (whose father had served as a sergeant under Wellington, as has been mentioned); Corporal Henry Jessel, a cousin of the famous lawyer; Nathan Henry, who rode in the charge of the Light Brigade and was captured; and, in the navy, Master Gunner J. C. Lyons and Samuel Nathan, son of an Exeter centenarian, who gained two medals while serving in Queen.
Other veterans of mid-Victorian campaigns were Lewis Levy, of the 14th Light Dragoons, who marched in the Persian Expeditionary Force in 1857 and subsequently in the Central Indian Field Force in 1857-8; Sergeant Walter Rooney (Bucks), R.A., who fought in India throughout the Mutiny and died when on the point of returning home; and Sergeant H. P. Moseley, who served in Canada at the time of the Fenian Risings, long a familiar figure in London in his scarlet uniform as a Chelsea Pensioner...
Jewish devotion to what England stands for was manifested during the Crimean War in a very remarkable manner. Several Russian Jews, captured before Sebastopol, regarded their release from the "Russian Haman" of the time as providential and enlisted in the British forces. A couple of them are mentioned in the Jewish Chronicle of 30, vi, 1893 and 22, ix, 1893 - F. Gust, captured at Balaclava, who then entered the 4th Regiment of Foot, and a certain Fisher Cohen, likewise a prisoner, who served in the British forces from 1854 to the end of the war. I fancy that another of the group died some years back at Plymouth: and Isaac Weber, long a familiar figure in the East End, was another. For other Crimean veterans, see Jewish Chronicle, 20, vi, 1873; 29, ix, 1899; 22, iv, 1904.
However, conscientious Jews were still excluded from the army by reason of the fact that Judaism was not recognised in the official list as one of the denominations that could be recorded on attestation. That this was altered in the end was due in particular to the efforts of two persons. When Colonel Albert Goldsmid was gazetted from Sandhurst in 1866, he had no difficulty, for he was barely conscious of his Jewish origin. Later on, his ancestral loyalties had been revived and he embraced the faith of his forebears, and when in 1884 he became a member of Headquarters Staff he began to work for the removal of the old obstacle.
At the other end of the military scale, Private Woolf Cohen, of the Fifth Lancers, with a handful of others, had insisted notwithstanding all difficulties in reporting themselves as Jews.
In the end their efforts were successful, and in the revised edition of the Queen's Regulations of 1886 Judaism at last received recognition. Only now the way was clear. Had conforming Jews previously been quite absent from the British army (and the facts as we have seen show a completely different picture) the fault would not have been theirs.
[Source: In 2013, this essay was available at the Jewish Historical Society of England website (http://www.jhse.org/book/export/article/15406), but the link was not working in 2016. However, it is currently online at www.jstor.org/stable/29777839 (accessed 19.8.2016).]
[PB: I have tried to follow up the references to Nathan Henry and others in the Jewish Chronicle, but with no luck. The archive's index can be accessed in various ways e.g. for genealogy via www.myheritage.com/research/collection-10148/the-jewish-chronicle, and more generally via
For a comprehensive list of of resources for UK Jewish (and wider) genealogy, see http://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/links.htm.]