The Jewish Diaspora

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Readmission to England

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1656Amsterdam → England

Why it happened

After the 1290 expulsion, readmission was driven by Puritan millenarian and philo-Semitic hopes of converting the Jews,1 and by Menasseh ben Israel's 1655 petitioning of Cromwell for Jews to 'live and trade' in England, matching the Protectorate's commercial interests.2

The migration

Since Edward I's 1290 expulsion, no openly Jewish community had existed in England, though Iberian were trading quietly in London by the 1650s.1 The Amsterdam rabbi Menasseh ben Israel arrived in 1655 and petitioned Cromwell; the Whitehall Conference of December 1655 heard lawyers conclude there was no law barring the Jews' return,33 yet clergy and merchants objected and Cromwell closed it without any formal act—the 1290 expulsion was never legislatively reversed.3 Tacit toleration instead came through the 1656 lawsuit of Antonio Rodrigues Robles, who recovered goods seized during the Anglo-Spanish War by pleading he was a Portuguese Jew, not a Spanish enemy.2 The mostly settlers, arriving via Amsterdam, then leased a Creechurch Lane synagogue that opened in 1657.2 By the decade's end only about thirty-five Jewish families lived in London,4 but this informal resettlement founded modern Anglo-Jewry.4

Sources

  1. BKatz DS. 1994. The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850. Clarendon Press (Oxford University Press)
  2. CSpanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation. 2026. History. Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation (Bevis Marks) link
  3. BWolf L. 1901. Menasseh ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell. Jewish Historical Society of England (London: Macmillan) link
  4. BEndelman TM. 2002. The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000. University of California Press link