The resettlement of the Jews in England was an informal arrangement during the Commonwealth of England in the mid-1650s that allowed Jews to practise their faith openly. It forms a prominent part of the history of the Jews in England. It happened directly after two events. First, a prominent rabbi, Menasseh ben Israel, came to the country from the Netherlands to make the case for Jewish resettlement, and second, a Spanish marrano (a Jew forcibly converted to Christianity who still practised Judaism in secret) merchant, Antonio Robles, requested that he be classified as a Jew rather than Spaniard during the war between England and Spain.
Historians have disagreed about the reasons behind the resettlement, particularly regarding Oliver Cromwell's motives, but the move is generally seen as a part of a current of religious and intellectual thought moving towards liberty of conscience, encompassing philosemitic millenarianism and Hebraicism, as well as political and trade interests favouring Jewish presence in England. The schools of thought that led to the resettlement of the Jews in England are the most heavily studied subject of Anglo-Jewish history in the period before the eighteenth century.Gow, Andrew Colin and Fradkin, Jeremy (2016). Protestantism and Non-Christian Religions in ed. Rublack, Ulinka (2017). The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations. OUP
Background In 1290, King Edward I of England had issued an edict expelling all Jews from England. However, the English Reformation, which started in the 1530s, brought a number of changes that benefited Jews in the long term. Doctrines and rituals of the Roman Catholic church that insulted Jews were eliminated, especially those that emphasised their roles as deicides. Further anti-Catholicism, with the Pope as antichrist, came to replace antisemitism.Lindemann, Albert S.; Levy, Richard S. (2008). Antisemitism: A History. Oxford University Press. . p. 151.Endelman, Todd M. (1999). The Jews of Georgian England, 1714–1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society. University of Michigan Press. . p. 47 The period of the English Civil Wars and Interregnum was marked by both widespread millennial beliefs and a beginning of religious tolerance. Significantly, millenarianism in England often had a strong Hebraist character, that emphasised the study of Hebrew and Judaism. This was sometimes extended by certain individuals to claim the English as the descendants of the Ten lost tribes of Israel,Scult, Mel (1978). Millennial Expectations and Jewish Liberties: A Study of the Efforts to Convert the Jews in Britain, Up to the Mid Nineteenth Century. Brill Archive. p. 18.Hirschman, Elizabeth Caldwell and Yates, Donald N. (2014). The Early Jews and Muslims of England and Wales: A Genetic and Genealogical History. McFarland. pp. 163–173 with Cromwell himself numbering amongst the supporters of this idea.Lapide, Pinchas E. (1984). Hebrew in the Church: The Foundations of Jewish-Christian Dialogue. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. . p. 73.
After both the Alhambra Decree of 1492, which expelled Jews from Spain in 1492, and similar measures in Portugal in 1496, some converso traders (Jewish converts to Christianity, who often practised Judaism in secret, sometimes also known as New Christians or derogatively as Marranos) settled in London and Bristol. The small community was largely linked by trade to Antwerp, and was expelled altogether in 1609. It was with London's growing importance as a trading city that Jews from the Netherlands began to settle in the country once more from the 1630s. It is from this first that the current Jewish population of the UK has grown.Edelman, Todd M. (2002). The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000. University of California Press. pp. 17–18
Religious toleration and liberty of conscience The 1640s and 1650s in England were marked by intense debates about religious tolerance, marked by speeches and tracts by radical puritans and dissenters who called for liberty of conscience. This extreme diversity of opinion about religious toleration was sorted into 12 schools of thought in the study of the period by W.K. Jordan. John Coffey uses a simpler three-point schema: anti-tolerationists, conservative tolerationists, and radical tolerationists, pointing out that although the latter were in a minority, they formed an important part of the debate.Coffey, John (2006). The Toleration Controversy during the English Revolution. in C. Durston and J. Maltby, eds, Religion in Revolutionary England. Manchester University Press, 2006. pp. 42–68. Nonetheless it is important to remember that although figures such as William Walwyn, Henry Vane, John Milton, and others made powerful apologia for religious toleration, their frame of reference was theological, rather than secular in nature and they were not calling for religious pluralism as is understood today.Walsham, Alexandra (2006).Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700. Manchester University Press. pp. 232–233. Zagorin, Peter (2003). How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West. Princeton University Press. pp. 195–196. . The early and mid Seventeenth century was also marked by a rise in Hebraism, the study of Jewish scriptures, which were often used to discuss political issues such as the existence of a monarchy or republic, and religious toleration. This debate used Jewish sources to justify its conclusions.Parker, Kim Ian (2015). ‘A King Like Other Nations’: Political Theory and The Hebrew Republic in the Early Modern Age in Kileen, Kevin, Smith, Helen, Willie, Rachel Judith (2015). The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c. 1530–1700. OUP Oxford. . The most prominent scholar in the field was the MP and jurist John Selden, whose thought was influenced by Thomas Erastus and Grotius. Selden proposed minimal government intervention on matters of religion, a view he modelled on the Hebrew Commonwealth. He in turn influenced similar approaches in John Milton (whose plea for freedom of the press, the Areopagitica (1644), directly named him), Thomas Hobbes and James Harrington (the latter of whom proposed settling Jews in Ireland in his book The Commonwealth of Oceana).Himmelfarb, Gertrude (2011). The People of the Book: Philosemitism in England, From Cromwell to Churchill. Encounter Books. . pp. 144–146Nelson, Eric (2011). The Religious Origins of Religious Tolerance. Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Overall the strongest political group of the 1640s and '50s, the English Puritans, had a negative view of toleration, seeing it as a concession to evil and heresy. It was often associated with tolerating the heresies of Arminianism, the philosophy of free will and free thought, and Socinianism, a doctrine of Anti-trinitarianism. But despite this Puritan hostility to toleration, England did see a certain religious laissez-faire emerge (for instance, the Rump Parliament repealed the recusancy laws in 1650). This was partly due to the impossibility of stopping religious free expression, but it also became a part of the cause of the new model army.Worden, Blair (2012). God's Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell. OUP. p. 68. The doctrinal policies of the protectorate were largely conservative. However, this Puritan train of thought could also point towards liberty of conscience. For Congregationalists, truth lay in the spirit rather than institutions. Like the Platonists, they searched for internal unity amidst external diversity.Worden (2012). pp. 69–70. Further, Puritans valued conscience, which could be neither forced nor tested, over ritual and ceremony. So rather than toleration, the key debate among key figures in the Protectorate revolved around liberty of conscience. For Blair Worden, Cromwell's religious policy was rooted in a search for union of believers, rather than toleration of differing beliefs, and religious persecution was the largest obstacle to this union. However, liberty of conscience extended only to "God's peculiar" and not heretics (such as Quakers, Socinians, and Ranters).Worden (2012). pp. 71–73.
There was a great increase of religious freedom and the ecclesiastical diversity in Cromwellian England. This marked a revolutionary change and led to increasing toleration in the years after the interregnum ended.Worden (2012). pp. 73–74. On the one hand, the loosely Calvinist Cromwell allowed the punishment of men such as the Unitarian John Biddle and the Quaker James Nayler, and accepted the restrictions on religious tolerance found in the Humble Petition and Advice of 1657. But on the other hand, his entourage included men who wanted more liberty of belief than he allowed. These non-sectarian 'merciful men' or politiques, who wanted to understand and tolerate beliefs different to their own, included Bulstrode Whitelocke, Matthew Hale, and Sir Charles Worsley.Worden, Blair (2012). God's Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell. OUP. pp. 85–86.
Millenarian 'admissionists' The toleration of Jews was largely borne by the hope of converting them to Christianity. Leonard Busher was one of the first to call for the readmission of the Jews to England and the toleration of their faith in 1616. Lawyer and MP, Henry Finch and the scholar Joseph Mede both wrote of the benefits of the conversion of the Jews in the 1620s. The Scottish minister John Wemyss advocated readmitting Jews to Christian lands with a view to converting them in the 1630s. So, by the 1640s, the imminent conversion of the Jews was a widespread belief among Puritans. Indeed during that decade the Christians who were most liberal towards Jews are also those who were most committed to their conversion. A number of these 'admissionists' were close to Cromwell, including John Sadler, John Dury, and Hugh Peter. Other notable readmissionists include exiled Royalist cleric Thomas Barlow and the Dissenter Henry Jessey. The Fifth Monarchy Men were another example of Puritan millenarians who saw the readmission of the Jews as hastening the kingdom of Christ. The exiled Royalist Sir Edward Nicholas is one of the few admissionists who did not seem interested in conversion. By contrast, the anti-admissionists were often animated by the belief that it would be difficult or impossible to convert the Jews. William Prynne's anti-Semitic pamphlet A Short Demurrer, which was printed on the eve of the Whitehall Conference, and the pamphlet Anglo-Judaeus or The History of the Jews Whilst Here in England by W.H. both doubt that the Jews would be converted once in England.Scult, Mel (1978). Millennial Expectations and Jewish Liberties: A Study of the Efforts to Convert the Jews in Britain, Up to the Mid Nineteenth Century. Brill Archive. pp. 18–32 Many millenarians at the time emphasised the chosen role of England in God's plan, and this was often accompanied by the identification the Jews as the true Israel of the Bible. Indeed, they saw the Jews as a superior group, sharing some characteristics with the chosen nation of England. This belief was rooted in the literal interpretation of the Biblical primacy of the Jews found in the writings of Thomas Brightman.Hirschman and Yates (2014). p. 167 This meant that if the Jews were specially favoured by God, the English must listen to their appeals for help.Crome, Andrew (2014). The Restoration of the Jews: Early Modern Hermeneutics, Eschatology, and National Identity in the Works of Thomas Brightman. Springer. . p. 189 These philo-semitic figures, who also believed in the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land, included Jeremiah Burroughs, Peter Bulkeley (whose father had given Brightman's funeral sermon), John Fenwicke, and John Cotton.Crome (2014). pp. 179, 184–188
1649 to 1654: First steps towards resettlement