Part 5

Early in March 1656 a proclamation was issued by the Privy Council declaring all Spanish monies, merchandise, and shipping to be lawful prize. The ink of this document was scarcely dry—indeed it had not been formally published—when, on the denunciation of an informer, the house of Don Antonio Rodrigues Robles, a wealthy Spanish merchant and Marrano of Duke’s Place, City, was entered by bailiffs armed with a Privy Council warrant instructing them to “seize, secure, and keep under safe custody all the goods and papers therein found.” On the same day the Commissioners of Customs, acting under a similar warrant, took possession of two ships in the Thames, the _Two Brothers_ and the _Tobias_, which were believed to be Robles’s property.[137] On the face of it, this action seemed to have no connection with the Jewish question. The fact that the information on which the warrants were based was presented to the Council by so staunch a friend of the Jews as Thurloe suffices to show that its Jewish bearing was at first quite unsuspected. It was apparently the private enterprise of a perfidious scrivener named Francis Knevett, who, after obtaining the confidence of several members of the Marrano community in his professional capacity, had discovered that under the new proclamation he might betray them with advantage to himself.[138] This seems also to have been the view of Robles, for in a petition he immediately addressed to the Protector he disputed the validity of the seizures on the purely legal ground that he was a Portuguese and not a Spaniard, and that his rights as a Merchant Stranger, which were consequently unaffected by the war with Spain, had been unjustly invaded.[139] On this point the Council, to whom the petition was referred, ordered an inquiry, and one of its members, Colonel Jones, was deputed to take evidence.

Meanwhile some suspicion that the case was aimed at the newly acquired privileges of the Marranos seems to have got abroad. Many of the Jews in London were of Spanish birth, and others, though natives of Portugal, were probably endenizened Spaniards, since in their guise of _Nuevos Cristianos_ they had held high office under the King of Spain.[140] It was clear, then, that if the case against Robles was established other prosecutions would follow, and in that way the small Jewish community would be broken up. The danger was all the greater since the protection and privileges so recently acquired by the Jews had only been granted verbally, and might easily be repudiated if public opinion proved too strong for the Protector. There was, however, no immediate reason why the leading Marranos, who had hitherto been in negotiation with Cromwell, should take up Robles’s cudgels, for he belonged to a party in the Synagogue which had imbibed strong Royalist sympathies in Holland and France, and which, consequently, had kept itself aloof from Menasseh’s Readmission campaign. They accordingly confined themselves to the presentation of a petition to the Protector, in which they asked that the “favours and protection” accorded to them, including the right of worship, might be confirmed in writing. At the same time they prayed for a license to acquire ground for a Jewish cemetery. This document was signed by Menasseh ben Israel, Antonio Fernandez Carvajal, and five other Marranos, but Robles was not among its signatories.[141]

Cromwell at once referred this petition to the Council, but the Lord President, apparently recognising that the Jewish question was coming up in a new form, held it back until the Robles case had been dealt with.[142] The fact that Robles was a Jew had, indeed, already been ascertained, and the belief that the prosecution was aimed at all his co-religionists was gaining ground owing to a new outburst of activity on the part of the anti-Semites. The anxiety of the Marranos at the shelving of their petition became accentuated by this agitation, and especially by the doubts which it seemed to be producing in the minds of some of their best friends. The wavering feeling in high places was made disagreeably manifest to them by a letter addressed to Menasseh ben Israel by John Sadler, in which that friend of the Jews pointed out that the charges of ritual murder and _quasi_ idolatry preferred by Prynne and Ross were being widely discussed, and that a public answer to them was urgently necessary.[143] Before Menasseh’s reply was written Colonel Jones presented an interim report to the Council, from which it appeared _inter alia_ that Knevett had filed a further information denouncing other Marranos as Spanish subjects.[144]

It was now no longer possible to ignore the existence of an anti-Jewish conspiracy. The first action of the Jews was to hurry forward the publication of Menasseh’s reply to Prynne and Ross. This took the form of the famous _Vindiciæ Judæorum_—the third tract printed in the present volume. It was described merely as “A Letter in Answer to certain Questions propounded by a Noble and Learned Gentleman touching the reproaches cast on the Nation of the Jewes.” The date of its appearance, however, fixes its relation to the Robles crisis, for it was published ten days after Colonel Jones’s report, while the seriousness of that crisis is strikingly illustrated by the urgent and earnest tone of the pamphlet. Menasseh evidently felt that not only his own grandiose idea of a new asylum for Israel was at stake, but that even the small progress that had been achieved towards that end was threatened by a more rigid exclusion of the Hebrew nation. He threw his whole soul into this fresh vindication of his people and their claims. Nothing, indeed, that had come from his facile pen had been more dignified, more impressive, more convincing. The vanity, the superficiality, the pretentious mysticism of his former works had gone. He was no longer playing a part even to himself. He was merely the champion of his people in a moment of their sore trial, writing from a heart whose every throb was for their welfare and their honour. The simple eloquence of this essay, its naïve garrulousness, the glimpses it yields of a pious, gentle, self-denying character, made it one of the most effective vindications of the Jews ever written. The best tribute to its value is afforded by the fact that it has since been frequently reprinted in all parts of Europe when the calumnies it denounced have been revived.

The _Vindiciæ Judæorum_ was a fitting prelude to the dénouement that followed. With this certificate in their hands the Marranos felt that they might risk claiming their legal rights as Jews, and thus at once repudiate their Spanish nationality and challenge a settlement of their status in the country. The decision was a bold one, but there was shrewd method in its apparent rashness. If the Marranos were technically Spanish subjects, they were in reality testimonies to the intolerance of Spain which made that country, in Cromwell’s words, “the natural, the providential enemy of England,”[145] and which was one of the grounds of the war. Like the Protestant traders whose liberty of conscience had been trampled on in Spain they also had been persecuted, though in a worse form. They were fugitives from the Inquisition, and consequently had a peculiar claim on the indulgence and consistency of the English people, who at that moment were filled with righteous horror at the religious policy of the “Popish enemy.”

In pursuance of this idea Robles now addressed a fresh petition to the Protector, which reached the Council of State on the 15th April,[146] five days after the publication of the _Vindiciæ_. In this document the purely legal question of nationality was dropped, and Robles confined himself to reciting how he and his kindred had been persecuted by the Inquisition in Portugal and Spain, how his father had died under torture, how his mother had been crippled for life, and other members of his family burnt or sent to the galleys because they were Jews. He related that he had sought refuge in England, “intending therein to shelter himselfe from those tiranicall Proceedings and injoy those Beneffitts and Kindnesse which this Com̄onw^{th} ever aforded to aflicted strangers.” He appealed to Cromwell’s notorious sympathy for “afflicted ones,” and especially “owr nation the Jews,” and skilfully suggested that a continuance of his prosecution would be tantamount to the introduction of the Inquisition into England. A week later affidavits confirming the statements in this petition were signed by all the leading Marranos and handed to Colonel Jones.[147] Thus the Crypto-Jews threw off their disguise. In the investigations which followed, the existence of over twenty Jewish families in London was revealed, and it was given in evidence that many of them had resided for years in the country.

These tactics produced dismay in the ranks of the anti-Semites. Knevett made a last despairing effort to construct a fresh case against the Jews by trying to bribe Robles’s servants to assist him in framing a new information. In this he failed.[148] The case was now quickly disposed of. On April 25th the Council of State, still anxious to avoid responsibility for a decision, sent all the papers to the Admiralty Commissioners, with a request for a prompt report. On May 11th the Commissioners summoned the witnesses before them, but extracted little else from them than that Robles was believed to be Portuguese, and that they were all victims of the Inquisition. On May 14th the Commissioners reported that they were unable to give a definite opinion on the question of nationality. Two days later the Council screwed up their courage to a decision, and, without giving any reasons, ordered all the warrants to be discharged, and reinstated Robles in the possession of his goods, premises, and ships.[149]

The Jewish battle was won, and nothing now remained but to secure the fruits of victory in an inexpugnable form. What followed is, in detail, a matter of conjecture, but the broad lines of the settlement we know from the petition of the Corporation of the City of London, already quoted. Rights of “cohabitation and trade in these dominions” were formally accorded to the Jews in writing.[150] That this happened before the end of 1656 we may gather from a statement of Cromwell’s intimate friend, Samuel Richardson, who, in his “Plain Dealing,” published in that year, says of the Protector, “He hath owned the poor despised people of God, and advanced many of them to a better way and means of living.”[151] The first steps were probably taken on the 26th June, when the longdeferred petition of the Marranos for a license to acquire a burial-ground and for a confirmation in writing of their rights of residence and worship came up for consideration.[152] The Council, still reluctant to engage their responsibility, made no entry of the discussion in their Order Book, and it was probably arranged that Cromwell should personally confirm the Jewish right of residence, subject to an understanding that the spirit of the recommendations presented to the Council after the Whitehall Conferences should be observed. The right to acquire a cemetery was certainly granted. Cromwell probably further engaged himself to instruct the London city authorities to place no impediments in the way of the Jews trading on an equality with other citizens.[153] On their side, the Marranos must have agreed not to assist in an indiscriminate immigration of their co-religionists, not to obtrude their worship and ceremonies on the public, not to engage in religious controversy, and not to make converts.[154] The restriction with regard to worshipping in private houses was also probably revised, and the maintenance of a synagogue, subject to the other conditions, sanctioned.[155] In February 1657 Antonio de Carvajal and another leading Marrano, Simon de Caceres, signed the lease for a Jewish cemetery in Mile End.[156] Shortly afterwards another result of the settlement was made public. Solomon Dormido, a son of David Abarbanel Dormido and nephew of Menasseh ben Israel, was admitted to the Royal Exchange as a duly licensed broker of the City of London, the authorities waiving in his favour the Christological oath essential to the induction of all brokers.[157] As wholesale trading in the City was transacted exclusively through brokers, the admission of a Jew to that limited fraternity is a substantial proof of the acquisition of untrammelled trading rights by the new community.

The victory, it will be observed, secured to the local Marranos all they required, and in a measure realised the aims of Cromwell’s own policy. To Menasseh ben Israel, however, it was no victory: it was a compromise of a purely selfish nature, which left his idea of a proclamation of a free asylum to the persecuted and scattered remnants of Israel as remote as ever. We may be certain that he did not hide his grief or his indignation. There is indeed abundant reason for believing that he quarrelled over it with the new Jewish community. His hopes of returning to his old position in Amsterdam were shattered, for the Dutch Jews, who had always shared the Stuart sympathies of their Christian compatriots, had formally abandoned him when they found they had nothing to gain from his mission, and had opened negotiations on their own behalf with the exiled king at Bruges.[158] He might, perhaps, have secured his future by becoming Rabbi of the London community had he been content to abide by the terms of the new settlement. This, however, he sturdily refused, and although he was deserted by all his friends, and his monetary resources were exhausted, he continued from his lodging in the Strand to urge on Cromwell the issue of the proclamation on which he had set his heart.

That he must have quarrelled with the London Marranos immediately after the settlement is shown by a letter he addressed to Cromwell towards the end of 1656, in which he asked for pecuniary help, and stated that he (the Protector) was “the alone succourer of my life in this land of strangers.”[159] Cromwell responded with a gift of £25, and in the following March granted him a pension of £100 a year, dating from February, and payable quarterly.[160] Unfortunately this pension was never paid, and Menasseh became overwhelmed with cares.[161] Nevertheless, for six months longer he doggedly pursued his mission. In September 1657 his only surviving son, Samuel ben Israel, who had remained with him in England, died.[162] Then his spirit broke. Begging a few pounds from the Protector[163] he turned his steps homewards, carrying with him the corpse of his son.

A broken and beggared man he met his family at Middelburg, in Zeeland. He was now bent with premature age. The comely, good-tempered face, with its quizzing eyes and dandyish moustache, so familiar to us in Rembrandt’s etching, had become hollow-cheeked and hollow-eyed. From the crow’s-feet under the temples the whiskers had grown wildly until they formed a white patriarchal beard.[164] It was the wintering touch of the hand of death. Two months later Menasseh died of a broken heart at the house of his brother-in-law, Ephraim Abarbanel, in the fifty-third year of his age.[165]

VI. THE REAL “VINDICIÆ”

One more question remains to be elucidated. How did the seemingly precarious settlement of the London Jews manage to survive the wreck of the Commonwealth?

Both Menasseh and Cromwell had builded more solidly than they knew. If the solution of the Jewish question arrived at towards the end of 1656 was not wholly satisfactory, it was precisely in that fact that its real strength lay. Experimental compromise is the law of English political progress. From the strife of wills represented in its extremer forms by Cromwell’s lofty conception of religious liberty on the one hand, and by the intolerance of the sectaries on the other, had emerged a compromise which conformed to this law, and which consequently made the final solution of the question an integral part of English political evolution. The great merit of the settlement was that while it disturbed little, it gave the Jews a future in the country on the condition that they were fitted to possess it.

The fact that in its initial stage it disturbed so little rendered it easy for Charles II. to connive at it. Had Menasseh ben Israel’s idea been realised in its entirety, the task of the restored Monarchy would have been more difficult. London would have been overrun by destitute Polish and Bohemian Jews driven westward by persecution, some fanaticised by their sufferings, others plying the parasitic trades into which commercial and industrial disabilities had driven the denizens of the Central European Jewries.[166] Many of them would have become identified with the wild Judaical sectaries who were the bitterest enemies of the Stuarts, while the others would have given new life to the tradition of Jewish usury, which for nearly four hundred years had been only an historical reminiscence in the country. Under these circumstances, we can well conceive that a re-expulsion of the Jews might have been one of the first tasks of the Restoration.

From this calamity England and the Jews were saved by the restricted character of the compromise of 1656. When the Commonwealth fell to pieces the Jewish community of London consisted only of some forty or fifty families of wealthy and enterprising merchants, scarcely distinguishable in their bearing and mode of life from the best kinds of merchant-strangers hailing from Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Lisbon, Cadiz, and Leghorn.

Nevertheless, efforts to procure their expulsion were not wanting. Royalists who recognised in them a relic of the hated Commonwealth, merchants whose restricted economic science resented their activity and success, and informers who imagined that their toleration was a violation of English law, set to work early to denounce them. These manœuvres began, indeed, as soon as the breath was out of Cromwell’s body. Only a few weeks after the Protector’s death a petition was presented to Richard Cromwell demanding the expulsion of the Jews and the confiscation of their property.[167] At the same time, Thomas Violet, the notorious informer and pamphleteer, made a collection of documents bearing on the illegality of the Jewish settlement, which he submitted to Mr. Justice Tyril, together with an application that the law should be set in motion against the intrusive community. The worthy Justice shrewdly suggested to Mr. Violet that in the then confused political situation he would do well to take no action. It would, he opined, be only prudent to await the establishment of a stable Government before moving in so serious a matter.

A few months later Charles II. re-entered London, and the Commonwealth was at an end. Naturally, everybody looked to the new régime to redress the particular grievance or grievances he harboured against “the late execrable Usurper,” and the anti-Jewish party was particularly prompt in its representations under this head. Scarcely had Charles arrived in the Metropolis when the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London presented to him a humble petition, bitterly complaining of the action of Cromwell in permitting the Jews to re-enter the land, and asking the King “to cause the former laws made against the Jews to be put in execution, and to recommend to your two Houses of Parliament to enact such new ones for the expulsion of all professed Jews out of your Majesty’s dominions, and to bar the door after them with such provisions and penalties, as in your Majesty’s wisdom should be found most agreeable to the benefits of religion, the honour of your Majesty, and the good and welfare of your subjects.”[168] The long pent-up wrath of the City found full expression in this petition, which must be read in its entirety to be appreciated. Thomas Violet followed with another petition, which was equally violent.[169] He declared that by law it was a felony for any Jew to be found in England. He did not, however, propose their expulsion, as he did not think that would be the best way of turning them to profitable account. His suggestion was in the first place that all their estates and properties should be confiscated, and then that they should be cast into prison and kept there until ransomed by their wealthy brethren abroad. A third petition, dated November 30, 1660, is preserved among the Domestic State Papers, but the names of the authors are not given. It runs very much on the lines of the City petition, but it admits the hypothesis of Jews residing in England under license, provided they were heavily taxed.[170]

No direct reply to any of these petitions is recorded. The views of the new Government are, however, no mystery. In the first place, there was no real Jewish question in the country, inasmuch as the Jews were very few, their character was above reproach, and the practice of their religion was conducted with so much tact and prudence that it was impossible in sober truth to be moved by Violet’s impassioned complaint of “a great dishonour of Christianity and public scandal of the true Protestant religion.”[171] Consequently the Government were free to consider the question exclusively from the point of view of secular politics. Once regarded in this light the conclusion could not be long in doubt. Cromwell’s maritime and commercial policy had been adopted by the statesmen of the Restoration, and the success of this policy—represented by the re-enacted Navigation Act—depended to no inconsiderable extent on toleration of the Jews.

Moreover, Charles was under personal obligations to the Jews, and had assured them of his protection even before he came by his own. The Jews of Amsterdam, and some of the wealthier Jews in London, had assisted him during his exile, especially the great family of Mendez da Costa and Augustin Coronel, the agent for Portugal and a personal friend of Monk.[172] Shortly after the mission of Menasseh ben Israel to Cromwell these Jews had approached Charles II. at Bruges and had assured him that they had neither assisted nor approved the Rabbi’s negotiations. Thereupon General Middleton had been instructed to treat with them for their support to the Royalist cause, and Charles had promised that “they shall find when God shall restore his Majesty that he would extend that protection to them which they could reasonably expect, and abate that rigour of the law which was against them in his several dominions.”[173] That these negotiations were not without practical result is beyond question, for the Da Costas and Coronels, as well as several other Jewish families, were exceedingly active on Charles’s behalf during the last few years of the Commonwealth.

It must not be imagined that this Royalist activity represented any double-dealing on the part of the Jews. Those who, like Carvajal and De Caceres, had fled direct from the Inquisition to England, were faithful to Cromwell to the end. The Royalist Jews were men who had acquired their Cavalier sympathies in France and Holland, and shared them with their Christian fellow-citizens in those countries. None of them were parties to the negotiations with Cromwell in 1655–56, and none had ever affected Puritan sympathies. They probably had conscientious objections to Republicanism, for they were of the aristocratic Sephardi branch of Israel, with some of the bluest blood of Spain in their veins and immense wealth in their strong-boxes. Their dissent from their Puritan brethren was an early illustration of the falsity of the hypothesis of Jewish political solidarity, which is to this day a cherished delusion of the anti-Semites.