The Jews Return to Britain

Individual Jews had lived in Britain as far back as the Roman conquest of 43AD and in 1070, after
the Norman conquest, Jews from Rouen in Normandy were invited in by King William I. Their
sojourn lasted just over two centuries before they were expelled by King Edward I in 1290.
The Return of the Messiah
Rabbi Ben Israel put a tempting argument to Cromwell,that the return of the Jews would hasten the
long-predicted appearance of the Messiah. Cromwell, a devout Puritan, proved susceptible. He duly
gave permission for the Jews to return, but not only because of the rabbi's religious arguments.
Six years earlier, at the end of the English Civil War, Parliament, led by Cromwell, had put the
Stewart King Charles I on trial for treason and publicly beheaded him. Afterwards, monarchy in
Britain was abolished.
Ever since, the English Republic and its Lord Protector, as Cromwell became in 1653, had been
regarded as illegitimate by the monarchies of Europe. The Jews, however, might be in a position to
remedy this situation. With their international connections and financial and diplomatic expertise,
they could smooth the way for Cromwell and his Republic to gain acceptance.
The Jews who came to Britain at this time were Sephardim, a name taken from the Hebrew word for
Spain, and were descended from the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497.
William Prynne, a Vindictive Pamphleteer
But they were not universally welcome. Their admission was attacked by William Prynne, a Puritan
pamphleteer with a long record of vindictive protests. Prynne's victims included Presbyterians,
Quakers and female actors or "notorious whores", as he labelled them.
Although Prynne had his ears cropped, his nose slit and the letters "S" and "L" for "seditious
libeller," branded on his cheeks, nothing seemed to stop him and the Jews duly became his latest

targets.
Prynne roused a great deal of popular enmity against the Jews, but Cromwell set more store by a
judicial report stating that there was no legal barrier to their return. The Jews, who began arriving
in Britain in early 1656, certainly appeared strange and foreign to many English people, though
others found them fascinating.
An Englishman Visits a Synagogue
One of these was John Greenhalgh who visited a synagogue in 1662 and afterwards wrote: "I
counted about or above a hundred right Jews... They are generally black-haired... for the Jews' hair
hath a deeper tincture of a more perfect raven black. They have a quick, piercing eye and look as if
strong intellectuals, several... are comely, gallant, proper gentlemen."
Like most newcomers to foreign countries, the Jews gathered together in close communities, mainly
in London, but later moved north to Manchester, Leeds and other cities. Their greatest assets were
their belief in a strong family life and devotion to their faith and its strict standards of behavior.
Barriers to Jewish Citizenship
Nevertheless, there was a long way for them to go towards acceptance by the established
population. Letters of denization were granted to some Jews, but this was no more than a halfway
house: the letters officially recognized their presence in Britain, but fell short of full citizenship.
There was a barrier, though. To become citizens of Britain, the Jews would have to take an oath of
loyalty as Christians and this, of course, they could not do.
Antisemitism was less blatant than it had been in medieval times, but it was far from absent in 17th
century Britain.This became evident in 1753, when the question of Jewish citizenship was proposed
in Parliament. It met with such a furore of protest that the idea had to be abandoned.
Earning Acceptance and Success
Nevertheless, like the Huguenots who had fled religious persecution in France more than contractor
london eighty years before them, the Jews were grateful for the benefits offered by Britain where
upward mobility was open to anyone willing to work for it.
Results were already apparent by the early 18th century when Solomon de Medina served as an
army contractor for the campaigns in Europe conducted by John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. As
a reward, de Medina became the first Jew to receive a knighthood.
A Jewish Lord Mayor of London and Others
In 1745, Sampson Gideon organized financial aid for King George II at the time of the Jacobite
rebellion which sought to restore the exiled Stewart dynasty to the throne of England. In a totally
different field, Michael Abulafia became music director to the Duke of Cambridge, a son of King
George III.
By the 19th century, Jews were moving into Establishment circles. In 1835, for instance, the Sheriff
of London was a Jew. Another became a baronet in 1841 and in 1855, two centuries after the return
of the Jews to Britain, David Salomans was elected Lord Mayor of London.

Sources
Endelman, Todd M: The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000 (Jewish Communities in the Modern World) by
Todd M. Endelman (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2002
ISBN-10: 0520227204/ISBN-13: 978-0520227200
Skinner, Patricia: Jews in Medieval Britain: Historical, Literary and Archaeological Perspectives
(Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2003) ISBN-10: 0851159311/
ISBN-13: 978-0851159317
BBC NEWS | UK | Q&A: Jews in Britain