Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  The Jews then were rapidly establishing themselves in Oliver’s mind as people willing and anxious to share in his vision of an expanding and successful England; as with some Catholics, he was increasingly willing to overlook their religious proclivities in favour of their peaceful and profitable intentions. And from every point of view he was surely right: the first Jews were said to have brought one and a half million in cash into England. It was then Oliver the Protector, under whose shadow many peoples could surely live, who inclined his mind favourably towards the Jews, rather than Oliver the visionary – the millennial side of their reintroduction was left to his comrades who had created the original climate of opinion. It was indeed that same useful Dormido who had in November 1654 originally submitted three petitions to the Protector, retailing the grisly horrors of the Inquisition towards those Jews still within its clutches. Oliver received Dormido with cordiality, but the Council rejected the petition. Menasseh ben Israel, still at Amsterdam, decided that he himself must come in person to carry through the destiny of his people, either advised to do so by ajew living in London, or even, as John Sadler hinted in a letter to Richard Cromwell after Oliver’s death, invited by the Protector himself.*13 ( * In December 1655 the Venetian Ambassador was to repeat a story that Oliver had met Menasseh ben Israel in his youth, while travelling in Flanders.15 But there is no conclusive evidence of this, and neither party ever referred to it. If, as has been suggested, Oliver never even made this journey abroad, then the encounter was probably a legend invented to explain his philo-Semitic tendencies.)

  Whatever the exact details of his invitation, in September 1655, just before the festival of the Jewish New Year, Menasseh ben Israel duly arrived in London; he brought three Rabbis with him in his train. He did not however stay in the familiar Jewish surroundings of the City, among his co-religionists, but was lodged by the Protector in the Strand, close by Whitehall, in a house opposite the New Exchange. Menasseh was a man of great charm, as well as the importunate if admirable personal energy which had brought him so far. His first attempt to display a host of books as references to his thesis to the Council of State was not a success, since Oliver was not present. But when the two men met, Menasseh’s mental powers, his vision of the world, and his earnest seeking after the will of God (if wrongly directed) quickly conquered the Protector, who had after all succumbed to the delights of the company of many lesser men. Menasseh ben Israel was invited to dine with the Protector; and it was a measure of his success in Puritan London that he dined also with Catherine Ranelagh, in whose salon he would encounter such intellectual philo-Semites as cornenius and Hartlib.14

  Menasseh ben Israel’s petition of October 1655, which described him as “A Divine and a Doctor of Physic in behalf of the Jewish Nation”, was a moving and dignified document calling for resettlement and free and public practice of the Jewish religion. It began with a compliment, how for some years since he had “often perceived that in this Nation [England] God hath a People, that is very tender hearted, and well wishing to our sore afflicted Nation …” He then explained his desire for resettlement in terms of the prophecy of Deuteronomy, which once fulfilled concerning the total dispersion of the Jews would lead to their return to the Holy Land. Now there were Jews in all corners of the globe – “And therefore this remains only in my judgement, before the MESSIA come and restore our nation, that first we must have our seat here likewise.” More worldly motives which might appeal to their proposed hosts followed: a section entitled “How profitable the Nation of the Jews are” which contained an interesting explanation of the Jewish talent for “merchandicing”. “I attribute this,” wrote Menasseh ben Israel, “in the first place to the particular Providence and mercy of God towards his people: for having banished them from their own Country, yet not from his Protection, he hath given them, as it were, a natural instinct, by which they might not only gain what was necessary for their need, but that they should also thrive in Riches and possessions; whereby they should not only become gracious to their Princes and Lords, but that they should be invited by others to come and dwell in their lands.”16

  These arguments, and especially the preamble, in which Menasseh ben Israel wrote: “I am not come to make any disturbance… but only to live with my Nation in the fear of the Lord under the shadow of your protection”, evidently struck an agreeable chord in Cromwell’s breast. The petition was duly forwarded to the Council, and a motion made that “the Jews deserving it may be admitted to this nation to trade and traffick and dwell amongst us as providence shall give occasion.” A sub-committee was set up. Such a step was of course not without popular reaction. The preachers, merchants and populace were reported to be against the resettlement, and there were certain anti-Semitic manifestations to Menasseh ben Israel in public. Oliver himself was favoured with two pieces of personal attention. On the one hand he was traduced by rumours of pecuniary advantage: he was about to sell St Paul’s to the Jews for a synagogue for a million pounds, for example, or as the hostile satire Agathocles had it, the Protector:

  Would prostitute it to so vile an use

  As to become a synagogue for Jews.

  Prynne, who was rabidly anti-Jewish as he was anti-Catholic, accused him of being bribed by the Jews to the tune of .Ł200,000, and the Tuscan agent spoke of “Jewish gold” being handed out. On the other hand, and far more flatteringly, his friendship even gave rise to the suggestion among the Jews themselves that he might be the Messiah: a hasty if fruitless journey was made to Huntingdon by a Jewish investigator to see if there was anything in his parentage to warrant such a conclusion. This was not the only manifestation of the personal reverence of the Jews for Cromwell. When Menasseh first met the Protector, one report said “he began not only to kiss but to press his hands and touching his whole body with the most exact care. When asked why he behaved so he replied that he had come from Antwerp [actually Amsterdam] solely to see if his Highness was of flesh and blood since his superhuman deeds indicated that he was more than a man and some divine composition issued from heaven.”17

  Indifferent to either theory, on 4 December Oliver addressed the Council personally on the subject of the Jews in what was said afterwards to have been the best speech he ever made. He was able to dismiss the question of the expulsion of 1290 which had after all been an act of royal prerogative, and therefore only applied to those Jews concerned. And in contrast to Menasseh ben Israel’s own arguments, he pooh-poohed the notion that Jewish traders, if introduced, would somehow outwit their English colleagues “the noblest and most esteemed merchants of the whole world”. But the controversy thereafter was none the less brisk. Thurloe, who believed at this point that nothing would come of it, told Henry Cromwell in Ireland that his father had been consulting with judges, merchants and divines on the subject and found many differences of opinion: “the matter is debated with great candour and ingenuity” he wrote “and without any heat.”18 But in the final session of the Council on 18 December the heat also made its appearance.

  Many objections were raised and Oliver’s ultimate contribution was to interrupt the debate, saying that matters must be left in his own hands and those of the Council. In any case he was anxious to prevent any so-called compromise being reached: the suggestion that the Jews should only be readmitted to decayed ports and towns, and should then pay double customs duties on imports and exports was exactly what the Marrano community did not want. Finally an adverse report from the committee of the Council of State was returned, which nevertheless left Cromwell free to deal with the matter.

  From now on, the status of the Jewish community in England entered a curious amorphous phase, in which it was generally believed that they were allowed back, and yet there was absolutely no legal backing to the belief, beyond the personal patronage of Cromwell, the man, rightly in this case, termed the Lord Protector. John Evelyn for example wrote in his Diary of 14 December: “now were the Jews admitted”. But the situation was more complicated: as Salvetti the Tuscan agent
reported, the wise Jews believed that Cromwell would now proceed “with prudence rather than precipitancy” in view of the hostile reactions of the Council. Only the unwise were confident that he would not have encouraged them so far in the first place if he had not intended to make a public demonstration. “It is thought that the Protector will not make any declaration in their favour, but tacitly he will connive at their holding private conventicles, which they do already in their houses, in order to avoid public scandal.”19 Cromwell then in th early months of 1656 proceeded on his prudent if not precipitate path, neither abandoning his own determination to readmit the Jews, nor outwardly making an issue of it all with the Council.* ( * It had been previously held that Oliver gave the Jews a verbal assurance of safety in January 1656; but this has been demonstrated to rest on a mistranslation of Salvetti’s report, from “meanwhile they continue to meet (for prayer)” to the false text of “meanwhile they may continue to meet”. Menasseh ben Israel wrote in April 1656: “as yet we have had not determination from His Serene Highness.”20) In March the Jews succeeded in their petition for a cemetery at Mile End; the fact that they were concentrating on such devotional matters showing that they were beginning to despair of the formal readmission once so much expected. Another pamphlet from Menasseh ben Israel, Vindidae Judaeorum, of April 1656 provided an answer to many of the popular accusations against the Jews, the work of Prynne and others, such as the ritual murder of Christian children, and the worship of idols. But in the meantime the development of the Anglo-Spanish War was ushering in a new phase in the whole business. Those Crypto-Jews among the Marranos who had passed themselves off as Spanish Catholics now found themselves threatened with the hideous confiscation of their property, on the grounds that they were enemy aliens. When the goods of Don Antonio Robles were seized by the bailiff of the Privy Council in March, a moment of crisis was reached. After the plea that he was in fact Portuguese failed, the alternative and more daring plea that he was Jewish was put forward. Robles made a personal appeal to Oliver, stressing his Jewish nationality, and referring to him hopefully as the “protector of afflicted ones”. And Robles, while admitting that he was uncircumcized and had attended Catholic chapels, succeeded in the object of his petition: in June the Council, spurred on by Cromwell, finally found that he was “a Jew born in Portugal”, and that the confiscation was therefore to be rescinded.21

  It was a crucial decision. Henceforward the Jewish merchants, bearing those great names among the early settlers of their nation in England, like da Costa, de la Cerda, Meza, Mendes, de Brite, as well as Carvajal and Dormido, walked and traded with confidence under the shadow of Oliver’s protection. As intelligencers they continued their useful trade: “they were good and useful spies” for the Protector, wrote Bishop Burnet. Burton in his Diary of 1658 referred to the Jews as “those able and general intelligencers, whose intercourse with the continent Cromwell had before turned a profitable account”. Not only that, but these distinguished Marranos did share the Protector’s visions of world expansion and world trade, and took readily to the notion of their adopted country. Simon de Caceres drew up a plan to conquer Chile, offering to Oliver both to organize the expedition and command it: those concerned would “go all upon an English account, and as Englishmen, and for his highness service only”. Carvajal, who like the Gentile merchant, Martin Noell, came to enjoy the Protector’s friendship, had plans for the revictualling and fortification of Jamaica, one of his patron’s most pressing problems. By 1657 Samuel Dormido had become the first Jewish member of the Stock Exchange, and by the spring of 1660 five tombstones had been erected in the new Jewish cemetery at Mile End.*22 ( * Still to be seen today, although long since filled by the descendants of the Marranos and their brethren, and disused. It lies behind the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Hospital.)

  In all this, there was only one tragic figure, and that was Menasseh ben Israel. The Jews were still not formally readmitted; the dispersion was not complete. The Protector had shown himself the Hope of Israel indeed,* ( * Sigmund Freud named one of his sons Oliver in response to what Cromwell had done for the English Jews.) but England was not yet the official refuge of his dreams. By the end of 1656 he was in financial straits, and appealed to Cromwell for help, receiving first Ł25 and then a pension of Ł100 – a substantial sum by the standards of the time. But his luck was out: the Treasury did not pay, and in September 1657 he had to beg some more money to take home the corpse of his only surviving son Samuel to Holland. He received Ł200 in return for surrendering his pension rights. The journey achieved, he himself died there broken-hearted later in the year. Even that money never came from a straitened Treasury, and later John Sadler was left pestering Richard Cromwell for money for the unfortunate widow Rachel ben Israel, still without success. Menasseh ben Israel was however buried with a fitting, noble epitaph in Spanish on his tomb: “He is not dead; for in heaven he lives in supreme glory, whilst on earth his pen has won him immortal remembrance.”23

  After the death of Oliver Cromwell, the apprehension of Menasseh ben Israel, born of deep knowledge of the reverses of Jewish history, about any resettlement that depended solely on the nod of one mortal man did indeed prove to have some justification. Petitions were forwarded to Richard Cromwell on behalf of English merchants to rid themselves of their Jewish competitors once more. Later a petition was presented to Charles n to undo the civil rights granted by “the late Usurper” and a City campaign mounted to that effect. A counter petition drawn up at the house of Carvajal’s widow, Maria Fernandez Carvajal and signed by her amongst others, pointed out that Royalist Jews had supported King Charles in Holland, and that he had pledged himself to toleration in the future. It was quite true: in September 1656 certain Jews at Amsterdam had applied to the King rejecting the petition of their brethren to Cromwell, in respect of which Charles had graciously acknowledged their support and suggested that any contributions they cared to make to his cause would be rewarded with patronage hereafter. Finally after anxious moments in August 1664 the Jews were at last legally readmitted.24 None of this detracted from the admirable and notable achievement of Oliver Cromwell personally in using his own power to gainsay and positively thwart the wishes of his Council to bring about a change which he judged not only beneficial to the country but right in itself. And if practical considerations played a greater part in his case than religious enthusiasm, that in itself showed how advantageous as well as benevolent his own rule could be, left to itself, when he cast himself in Robles’s phrase in the role of “Protector of afflicted ones”.

  * * *

  Sadly not all those who lived in England under the shadow of Cromwell’s protection shared the humble desire of the Jews to make no disturbance. The continuing rumbustious attitude of the religious minorities was another stone in the path of peace in England. Once again Cromwell attempted by the exercise of personal clemency to ameliorate the consequences of the laws against them. But it was to prove uphill work. While the dilemma of a man who stood for freedom of conscience on the one hand, and yet governed a country where Quakers and Baptists were indubitably penalized for their dissent was increasingly apparent. It was true that those who broke the censorship laws were treated mildly: Arise Evans and Walter Gosteld, who both presented highly critical pamphlets to the Protector, commending Charles Stuart’s monarchy, were not punished. Oliver was generally supposed to be more tolerant than his Council. Robert Overton, in prison, heard that Cromwell had shrugged off one such manifestation of popular abuse with excellent indifference to satire in a statesman. Overton had copied out a paper of derogatory verses called “The Character of a Protector” which began along these lines:

  What’s a Protector? He’s a stately thing

  That apes it in the non-age of a King

  Fantastic image of the Royal head

  The brewer’s with the King’s arms quartered . . .

  These had been subsequently filched from his letter-case and shown to the Protector in question. An explosiv
e reaction might have been expected. But a friend of Overton’s told him that Oliver had merely glanced at the paper “and I believe laughed at them as (to my knowledge) heretofore he hath done at papers and pamphlets of more personal and particular import and abuse”.25

  The fact remained that the laws of the country were harsh. The Catholics, as has been seen, were enjoying some real measure of effective toleration by 1656, and it was significant that when a hundred English people were arrested leaving the chapel of the Venetian Ambassador on the Feast of the Epiphany in January, the Protector still refused to take steps to restrict the Mass. The fault, he said, lay not with the Ambassador but with the English who had illegally attended the Mass. A year later when eight priests were arrested in Covent Garden, Oliver made merry at their expense: some of his gentlemen tried on their copes and other “popish vestments”, which caused “abundance of mirth” in both Protector and spectators. Yet no harm came to the priests thereafter. But as with the Jews, the Protector, for all his oft-declared political desire to please Cardinal Mazarin with some measure of official toleration for Catholics, was unable to bring it about. On several occasions, he assured Mazarin via his Ambassador Bordeaux that he would simply have to trust him and wait; and in the meantime when it suited Oliver’s book to arouse antiCatholic feelings – as over the Spanish War – on the grounds of their foreign allegiance, that they were all “Spaniolised” and ever had been, that too he felt free to do.26 The Catholics’ condition, like that of the Jews, was much dependent on personal sufferance.