that if the Jewish burial service was performed at all its performance was successfully concealed. It is also manifest that this mode of interment did not satisfy the religious scruples of the more observant Jews. In September, 1657, Menasseh Ben Israel's son died in his house in London, and the pious father determined, notwithstanding the greatness of the expense and the narrowness of his means, to transport the body to Holland. To enable him to do this he petitioned the Protector to commute the pension of £100 which had recently been granted him for an immediate payment of £300: the petition was not granted in full, for it was finally arranged that the pension should be resigned and a new grant of £200 be made. Menasseh was ultimately enabled to make the journey without receiving the grant', but the transaction shows that the right of burial with Jewish religious ceremonies had not

1 S. P. Dom. Intro. cxlvi. 89, and cc. 8, printed in Wolf's Menasseh Ben Israel at p. lxxxvii. Mr. Wolf does not do Cromwell justice in regard to the payment of this pension. He says: "Unfortunately this pension was never paid, and Menasseh became overwhelmed with cares" (Menasseh Ben Israel, p. lxix). The pension was granted on March 23, 165, and enrolled on May 21, 1657: “Manasseth Ben Israel, a penčon of 10011 per annum, payable quarterly and commencing from the 20th day of February, 1656[-7]" (see the Fifth Report of the Deputy Keeper of Public Records, App. II, p. 263). Before Menasseh's departure, in the autumn of 1657, only two quarterly payments of £25 each would be due, and there is ample evidence that two such payments were made, one before September 29, 1657, and one after that date. It was probably this last payment which enabled Menasseh to make his way to Middelburg. It was not suggested by Menasseh's friends that the pension was not paid; what Sadler says in his petition to Richard Cromwell is "that at length he submitted to resign his former pension for a new grant of £200 to be presently paid as the councill ordered. But notwithstanding his stay & expense in procuring several seales, he never gott one penny of the said £200." It may be that Sadler was misinformed about the seals being actually procured, at any rate they are not extant now; and if they were ever granted the financial advisers of the Protector may have thought that as Menasseh died almost directly after the commutation of the pension, and before another quarter's allowance had fallen due, there was no moral obligation to pay his widow the promised grant of £200. For the two payments of £25 each, see the Eighth Report of the Hist. MSS. Comm., Part I, App. pp. 94 b and 95a.

been granted, and that the establishment of a Jewish cemetery was unknown to the authorities. Otherwise the answer to Menasseh's petition would have been, You can bury your son here, and there is, therefore, no occasion to commute your pension: this would seem to dispose of the theory that a favourable answer was given to Menasseh's petition of March, 1656. As we have already stated, the petition was a very modest one; it did not ask for the right of public worship or the formation of a synagogue, but merely permission to meet privately for the purposes of devotion at the petitioners' own houses; nor, on the other hand, did it ask for the establishment or consecration of a cemetery, but merely for a licence to bury the dead in a convenient place outside the city "with the Proprietor's leave." The Jews in England were at this time classed with Popish Recusants, and therefore such a licence was necessary, for the Act to prevent and avoid dangers which may grow by Popish Recusants (3 Jas. I, c. 5, s. 15) imposed a penalty of twenty pounds upon persons causing a Popish Recusant to be buried in any place other than in the church or churchyard, according to the ecclesiastical laws of the realm. The request was merely to exercise a right which, had it not been for the statute, could not have been denied. However, since the outbreak of the war with Spain and the decision of the Robles case, the Jews here no longer lived as Spanish subjects in close touch with the Embassy and regularly attending the mass held there; accordingly they may have been no longer considered as Popish Recusants, and so liable to the penalties of the statute. As stated above, they probably at this time attended some Protestant place of worship. And so if they buried their dead in private ground without any religious ceremony they did nothing illegal, and if Jewish religious rites were performed, the strictest secrecy was observed. When all the circumstances are taken into consideration, it can hardly be maintained that the fact that a few Jews were buried in a garden at Mile End without

I

any publicity, and probably without any previous consecration of the ground, is any proof that any legal protection had been accorded to those professing the Jewish religion 1.

1 For the facts concerning the first Jewish cemetery at Mile End, see an article by Mr. Israel Davis in the Jewish Chronicle of November 26, 1880. Some interesting letters on the subject appeared in the same periodical during the month of October, 1901.

VI.

well's

We must now turn from the pursuit of theories which, Cromhowever interesting, are either insufficiently supported by attitude to evidence or demonstrably false, and attempt to sum up the Jews. what Cromwell actually did. It is clear that at one time he had been inclined to concede some legal protection to the Jews, and had accorded Menasseh both sympathy and encouragement; but the popular storm which the public. discussion of the proposals had raised convinced him of the folly of trying to carry into actual operation any plan that he may have formed. Accordingly, after the Conference he never made any such attempt, and actually expressed himself as opposed to the resettlement of the Jews. "I had almost forgot," writes Colonel Whitley from Calais to Sir Edward Nicholas on Jan. 14, 1655, the month after the Conference had broken up, "that Cromwell says it is an ungodly thing to introduce the Jews; but, if he refuse them, it is because they refuse to purchase it at the sum desired unless they may have the authority of a parliament for their being there with safety 1." The finances of the Commonwealth were at this time at a low ebb, and the Royalist newswriter, in repeating the statement made by Cromwell, cannot help, having regard to his previous conduct, reflecting that it was not sincere, and that privileges might yet be granted if the Jews were willing to pay a sufficiently heavy price for them. But such privileges could only have been validly granted by legislation, 1 The Nicholas Papers, vol. III, p. 255.

the Jews

under Cromwell

as under

Charles I.

and the Jews, with that prudent caution which they are credited with generally displaying in money matters, very wisely refused to pay for a boon which could only be securely granted under the guarantee of an Act of Parliament, when the Protector had not the courage to introduce a bill which, even if backed by his great influence, would have stood little chance of ever becoming law. At The legal any rate, Cromwell did nothing, and the position of the position of Jews remained throughout his régime the same as it had been in the time of Charles I. They were liable to severe the same penalties if they did not attend an authorized, that is, a Christian, place of worship, and they were precluded from holding any Jewish religious service. Jewish rites may, indeed, have been privately practised, but it is evident that the strictest secrecy was observed. It is true that there were still Jews in England, as there had been in the time of the late king, but they outwardly conformed to the laws of the land, or at any rate they were careful to commit no open or flagrant breach of them. Some few of them had rendered the Protector services, especially in his expeditions to the Indies and his war with Spain, so that their presence here was well known to him. As the law then stood he might have ordered their withdrawal, but so long as they created no trouble or disturbance he was willing that they should remain. As Mr. Carteret Webb, writing it is true nearly a century after the events, but at the same time entrusted by the oldest Jewish community in London with the advocacy of their cause, and having knowledge of the traditions of the English Jews and access to all their documents, says, "Nothing more was done by Cromwell than the conniving at Alvaro da Costa and five other Jew families living in England1." This statement of comparatively late date is amply corroborated by The case of the Jews stated, which was drawn up in opposition to the very serious attempt to levy a special tax upon the Jews, shortly after the deposition of James II, the

1 The question whether, &c., p. 36.