Thus the famous Conference resulted, like all the attempts made during the interregnum, in nothing being done and no alteration in the law being made; Cromwell's good-will was not proof against the prejudice which was displayed at the Conference and which was rampant among the mob outside. Nor did the Lord Protector, actuated as he was at this time by the motives of the astute politician rather than by the feelings of the religious enthusiast, care to press the cause of religious toleration in the teeth of popular opposition; and yet he did not give the petitioners a formal dismissal. And so Rabbi Menasseh remained in London, but with far different hopes to those he cherished on his first arrival. On March 24 of the following year he again took part with six other Jews in presenting a petition to the Protector. The boons prayed for by the petitioners were now very small; they were two only, (1) protection in writing for meeting privately in their own houses for purposes of devotion; (2) a license to bury their dead in a convenient place without the city. But even this petition was not granted. It was referred to the consideration of the Council and no answer was ever returned to it. A few days later, on April 10, Menasseh published his Vindiciae Iudaeorum, his last effort to gain the cause he had come to plead. Speaking of the Conference he says: "Mens judgements and sentences were different. Insomuch, that as yet, we have had no finall determination from his Serene Highnesse. Wherefore those few Jewes that were here, despairing of our expected successe, departed hence. And others who desired to come hither, have quitted their hopes, and betaken themselves some to Italy, some to Geneva, where that Commonwealth hath at this time most freely granted them many and great priviledges 1." But Menasseh, though his Vindiciae effected nothing, though no response came to his second petition with its very humble prayer, still

1 Vindiciae Iudaeorum, the seventh section.

stayed behind at his post, hoping against hope. In September, 1657, his son Samuel died in his house, and the pious father having solemnly promised to take his mortal remains to Holland and lay them to rest in consecrated soil there, "at length with his heart ever broken with griefe on losing heer his only sonne and his presious time with all his hopes in this iland he got away with so much breath as lasted, till he came to Midleburg and then he dyed1." His mission had proved an utter failure.

1 Petition of John Sadler to Richard Cromwell (S. P. Dom. Inter., cc. 8), and Petition from Menasseh to Oliver, Sept. 17, 1657 (S. P. Dom. Inter., clvi. 89), both printed in Wolf's Menasseh Ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell, p. lxxxvii.

V.

The Con

MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL'S mission had failed. ference summoned to consider his proposals had broken up without coming to any resolution; the petition presented in the following spring had received no answer, and at length, after waiting two years, the great Rabbi had returned to his home and friends, giving up the cause for lost. But the publicity given to the mission and the hopes founded upon it were such that many undoubtedly believed that it had met with some measure of success. There are accordingly some few references in contemporary literature to favours conferred upon the Jews by Cromwell. It is probable that all of these refer to the Conference at Whitehall in December, 1655, and there is little doubt that, owing to the attitude that Cromwell had adopted towards Menasseh both before and at the Conference, the impression had got abroad that special privileges had been formally accorded to the Jews. It was to officially contradict this widespread impression that the narrative set out at full length in the last article was published by order of Cromwell and his Council. It would serve no useful purpose to enumerate or comment on all the statements made by the writers of the period, but it will be sufficient to mention the most explicit of them all. John Evelyn writes in his Memoirs, December 14, 1655, "Now were the Jews admitted." This must allude to the Conference, for if we turn to the official narrative we find that this was

1 1 Evelyn's Memoirs, vol. I, p. 288 (1st edition).

the day of the penultimate meeting of the Conference, but we also find that the diarist's statement is untrue, and that no resolution on this or any other point raised at the Conference was ever reached. Nor can there be any reason for casting doubt upon the statement in the official narrative, for it is amply corroborated by Menasseh himself in his Vindiciae Iudaeorum1. In fact the negotiations of 1655 to 1656 had resulted in precisely the same way as those of seven years earlier, and the statements made in regard to them are entitled to no more weight than those which have already been referred to in dealing with the earlier period. It is, moreover, somewhat remarkable that the learned Dr. Haggard 2 omits all mention of Menasseh and the Conference in his concise but accurate account of this subject. He does, however, allude to the petition of 1648, and it may well be that he regarded Menasseh's mission and the earlier petition as really being only one continuous effort spread over a lengthy period; if such was his view it seems to have been shared by Menasseh himself, who, writing on April 10, 1656, says: "For seven yeares on this behalf, I have endeavoured, and solicited it" (namely an entrance into this Island for the Jews), "by letters, and other means, without any intervall 3." In any case it would at the present time be almost universally admitted that Dr. Haggard's words, "The question was much agitated, but nothing was done," apply with equal truth to the earlier petition and the great Rabbi's mission seven years later.

During our own and our fathers' times a great change has taken place in the opinions men have formed of Cromwell's character and his place in the history of his country. It was at one time the fashion to write him down a self-seeking hypocrite; but thanks to the powerful advocacy of Thomas Carlyle and other writers contemporary with and subsequent to Carlyle, he has become a great 2 Cons. Cas., vol. I, p. 216.

1

1 See the seventh section.

3 Vindiciae Iudaeorum, sec. 7.

statesman, nay, a hero. In 1841, when this change of view was still in the process of birth, Carlyle wrote of Cromwell: "His dead body was hung in chains; his 'place in History' -place in History, forsooth-has been a place of ignominy, accusation, blackness and disgrace; and here this day who knows if it is not rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to pronounce him not a knave and liar, but a genuinely honest man 1?" And so in the course of the apotheosis of the great Oliver, his virtue as an upholder of Religious Toleration has been much dilated upon; and his conduct towards the Jews has been selected as one instance of it. But it should not be forgotten that by the men of his own time Toleration, in those who held the reins of government, was regarded as a vice rather than a virtue; and accordingly it was not his supporters, but his political opponents, such as Walker, Evelyn, and Burnet, who laid most stress on the favours he was alleged to have shown to the Jews. Before he had risen to supreme power, he had been a staunch upholder of liberty of conscience, but once he had become head of the state he was too wise to attempt to carry out measures which he knew would create violent opposition among those on whose support his influence depended. As he himself said: "This hath been one of the vanities of our contest. Every sect saith, 'Oh give me liberty!' but give it him, and to his power he will not yield it to anybody else 2." Accordingly, when the time for its actual application came, Cromwell was constrained to allow liberty of conscience only within the very narrowest limits; for instance, in dealing with the Irish Catholics he did not force them to attend Protestant churches, but he refused to allow them to hold public worship according to their own rites. "I meddle not with any man's conscience," he wrote to the Governor of Ross; "but if by liberty of conscience you mean a liberty to exercise the mass, I judge it best to exercise plain dealing 1 Carlyle, on Heroes, p. 335.

2 Oliver Cromwell, by Charles Firth, p. 306.