It appears that the St. John mission, when its failure became probable, was instructed to study the Jewish question, and probably to enter into negotiations with leading Jews in Amsterdam. Certain it is that its members saw a great deal of Menasseh ben Israel during their sojourn in Holland, and that Cromwell’s benevolent intentions were conveyed to him. Thurloe, who was secretary to the mission, had several conferences with the Rabbi, and the Synagogue entertained the members of the mission, notwithstanding that public opinion ran high against them.[[50]] Strickland, the colleague of St. John, and formerly ambassador at the Hague, was ever afterwards regarded as an authority on the Jewish question, for he served on most of the Committees appointed to consider Menasseh’s petitions. Still more significant is the fact that within a few weeks of the return of the Embassy a letter, the text of which has not been preserved, was received from Menasseh by the Council of State, and an influential committee, on which Cromwell himself served, was at once appointed to peruse and answer it.[[51]] Towards the end of the following year two passes couched in flattering terms were issued to the Rabbi to enable him to come to England.[[52]]
Meanwhile, the long-feared war broke out, and negotiations were perforce suspended. From 1652 to 1654 the popular agitation for the Readmission of the Jews spluttered weakly in pamphlets and broadsheets. In 1653 there was a debate in Parliament on the subject, but no conclusion was arrived at.[[53]] In the following year, shortly after the conclusion of peace, a new element was introduced into the question by the appearance on the scene of a fresh petitioner from Holland, one Manuel Martinez Dormido, a brother-in-law of Menasseh ben Israel, and afterwards well known in England as David Abarbanel Dormido.
The mission of Dormido was clearly a continuation of Menasseh’s enterprise, and it was probably undertaken on the direct invitation of the Protector. With the restoration of peace on terms which rendered persistence in the policy of the Navigation Act indispensable, Cromwell must have been anxious to take the Jewish question seriously in hand. The negotiations opened by Thurloe with Menasseh in 1651 were probably resumed, and an intimation was conveyed to the Jewish Rabbi that the time was ripe for him to come to England and lay his long-contemplated prayer before the Government of the Commonwealth. Menasseh’s reasons for not accepting the invitation in person are not difficult to understand. He doubtless refers to them in the passage from the Vindiciæ I have already quoted, where he says he was entreated by his kindred and friends, “considering the chequered and interwoven vicissitudes and turns of things here below, not to part from them.”[[54]] His kindred and friends were wise. Owing to his quarrels with his colleagues in the Amsterdam Rabbinate his situation had become precarious, and it might have become hopelessly and disastrously compromised had he, in the then incensed state of Dutch feeling against England—a feeling in which the leading Jews of the Netherlands participated—undertaken a mission to the Protector. Hence the delegation of the work to his brother-in-law. An indication of Menasseh’s interest in the new mission is afforded by the fact that his only surviving son, Samuel ben Israel, was associated with Dormido, and accompanied him to London.
Unlike his distinguished relative, Dormido had nothing to lose by approaching Cromwell. A Marrano by birth, a native of Andalusia, where he had enjoyed great wealth and held high public office, he had been persecuted by the Inquisition, and compelled to fly to Holland. There he had made a fortune in the Brazil trade, and had become a leading merchant of Amsterdam, and one of the chiefs of the Synagogue. The conquest of Pernambuco by the Portuguese early in 1654 had ruined him, and he found himself compelled to begin life afresh.[[55]] He saw his opportunity in the mission confided to him by Menasseh. It opened to him the chance of a new career under the powerful protection of the greatest personality in Christendom. Unlike his brother-in-law, he had no Millenarian delusions. The Jewish question appealed to him in something of the same practical fashion that it appealed to Cromwell. While the Protector was seeking the commercial interests of the Commonwealth, Dormido was anxious to repair his own shattered fortunes.
On the 1st September he arrived in London, and at once set about drafting two petitions to Cromwell.[[56]] In the first of these documents he recited his personal history, the story of his sufferings at the hands of the Inquisition, and of the confiscation of his property by the Portuguese in Pernambuco. He expressed his desire to become a resident in England and a subject of the Commonwealth, and wound up by praying the Protector to use his good offices with the King of Portugal for the restitution of his fortune. The second petition was a prayer for the Readmission of the Jewish people to England, “graunting them libertie to come with theire famillies and estates, to bee dwellers here with the same eaquallnese and conveniences wch yr inland borne subjects doe enjoy.” The petition, after a violent tirade against the Inquisition and the intolerance of the Apostolical Roman Church, pointed out that the Readmission of the Jews would be to the advantage of trade and industry, and would vastly increase the public revenues. These adroit appeals to the chief motives of the Protector’s statecraft were followed by a suggestion that in the event of the prayer being granted the petitioner might be appointed to the control and management of the new community, with, of course, appropriate compensation for his services.
Despite their obviously selfish motives, Cromwell received these petitions with significant graciousness. They were at once sent to the Council, with an endorsement, stating that “His Highnes is pleased in an especiall manner to recommend these two annexed papers to the speedy consideracion of the Councell, that the Peticion may receive all due satisfacion and withall convenient speed.” It is impossible not to be struck by the pressing nature of this recommendation, when it is considered that the chief petition dealt with a very large and important political question, and that its signatory was a man wholly unknown in England. Cromwell’s action can only be explained by the theory that he was, as I have suggested, the instigator of the whole movement. Whether the Council were aware of this or not is impossible to say. They had as yet no decided opinions on the subject, but they saw that it was a large and difficult question, that its bearings were imperfectly known, and that its decision, either one way or the other, involved a very serious responsibility at a time when the religious element wielded so much power in the country, and withal so capriciously. At the personal instigation of the Protector, however, they consented to appoint a committee to consider the petitions. A month later, taking advantage of a meeting at which Cromwell was not present, the committee verbally reported, and the Council resolved, that it “saw no excuse to make any order.”[[57]]
That Cromwell was disappointed by this result he speedily made clear. In regard to the Resettlement petition, he did not care to take the responsibility of giving a decision; but on the other petition he took immediate steps to afford satisfaction to Dormido, in spite of the refusal of the Council to have anything to do with it. He addressed an autograph letter to the King of Portugal, asking him as a personal favour to restore Dormido’s property, or to make him full compensation for his losses.[[58]] Seeing that Dormido was an alien, and had absolutely no claim on the British Government, this personal intervention by Cromwell on his behalf affords a further strong presumption of his privity to the Jewish mission. It is also not a little significant that a few months later the Protector granted a patent of denization to Antonio Fernandez Carvajal, the chief of the little Marrano community in London, and his two sons.[[59]]
The question was, however, not allowed to rest here. Cromwell wanted an authoritative decision, which would enable him to do more than merely protect individual Jews, and it was clear that this could not be obtained unless a more important person than Dormido were induced to take the matter in hand. The question had to be raised to a higher level, and for this purpose it was necessary that it should make some noise in the country. Only one European Jew had sufficient influence in England to stimulate the popular imagination, and to justify the Government in taking serious steps for the solution of the question. That man was the author of the “Hope of Israel.” In May 1655 it was decided to send Samuel ben Israel back to Amsterdam to lay the case before his father, and persuade him to come to London.[[60]] There is no mystery as to who suggested this step. Menasseh in his diplomatic way merely tells us he was informed that his “coming over would not be altogether unwelcome to His Highness the Lord Protector.”[[61]] There is, however, a letter extant from John Sadler to Richard Cromwell, written shortly after Oliver’s death, in which it is definitely stated that Menasseh was invited “by some letters of your late royall father.”[[62]] Sadler no doubt spoke from personal knowledge, for in 1654 he was acting as private secretary to the Protector, and the endorsement on Dormido’s petitions recommending them to the Council bears his signature.[[63]] Under these circumstances we can well understand that Menasseh was induced, as he says, to “conceive great hopes,” and that he resolved to undertake the journey. In October he arrived in London with the MS. of his famous “Humble Addresses” in his pocket.
During the five months that Menasseh was preparing for his journey, Cromwell was not idle. Colonial questions were occupying his mind very largely, and on these questions he was in the habit of receiving advice from one at least of the London Marranos, Simon de Caceres, a relative of Spinoza, and an eminent merchant who had large interests in the West Indies, and had enjoyed the special favour of the King of Denmark and the Queen of Sweden.[[64]] It was no doubt at the instigation of De Caceres that in April 1655 Cromwell sent a Jewish physician, Abraham de Mercado, with his son Raphael to Barbados.[[65]] Later in the year he was deep in consultation with De Caceres in regard to the defences of the newly acquired island of Jamaica, and a plan for the conquest of Chili.[[66]] The most important result of these confabulations was a scheme for colonising Surinam (which since 1650 had been a British colony) with the Jewish fugitives from Brazil, who had been obliged to leave Pernambuco and Recife through the Portuguese reoccupation of those towns. The idea was, no doubt, suggested by Dormido, himself one of the victims of the Portuguese conquest. In order to attract the Jews, they were granted a charter in which full liberty of conscience was secured to them, together with civil rights, a large measure of communal autonomy, and important land grants.[[67]]
Thus a beginning was made in the solution of the Jewish question by their admission as citizens to one of the colonial dependencies of Great Britain. This was the first important step achieved by Cromwell, and it illustrates at once his deep interest in the Jewish question, and the practical considerations which actuated him in seeking its solution.