In an earlier post where we talked our our Jewish East End London walks we traced the history of Jewish London up until the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290.
In this post we follow London’s Jewish history through to the time of Cromwell and the resettlement of the Jews. Our City of London walks that cover the City’s eastern section is steeped in the capital’s Jewish history and this is a foretaste of the type of in depth detail we like to present on our walking tours of London.
For nearly four centuries after the expulsion it was held that beginning it was illegal for a Jew to reside in England, yet they were here. Successive governments found it expedient to ignore the presence of traders with international experience especially if they were profitable to the crown.
During these centuries the Jews in England were either ‘conversos’(converts to Christianity) or ‘Marranos’ (Jews publicly professing Christianity but privately practising Judaism).
An early example is Dr Roderigo Lopes, personal physician to Queen Elizabeth I, executed on patently false charges of treason (there is a list of famous trials displayed in the City of London Guildhall, which we cover on our historic City of London walks, which includes that of Dr Lopes’).
The Puritan revolution in England, culminating in the English Civil War of 1642-48, radically altered the position of the Jews vis-à-vis England.
The revolution, itself an extended process through the reigns of Elizabeth, James I and Charles I, involved a search for purity in religion and, above all, a return to the Bible as a source of authority.
Translations of the Bible into English were now available and printing made them widespread. Puritans reading their Bibles were impressed with the religious rigour of the Old Testament prophets and became increasingly interested in Judaism.
A chair in Hebrew studies at Oxford was founded to facilitate the more accurate translation of the Bible and soon pamphlets were circulating questioning the exclusion of Jews from England.
Suggestions were made that the problems that beset England (as far as the Puritans were concerned, this meant the King and the established church) were God’s punishment for the way the Jews had been treated.
The Civil War led to the execution of the King and to England becoming a republic from 1648-1660. The Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell was interested in developing overseas trade, particularly at the expense of the Dutch Republic and the Spanish crown.
The presence in Amsterdam of a wealthy and talented group of international merchants and financiers of Spanish and Portuguese descent was an attractive prize — if they could be persuaded to come to England…. The process was long and at first furtive, beginning about 1650.
The first Marrano (for they were to remain such for a while) to arrive in London appears to have been Diego Rodriguez Arias in 1651, followed in 1653 by Duarte Henrique Alvarez and his nephew Antonio Rodriguez Robles, who lived in Duke’s Place at Aldgate, on the eastern edge of the City, which you cover on our Eastern City London walks.
In 1654, a future leader of the London Jewish community arrived — David Abrabanel (also known as Manoel Martinez Dormido). Dormido came from Andalusia where he had been a city treasurer and customs and revenue officer.
Tortured by the Inquisition, he went to Amsterdam in 1640, becoming a merchant and an intelligencer (i.e. a spy) for Oliver Cromwell.
In 1654, Dormido lost his business in Recife due to the exigencies of war and came to live in Great St Helens, London (not far from Aldgate). Dormido formed a minyan in his house and in the year of his arrival petitioned Cromwell for the resettlement of the Jews in England.
The following year (1655) two other future leaders arrived in London — Simon (Jacob) de Caceres and Antonio Ferdinando Carvajal (also known as Abraham Hisquiau Carvajal).
Caceres was a merchant and shipowner with interests in the sugar trade and land in Barbados and was a Sephardi, originally from Hamburg. Carvajal was a shipowner and gold bullion merchant born in Portugal at Fundao. He fled to the Canaries in 1630, later joining a Marrano group in Rouen where he was denounced by a certain Diego Cisneros. Carvajal escaped to England in 1655, and settled in Leadenhall Street in the City of London.
Walks of ours that include this area include the Historic City, The Secret City and the Jewish East End London walk.The same year Carvajal, along with his sons Alonzo, Jorge and Joseph, was endenizened (naturalized) by Oliver Cromwell.
Carvajal like Dormido had a minyan at his house but pursued the rather odd disguise of being a Roman Catholic (in a fiercely Protestant country!) by attending mass at the Spanish Embassy.
He was fined as a recusant (a persistent Catholic) in 1655. It is difficult to explain Carvajal’s behaviour unless it is connected to the fact that he and Caceres, like Dormido, were also intelligence officers for Cromwell.
Now events were to conspire to bring three separate interests to pursue the same objective. In late 1655 England declared war on Spain, and in March the following year the Council of State ordered the seizure of goods of all Spanish subjects.
On 14 March two ships belonging to Antonio Robles (Carvajal’s nephew) were seized. Robles immediately petitioned the Commissioners of the Admiralty for return of his property on the grounds that he was neither Spanish nor Catholic, but Portuguese and Jewish.
For the first time since 1290 there was an acknowledgement in print that a Jew was living in England!
More on Lodnon’s jewish History will follow soon and we will be adding one of our free London walks around the east End history later on this year. So keep checking back to our daily blog to learn more of the history of this wonderful city that spent 2,000 years preparing for you to explore it.
Tags: Aldgate, Diego Rodriguez Arias, Jewish History, Jewish Walks, London East End Walks, London walks, London's Jewish Community, Oliver Cromwell, Tours of Jewish London
