Editing History of the Marranos in England

{{Short description|English Jews forcibly converted to Christianity}}
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{{History of the Jews in England}}

The '''History of Sephardic Jews in England''' consists of the [[Sephardic Jew]]s' contribution and achievement in England.

Sephardic Jews were Spanish and Portuguese Jews living in the Iberian Peninsula who converted or were forced to convert to Christianity during the Middle Ages, but continued to practice Judaism in secrecy.

==Arrival of Sephardic Jews==
Documents suggest that, although small in number at the time, Sephardic Jews fleeing persecution from the [[Inquisition]] developed a small community in [[London]] around the late 16th century, largely known from contemporary [[Spain | Spanish]] and [[Portugal | Portuguese]] sources writing about English Catholic ambassadors' repeated complaints of Jews from this community meeting to celebrate [[Passover]] and [[Yom Kippur]] in London.<ref>{{cite web | author-last=Shapiro | author-first=James | title=How were Jews regarded in 16th-century England? | date=15 March 2016 | access-date=15 September 2023 | publisher=British Library | department=Discovering Literature: Shakespeare & Renaissance | url=https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/how-were-the-jews-regarded-in-16th-century-england | archive-date=9 October 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231009104105/https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/how-were-the-jews-regarded-in-16th-century-england | url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | author-last=Prior | author-first=Roger | title=A second Jewish community in Tudor London | journal=Jewish Historical Studies | volume=31, 1988-1990 | pages=137–152 | publisher=Jewish Historical Society of England | jstor=29779868 | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29779866}}</ref>  
Toward the middle of the 17th century a considerable number of Sephardic merchants settled in London and formed there a secret [[Wiktionary:congregation|congregation]], at the head of which was [[Antonio Fernandez Carvajal]]. They conducted a large business with the [[Levant]], [[East Indies|East]] and [[West Indies]], Canary Islands, and [[Brazil]], and above all with the [[Netherlands]], Spain, and [[Portugal]]. They formed an important link in the network of trade spread, especially throughout the Spanish and [[Portugal|Portuguese]] world by the Sephardi or secret Jews (see Commerce). Their position enabled them to give [[Oliver Cromwell|Cromwell]] and his secretary, [[John Thurloe]], important information as to the plans both of [[Charles I of England|Charles Stuart]] in Holland and of the Spaniards in the [[New World]] (see L. Wolf, "Cromwell's Secret Intelligencers"). Outwardly they passed as Spaniards and Catholics; but they held prayer-meetings at Creechurch Lane, and became known to the government as Jews by faith.

Creechurch Lane and, later in 1701, the [[Bevis Marks Synagogue]] in 1701 become the first Jewish religious places since the [[Edict of Expulsion]] of 1290. In the following three centuries, Sephardic Jews communities established near the major European sea ports like [[Port of Amsterdam|Amsterdam]] and London, helping the ''Marranos'' who were expelled from the [[Spanish Inquisition]] to rise up new merchant activities.<ref>{{cite book|author=Elizabeth Ann Mitchell|url=https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/12579s505|title=In the Style of Toleration: Bevis Marks and the Synagogue Architecture of Seventeenth-Century London|date=6 May 2014|doi=10.18130/V3PD5J|page=1|publisher=University of Virginia|oclc=7355542304|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180602194407/https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/12579s505|archive-date=2 June 2018|url-status=live}} (M.A. thesis, with the supervision of [[Gabriel N. Finder]])</ref>

==Puritans call for the Jews' return==

Meanwhile, public opinion in England had been prepared by the [[Puritan]] movement for a sympathetic treatment of any proposal by the Judaizing sects among the extremists of the [[Parliament of England|Parliament]]ary party for the readmission of the Jews into England. Petitions favouring readmission had been presented to the army as early as 1649 by two [[Baptists]] of [[Amsterdam]], Johanna Cartwright and her son Ebenezer ("The Petition of the Jews for the Repealing of the Act of Parliament for Their Banishment out of England"); and suggestions looking to that end were made by men of the type of [[Roger Williams]], [[Hugh Peters]], and by Independents generally. Many were moved in the same direction by mystical [[Messiah|Messianic]] reasons; and their views attracted the enthusiasm of [[Menasseh Ben Israel]], who in 1650 published his ''Hope of Israel'', in which he advocated the return as a preliminary to the appearance of the Messiah. The Messiah could not appear till Jews existed in all the lands of the earth. According to [[Antonio de Montezinos]], the [[Ten Tribes]] had been discovered in the American Indians of Ecuador, and England was the only country from which Jews were excluded. If England admitted them, the Messianic age might be expected.

==In fiction==

''[[The Queen's Fool]]'', historical novel by [[Philippa Gregory]], is told from the point of view of a (fictional) Marrano girl living in England at the time of [[Mary I of England|Queen Mary I]].

==See also==

*[[History of the Jews in England]]
*[[History of the Jews in England (1066-1200)]]
*[[Edict of Expulsion]]
*[[Resettlement of the Jews in England]]
**[[Menasseh Ben Israel]] (1604–1657)
*[[Jew Bill of 1753]]
*[[Influences on the standing of the Jews in England]]
*[[Emancipation of the Jews in England]]
*[[Early English Jewish literature]]
*[[History of the Jews in Scotland]]
*[[Spanish and Portuguese Jews]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}
* {{Jewish Encyclopedia|title=England}}
* Katz, David. The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.

{{Sephardi Jews topics}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:History of the Marranos in England}}
[[Category:Jewish English history]]
[[Category:Sephardi Jews topics]]
[[Category:Sephardi Jewish culture in the United Kingdom]]