Chapter IV: The Appeal to the Nation

On his arrival in London, Menasseh, with his retinue of three Rabbis,[68] was lodged with much ceremony in one of the houses opposite the New Exchange, in the then fashionable Strand, the Piccadilly of its day. These houses were frequented by distinguished strangers who desired to be near the centre of official life at Whitehall, and the fact that Menasseh with his slender purse took up his abode in one of them, instead of seeking hospitality with his brother-in-law or his Marrano co-religionists in the city, shows at once the importance with which his mission was invested.[69] He was the guest of the Protector, bidden to London to discuss high affairs of state, and as such it was obviously inadmissible that he should be hidden away in some obscure address in an East-End Alsatia.

His first task after he had settled down in his “study” in the Strand was to print his “Humble Addresses,” in which he appealed to the Protector and the Commonwealth to readmit the Jews, and stated the grounds of his petition. This tract was written and translated into English long before he left Amsterdam. It had probably been prepared three years before, when he first received his passes for England. That it was in existence at a time when his final mission was uncontemplated is proved by its mention in a list of his works he sent to Felgenhauer in February 1655 (N.S.).[70] The title is there given as _De Fidelitate et Utilitate Judaicæ Gentis_, and it is described as _Libellus Anglicus_. This was nine months before he arrived in London, and three and a half months before his brother-in-law sent for him. My impression is that the tract was prepared at the time of the St. John mission in 1651, and that Menasseh had drafted it in accordance with the advice of Thurloe, who had pointed out that the faithfulness and profitableness of the Jewish people were likely to weigh more with Cromwell than the relation of their dispersion to the Messianic Age.

At any rate, the style and matter of the pamphlet are in welcome contrast to the fantastical theories of the “Hope of Israel,” resembling more the matter-of-fact petition of Dormido. The Danielic prophecy is, it is true, still asserted, but only as an aside, the case for the Readmission being argued almost exclusively on grounds of political expediency. Incidentally certain floating calumnies against the Jews—such as their alleged usury, the slaying of infants for the Passover, and their conversion of Christians—are discussed and refuted. In regard to the conversion of Christians, Menasseh had completely changed his attitude since writing the “Hope of Israel,” for in that work he had boasted of the conversions made by the Jews in Spain.[71] The prudent restraints Menasseh had imposed upon himself in the composition of this pamphlet are the more marked, since we know that he had in no way modified his original views as expounded in the “Hope of Israel.” This is shown by a letter he wrote to Felgenhauer early in the year, thanking him for dedicating to him the _Bonum Nuncium Israeli_, one of the maddest rhapsodies ever written.[72] In this letter he reiterated all his former views, with the exception of his belief in the imminence of the Millennium. Nor had he adopted any idea of compromising the question of the Readmission to meet the prejudices or fears of the various political and religious factions in England. His demand was for absolute freedom of ingress and settlement for all Jews and the unfettered exercise of their religion, “whiles we expect with you the Hope of Israel to be revealed.” The necessity of such a privilege had been the more impressed upon him by the renewal of the persecutions of his co-religionists in Poland, which had sent a great wave of destitute Jews westward. It was primarily for them and for the Marranos of Spain and Portugal that he hoped to find an unrestricted asylum in England.[73]

Until the publication of the “Humble Addresses,” there are but scanty clues in the printed literature of the time to the frame of mind in which Menasseh’s mission found the English public. It would seem, from the silence of the printing-presses, that the nearer the people approached the Readmission question as a problem of practical politics, the less enthusiastic they became for its solution. This is not difficult to understand. The secular Tolerationists were unable to make headway against the dangers of unlimited sectarianism, to which their doctrines seemed calculated to open the door. Of their chief exponents, Roger Williams was in America, John Sadler was muzzled by the responsibilities of office, and Hugh Peters was without an influential following. Moreover, the prosecutions of James Naylor and Biddle were then prominently before the public as a lesson that Toleration had yet to triumph within the Christian pale. The Conversionists and Millenarians, who formed the great majority of the Judeophils, and who included all Menasseh’s own friends except Sadler, attached no importance to the terms on which the Jews might be admitted, and were quite willing to acquiesce in legislative restrictions provided only they were admitted. The Economists and Political Opportunists, represented by Cromwell, Thurloe, Blake, and Monk,[74] did not dare to confess their true motives, since their worldly aims would on the one hand have been condemned by all the religious partisans of the Readmission, and on the other, would have alarmed the merchants of London, who had no desire for the commercial competition of a privileged colony of Hebrew traders.

This discouraging state of affairs was aggravated by foreign and Royalist intrigues. From the moment Menasseh’s mission was thought of, the Embassies in London and the Royalist agents set to work to defeat it. The Embassies, especially that of Holland, opposed it on its true grounds, as a development of the policy of the Navigation Act.[75] The Royalists were anxious to defeat it because, as Whitelock says, “it was a business of much importance to the Commonwealth, and the Protector was earnestly set upon it.”[76] Moreover, they had hoped to attract the Jews to their own cause, and they had been encouraged in this hope by the substantial assistance already rendered to them by wealthy Hebrews, like the Da Costas and Coronels.[77] An intercepted letter from Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary to the exiled King, shows that the highest Royalist circles took a profound interest in the Jewish question, and made it their business to be well informed as to its progress. Nicholas, indeed, seems to have known all about the negotiations which preceded Menasseh’s journey to England.[78]

As soon as Menasseh reached London, he found himself the object of a host of calumnious legends, clearly designed by the Royalists and foreign agents to disturb the public mind. The story that the Jews had offered to buy St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Bodleian Library, which had been circulated unheeded in 1649, was revived.[79] One of Menasseh’s retinue was accused of wishing to identify Cromwell as the Jewish Messiah, and it was circumstantially stated that he had investigated the Protector’s pedigree in order to prove his Davidic descent.[80] It was declared that Cromwell harboured a design to hand over to the Jews the farming of the customs.[81] At the same time their character was painted in the darkest colours.[82] One of the most insidious forms that this campaign took was an attempt to show that the hope of converting the Jews, by which the larger number of the friends of the Readmission were actuated, was illusory, and that so far from becoming Christians, the Jews would “stone Christ to death.” For this purpose the pen of a converted Jew, named Paul Isaiah, who had served as a trooper in Rupert’s Horse, was requisitioned.[83] It was a hazardous experiment to employ Isaiah, for he might easily have been hailed by the Conversionists as a proof of the convertibility of the Jews. It was, however, notorious that he had learnt the ethics of the wilder Cavalier swashbucklers only too well,[84] and he was consequently regarded rather as an “awful example” of the sort of Jew who might be expected to listen to the Gospel than as an encouragement to hope for the salvation of the whole people.

The publication of the “Humble Addresses” only aggravated these popular misgivings. While the clerical and commercial Anti-Semites disputed all the propositions of Menasseh’s pamphlet, the visionaries and friends of Israel strongly resented the “sinfulness” of its insistence on the profitableness of the Jews. The bias of public feeling, as revealed by the tracts to which the “Humble Addresses” gave rise, was distinctly less favourable than in 1649, and was overwhelmingly hostile to an unreserved acquiescence in the terms of the Jewish petition. In 1649 an honest attempt to understand Judaism was made, as we may see by the publication of Chilmead’s translation of Leo de Modena’s _Historia dei riti ebraici_. There is no trace of an appeal to this or any similarly authoritative work in 1655–56, except in a stray passage of an isolated protest against the calumnies heaped on the Jews.[85] On the contrary, the efforts of the new students of Judaism, like Alexander Ross, were devoted to proving that the Jews had nothing in common with Christians, and that their religion “is not founded on Moses and the Law, but on idle and foolish traditions of the Rabbins”—that it was, in fact, a sort of Paganism.[86] The historical attacks on the Jews were the most powerful that had yet been made, while the replies to them were few and by obscure writers.[87] What is most significant, however, is that the chief friends of the Jews—the men who had encouraged Menasseh six years before—were now either silent or openly in favour of restrictions which would have rendered the Readmission a barren privilege. Sadler did not reiterate the Judeophil teachings of his “Rights of the Kingdom”; there was no echo of Hugh Peters’s “Good Work for a Good Magistrate,” with its uncompromising demand for liberty of conscience; and the pseudonymous author of “An Apology for the Honourable Nation of Jews,” which had so strongly impressed the public in 1648, was dumb. John Dury, who had practically started the first agitation in favour of the Jews, was now studying Jewish disabilities at Cassel, with a view to their introduction into England;[88] and Henry Jessey, the author of “The Glory of Judah and Israel,” to the testimonies of which Menasseh confidently appealed in the closing paragraph of his “Humble Addresses,” had been won over to the necessity of restrictions.[89] Not a single influential voice was raised in England in support of Menasseh’s proposals, either on the ground of love for the Jews or religious liberty. The temper of the unlettered people, especially the mercantile classes, is sufficiently illustrated by the fact that only a few months before a Jewish beggar had been mobbed in the city, owing to the inflammatory conduct of a merchant, who had followed the poor stranger about the Poultry shouting, “Give him nothing; he is a cursed Jew.”[90]

Undeterred by the inhospitable attitude of the public, Menasseh formally opened his negotiations with the Government of the Commonwealth. His first step was to pay a visit to Whitehall, and present copies of his “Humble Addresses” to the Council of State. He was unfortunate in the day he selected for this visit, for it happened to be one of the rare occasions when Cromwell was not present at the Council’s deliberations. The result was that, as on the similar occasion of the consideration of the report on Dormido’s petition, the Council felt itself free to take no action. It contented itself with instructing its clerk, Mr. Jessop, “to go forth and receive the said books,” and then proceeded with other business.[91]

That the Council had no desire to assume the responsibility of deciding the thorny Jewish question soon became manifest. A fortnight after Menasseh’s abortive visit to Whitehall, Cromwell brought down to the Council a petition which had been handed to him by the Jewish Rabbi, in which were set forth categorically the several “graces and favours” by which it was proposed that the Readmission of the Jews should be effected.[92] The Protector evidently felt none of the misgivings of his advisers. It is probable, indeed, that in his masterful way he misunderstood the trend of public feeling. He had convinced himself that, as an act of policy, some concession to the Jews was desirable. His strong instinct for religious liberty inclined him favourably to the more academic aspects of the question, and his profound sympathy with persecuted peoples had been stirred by the accounts Menasseh had personally given him of the dire straits of the Jews in Poland, Sweden, and the Holy Land, and of the cruelties inflicted on them in Spain and Portugal.[93] Moreover, his patriotism revolted at the idea that Protestant England should be _particeps criminis_ in a policy of oppression which was so peculiarly identified with Papistical error. Thus impressed, he cared little for the outcries of the pamphleteers or the nervous scruples of his councillors, and he set himself to force on a prompt solution. At his instance a motion was made “That the Jews deserving it may be admitted into this nation to trade and traffic and dwell amongst us as Providence shall give occasion,”[94] and this, together with the petition of Menasseh and his “Humble Addresses,” was at once referred to a Committee. At the same time it was made clear to that body that the Protector expected an early report.[95]

So much is evident from the fact that the Committee met the same afternoon and reported the next morning. Its task was not an easy one. The feeling of the Council was by no means hostile to the Jews, but it had no enthusiasm for their cause, and it probably felt that an extension of official toleration beyond the limits of Christianity was a hazardous experiment. On the other hand, it was no longer possible for it to express this feeling in the same unceremonious fashion as had been done in the case of Dormido. The Jewish question had become the question of the day owing to Menasseh’s visit. Public feeling had been deeply stirred by it, and Cromwell had placed it in the forefront of his personal solicitude. Some action was necessary. The Committee seems to have discreetly resolved that the wisest course to pursue was one which would absolve it of responsibility, and leave Cromwell and the outside public to fight it out between them. Accordingly it reported that it felt itself incompetent to offer any advice to the Council, and it suggested that the views of the nation should be ascertained by the summoning of a Conference of representative Englishmen who might assist it in framing a report.

This resolution was duly reported to the Council on the following day, when Cromwell was again present. How little the Protector estimated the difficulties in his path is shown by the fact that the Committee’s recommendation was at once acted upon. John Lisle, Sir Charles Wolseley, and Sir Gilbert Pickering, three members of the Committee notoriously devoted to Cromwell, were instructed to meet the Lord President the same afternoon, and draw up a list of the personages to be summoned to the proposed Conference.[96] The list was duly presented to the Council on the following morning, and, under the vigilant eye of the Protector, approved. At the same time the terms of a circular convening the Conference were agreed upon, and the 4th December was fixed for the meeting.[97]

Nothing is more significant than the rapidity with which these steps were taken. On Tuesday the 13th November Menasseh’s petition was sprung on the reluctant Council. On the following Thursday summonses to a National Conference were being sent out from Whitehall, the Council having meanwhile held three meetings, at all of which the Jewish question was discussed, and a Committee specially charged with the question having held two further meetings. In all this we may clearly trace the personal insistence of the Protector.

Bruited abroad through the congregations of the divines and the constituents of the politicians and merchants to whom the summonses to the Conference had been addressed, the question of the Readmission of the Jews now came to the forefront of national politics. Amid considerable popular excitement, the Conference met in the Council Chamber at Whitehall[98] on the first Tuesday in December.

It was a notable gathering—one of the most notable in the whole history of the Commonwealth. The statesmen present were the most eminent on the active list of the moment. There was Henry Lawrence, the Lord President, with four of his civilian colleagues on the Council, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Sir Charles Wolseley, Lisle the regicide, and Francis Rous. Close by was Walter Strickland, the diplomatist, who had represented the Commonwealth at the Hague, and had shared with Oliver St. John the honours and mortifications of the famous mission of 1651. In the same inner circle were John Lambert, “the army’s darling,” and one of the most brilliant of Cromwell’s veterans, and William Sydenham, one of the founders of the Protectorate. The law was represented by Sir John Glynne, Chief Justice of the Upper Bench, and William Steele, Chief Baron of the Exchequer. Lord Chief Justice St. John had also been invited, but he astutely stayed away. Those who knew St. John must have regarded his absence as ominous. On behalf of the mercantile community there appeared Alderman Dethick, the Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Cressett of the Charterhouse, Alderman Riccards, and Sheriff Thompson. These men were official nonentities, for the real representatives of Commerce were Sir Christopher Pack, the late Lord Mayor and the leading mercantile authority in the country, William Kiffen, the wealthy merchant-parson, and the regicide Owen Rowe, now deputy-governor of the Bermuda Company.

It was, however, on the religious side that the Conference was strongest. Sixteen theologians and divines, the flower of Puritan piety and learning, responded to Cromwell’s invitation. There was Dr. Cudworth, Regius Professor of Hebrew, the philosophic opponent of atheism, whose “Intellectual System” is an English classic. There, too, were Dr. Owen, most famous of Independent divines and most fearless of the champions of religious liberty, and John Caryll, the great Puritan Bible commentator. Oxford University sent Dr. Goodwin, President of Magdalen College, and Henry Wilkinson, Canon of Christ Church. Cambridge appeared in the person of the learned Dr. Whitchcote, Provost of King’s. Among the preachers were William Bridge of Yarmouth; Daniel Dyke, one of Cromwell’s chaplains in ordinary; Henry Jessey, the Baptist Judeophil and friend of Menasseh; Thomas Manton, mildest and most genial of Presbyterians, “the prelate of the Commonwealth,” as Wood calls him; Dr. Newcomen, one of the authors of “Smectymnuus”; Philip Nye, the sturdy Independent and champion of toleration; Anthony Tuckney, one of the most prominent divines of the Westminster Assembly, and three lesser lights, William Benn of Dorchester, Walter Craddock of All Hallows the Great, London, and Samuel Fairclough. John Carter, the vehement enemy of Presbyterianism and monarchy, could not attend, for he was on his deathbed at Norwich when the invitation reached him.[99]

It is not difficult to see that the Conference had been carefully organised with a view to a decision favourable to the Jews. The great majority of the members were conspicuous for their attachment to the cause of religious toleration, while not a few of the laymen were equally notorious for their devotion—some for their subservience—to Cromwell. And yet its upshot proved very different from what the Protector anticipated.[100]

The first meeting was chiefly concerned with the legal problem. After the proposals of Menasseh ben Israel had been read, Cromwell himself laid down the programme of the proceedings in two questions.

(1) Whether it be lawful to receive the Jews?

(2) If it be lawful, then upon what terms is it meet to receive them?[101]

The first question was purely technical, and only the lawyers were competent to pronounce an opinion on it. Accordingly, the two Judges present, Glynne and Steele, were called upon to speak. After an elaborate review of the status of the Jews in the pre-expulsion period, and the circumstances under which they were banished in 1290, both expressed the opinion that “there was no law which forbad the Jews’ return into England.”[102] The grounds of this decision are nowhere stated. It was probably based on the fact that the banishment in 1290 was an exercise of the royal prerogative in regard to the personal “chattels” of the King and not an Act of Parliament, and that the force of the decree expired with the death of Edward I. At any rate, Cromwell had gained his first point,[103] and he joyfully adjourned the Conference to the following Friday, adjuring the divines meanwhile to ponder well the second question.[104]

What happened at the two following meetings, which were held on the 7th and 12th December,[105] we do not know in detail. The records of the time only afford us scanty glimpses of the opinions expressed, without any indication of the days on which they were respectively uttered. It is clear, however, that the feeling of the clergy turned out to be on the whole unfavourable to Menasseh’s petition. The calumnies of the pamphleteers had done their work. The idea of public religious services at which Christ might be blasphemed stayed the hands of the most tolerant. Others feared that unrestricted liberty of Jewish worship would create in the Synagogue a nucleus round which the Judaical sectaries would rally. Dr. Newcomen drew a harrowing picture of English converts to Judaism joining the immigrants in offering children to Moloch.[106] The moderate majority, impressed, probably, by a weighty and elaborate opinion drawn up by Dr. Barlow, librarian of the Bodleian, and presented to the Conference by Dr. Goodwin,[107] were strongly in favour of an admission under severe restrictions. Even the level-headed Nye, who was ready to tolerate all religious follies so long as they were peaceable, asked for “due cautions warranted by Holy Scripture.”[108] It was in vain that Lawrence and Lambert, supported by the learned commentator Caryll, combated these opinions.[109]

On the eve of the third meeting Cromwell sought to strengthen the Judeophils by adding to the Conference Hugh Peters, the oldest of the advocates of unrestricted Readmission, together with his favourite chaplain, Peter Sterry, and Mr. Bulkeley, the Provost of Eton.[110] This, however, did not improve matters, for Peters had meanwhile heard something of the Marranos in London and their papistical dissimulation of their religion, and he vigorously denounced the Jews as “a self-seeking generation” who “made but little conscience of their own principles.”[111] This discourse seems to have produced a considerable impression on the Conference, for Thurloe, writing to Henry Cromwell on the 17th, expressed the shrewd opinion that “nothing will be done.”[112]

So far, however, the essential point for which Cromwell had been striving had not been jeopardised. He was desirous of securing the admission of the Jews on liberal terms, but at a pinch he would no doubt have agreed to religious and civil restrictions, provided the commercial activity of the immigrants was not unduly fettered. Hence the terms favoured by the majority of the clergy did not trouble him very seriously.

At the final meeting, which was held on the 18th December,[113] the commercial question was broached. On this occasion the doors of the Council Chamber were, for some sinister reason, thrown open to the public,[114] and an excited crowd, armed with copies of Prynne’s newly published tract on the Jewish question,[115] collected to hear the debate. The proceedings were tempestuous from the beginning, and gradually they took the form of a vehement demonstration against the Jews. Merchant after merchant rose and violently protested against any concessions, declaring that the Hebrews were a mean and vicious people, and that their admission would enrich foreigners and impoverish the natives.[116] Even strangers took part in these tirades, and a Mr. Lloyd, who was not a member of the Conference, distinguished himself by a “fierce” harangue.[117] The climax was reached when Sir Christopher Pack, the most eminent citizen of his day, and a devoted adherent of the Protector, ranged himself with the opponents of Menasseh, in an address which is said to have been the most impressive delivered during the whole course of the Conference.[118]

The advocates of out-and-out exclusion were, however, as little likely to carry the day as the champions of unrestricted admission, for the majority of the members of the Conference were divines who were anxious that the Jews should be converted, and for that reason desired that they should be somehow or other brought into the country. Moreover, since the decision of the Judges, the question was no longer whether exclusion should be persisted in, but only on what terms admission should be sanctioned. This was probably pointed out to the merchants, and an attempt to arrive at a compromise was made. After some private confabulations, Henry Jessey rose to announce the terms that had been agreed upon. The appearance of Jessey, the profound Rabbinical student, the friend of Menasseh, and one of the veterans of the Readmission cause, seemed to betoken a Jewish victory. What must have been the astonishment of his friends when he stated, with naïve satisfaction, that the basis of the compromise was that the Jews should only be admitted to decayed ports and towns, and that they should pay double customs duties on their imports and exports![119]

Cromwell now saw his whole scheme crumbling to pieces. That, if put to the vote, Jessey’s compromise would be adopted by an overwhelming majority was patent to everybody. In that case not only would the commercial design which Cromwell had at heart be defeated, but the Marranos in London, who had served him so well, would be practically banished. At all hazards a vote had to be prevented.[120] Cromwell acted with characteristic promptness and audacity. Rising from the chair of state, he addressed the Assembly. Ingeniously ignoring the proposed compromise, he began his speech with a review of the differences of opinion revealed by the various speakers. They were, he scornfully declared, a babel of discordances. He had hoped that the Preachers would have given him some clear and practical advice, but they had only multiplied his doubts. Protesting that he had no engagements to the Jews but what the Scriptures held forth, he insisted that “since there was a promise of their conversion, means must be used to that end, which was the preaching of the Gospel, and that could not be done unless they were permitted to dwell where the Gospel was preached.” Then, turning to the merchants, he harped sarcastically on the accusations they had brought against the Jews. “You say they are the meanest and most despised of all people. So be it. But in that case what becomes of your fears? Can you really be afraid that this contemptible and despised people should be able to prevail in trade and credit over the merchants of England, the noblest and most esteemed merchants of the whole world?” It was clear, he added sharply, that no help was to be expected from the Conference, and that he and the Council would have to take their own course. He hoped he should do nothing foolishly or rashly, and he asked now only that the Conference would give him the benefit of their prayers, so that he might be directed to act for the glory of God and the good of the nation.[121] So saying, he vacated the chair in token that the proceedings were at an end.

The speech was a fighting speech, delivered with great animation, and is said to have been one of the best Cromwell ever made.[122] It achieved its object, for the Conference broke up without a word of protest, and the crowds dispersed in cowed silence. Cromwell left the Council Chamber in a towering passion, and it was some days before he recovered his equanimity.[123]

The battle was, however, not yet over. Cromwell had dismissed the Conference, but the Committee of the Council of State had yet to report. It could not well, in sober writing, take the view of the Protector’s strategic speech, nor could it ignore the instruction of the Council to which it owed its existence. Accordingly it set itself to the drafting of a report which should express the obvious views of the Conference without conflicting too violently with Cromwell’s equally obvious design. The report accepted the view of the Judges that there was no law against the Readmission, and then proceeded to set forth under six heads the views urged by the Conference, including the view of the merchants, that “great prejudice is likely to arise to the natives of this Commonwealth in matters of trade.” Finally, it laid down seven conditions, apparently borrowed from Barlow’s opinion,[124] by which the Readmission should be governed. The Jews should have no autonomous jurisdiction; they should be forbidden from blaspheming Christ; they should not profane the Christian Sabbath; they should have no Christian servants; they should be ineligible for public office; they should print nothing against Christianity, and they should not discourage those who might attempt to convert them, while the making of converts by them should be prohibited. No restriction on their trading was suggested.[125]

What became of this document is not clear. A clean copy of it, undated and unendorsed, is preserved in the State Papers, but there is no reference to it in the Order Book of the Council of State.[126] And yet it is certain that the Committee presented it to the Council, for the Conference was only a means of enlightening the Committee, and the Council still looked to it for advice. It is probable that it was never formally accepted by the Council. When it was in due course brought up, Cromwell most likely objected to its presentation. After his experience of the Conference, it was clear to him that whatever was done would have to be done more or less unofficially. The acceptance of the report would have involved legislation, in which case the proceedings of the Conference would have been repeated in a form far more difficult to control, and perhaps impossible to defeat. Gratified by the omission of trade restrictions from the report, and feeling the necessity of retaining the support of the Council in the further steps he might take, the Protector probably assured them that he was in agreement with them on most points, and that he would do nothing unwarranted by the views they had expressed. At the same time he doubtless pointed out that many other important questions claimed the attention of Parliament, and that it would be well if men’s minds were not further disturbed by the Jewish question. Accordingly he advised that the report should be ignored and the matter allowed to drop.[127]

Here the question rested at the end of 1655. The result was not encouraging, but at any rate one important point had been gained. The prevailing idea that the incoming of Jews and their sojourn in the land were illegal had been completely and finally shattered. This was the thin end of the wedge, and it had been so securely driven in, that John Evelyn entered in his Diary under date of December 14th: “Now were the Jews admitted.”[128]