Читать книгу Menasseh ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell - Manasseh ben Israel - Страница 10

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]