Читать книгу Menasseh ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell - Manasseh ben Israel - Страница 8

The statesmen of the Commonwealth, who knew so well how to conjure with human enthusiasm, were essentially practical men. To imagine that they were the slaves of the great religious revival which had enabled them to overcome the loyalist inspiration of the cavaliers is entirely to misconceive their character and aims. The logical outcome of that revival, and of the triumph of the Puritan arms, would have been the Kingdom of Saints, but Cromwell’s ambition aimed at something much more conventional. Imperial expansion and trade ascendency filled a larger place in his mind than the Other-worldly inspirations which had carried him to power.

With the unrestricted Toleration principles of the Baptists he had no sympathy, and still less with the Messianic phantasies of the Fifth Monarchy Men which Menasseh ben Israel had virtually embraced. His ideas on Religious Liberty were certainly large and far in advance of his times,^[44] but they were essentially the ideas of a churchman. Their limits are illustrated by his ostentatious patronage in 1652 of Owens’ scheme of a Toleration confined to Christians.^[45] Still he was not the slave of these limits. The ingenious distinction he drew between the Papistry of France and that of Spain, when it became necessary for him to choose between them, and his complete disregard of the same principles in the case of the Portuguese alliance, show how readily he subordinated his strongest religious prejudices to political exigencies. As for the mystics and ultra-democrats, his views were set forth very clearly in his speech to the new Parliament in September 1651, when he opposed the Millenarians, the Judaisers, and the Levellers by name.^[46] It is impossible for any one reading this speech side by side with Menasseh ben Israel’s tracts to believe that the author of it had any sympathy with the wilder motives actuating the Jewish Rabbi.

What was it, then, that brought these two different characters so closely together? That the Readmission of the Jews to England was one of Cromwell’s own schemes—part and parcel of that dream of Imperial expansion which filled his latter days with its stupendous adumbration and vanished so tragically with his early death—it is impossible to doubt. We have no record of his views on the subject, beyond a short and ambiguous abstract of his speech at the Whitehall Conferences, but there is ample evidence that he was the mainspring of the whole movement, and that Menasseh was but a puppet in his hands. His main motives are not difficult to guess. Cromwell’s statecraft was, as I have said, not entirely or even essentially governed by religious policy. He desired to make England great and prosperous, as well as pious and free, and for these purposes he had to consider the utility of his subjects even before he weighed their orthodoxy. Now the Jews could not but appeal to him as very desirable instruments of his colonial and commercial policy. They controlled the Spanish and Portuguese trade; they had the Levant trade largely in their hands; they had helped to found the Hamburg Bank, and they were deeply interested in the Dutch East and West Indian companies. Their command of bullion, too, was enormous, and their interest in shipping was considerable.^[47] Moreover, he knew something personally of the Jews, for he was acquainted with some of the members of the community of Marranos then established in London, and they had proved exceedingly useful to him as contractors and intelligencers.^[48] There is, indeed, reason to believe that some of these Marranos had been brought into the country by the Parliamentary Government as early as 1643 with the specific object of supplying the pecuniary necessities of the new administration.^[49]

Until the end of 1651 the Readmission question presented no elements of urgency, because there was a chance of its favourable solution without its being made the object of a special effort on the part of the Government or the legislature. By the treaty of coalition proposed to the Netherlands by the St. John mission early in 1651, the Jewish question would have solved itself, for the Hebrew merchants of Amsterdam would have ipso facto acquired in England the same rights as they enjoyed in Holland. That proposal, however, broke down, and as a result the famous Navigation Act was passed. The object of that measure was to exclude foreign nations from the colonial trade, and to dethrone the Dutch from their supremacy in the carrying and distributing traffic of Europe. Consequently it supplied a strong inducement to Jewish merchants—especially those of Amsterdam who were then trading with Jamaica and Barbados—to transfer their counting-houses to London. As such an immigration would have well served the policy embodied in the Navigation Act, it became desirable that some means of legalising Jewish residence in England should be found, and hence the question of Readmission was brought within the field of practical politics. This was the new form in which it presented itself. It was no longer a question of Religious Toleration or of the hastening of the Millennium, but purely a question of political expediency.

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.