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The Role of Jews in the Glorious Revolution ​

WARNING

Please see the original source for this paper: https://diegospencil.com/2024/09/17/the-role-of-the-jews-in-the-glorious-revolution/

The Removal of James II & Installation of William III ​

The Glorious Revolution was one of the most significant events in English history. It was the last successful invasion of England and saw the replacement of the Stuart monarch James II with his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange, who became King William III. This paper will argue that Jews played a crucial role in the Glorious Revolution by financing and supplying William’s army, improving their fortune and position in England through bringing more members of their community to the country and increasing their influence in economic institutions. Oliver Cromwell allowed Jews to return to England in 1656 because of his messianic Puritan beliefs and recognition of their commercial acumen. They were tolerated and protected by Kings Charles II and James II but were subject to some concerted attacks. Jews felt that under William of Orange their community in England could grow to become as prosperous as it already was in the Dutch Republic. William’s army in the Revolution was supplied and fed by the Sephardi Jewish weapons contractors Solomon de Medina, Isaac Pereira and Moses Machado. The whole campaign was financed with a loan of 2 million crowns from the banker Francisco Lopes Suasso. The Revolution secured England’s Jewish community by connecting it with its center in the Dutch Republic. While Jews were temporarily taxed heavily because the crown needed revenue, they found success in England’s overseas trade operations, including the diamond trade. William III repaid the Jews through his creation of the Bank of England, which Sephardi Jews ended up owning the main shares of. The Jewish community in England was never seriously threatened again.

The Jews had been officially banned from England since 1290, at the orders of Edward I.- [1] In 1630 converso merchants started to settle in London, marking the beginning of the modern British Jewish community, though it was not officially authorized. Radical Puritans were the first to suggest the readmission of Jews, for they wanted to convert them to Christianity and felt that England was divinely chosen to carry out this task. In January 1649, Johanna Cartwright and her son Ebenezer petitioned Thomas Fairfax and the Council of the Army to reverse the expulsion edict and allow the Jews to settle and trade in England.- [2] Menasseh Ben Israel, a Jewish intellectual from Amsterdam, also had his own messianic beliefs. He appealed to Cromwell to allow the Jews to resettle in England, playing up commonalities between Christians and Jews.- [3] Manasseh also told Cromwell about the considerable influence Jews exercised in the Dutch East and West India Company.- [4] Cromwell was a millenarian and saw advantages to readmitting the Jews: they provided him with political intelligence from abroad and commercial advantages.- [5] He convened meetings in the Council Chamber at Whitehall in 1655 on the readmission of the Jews. Jurists argued that no law barred their return. However, only a minority of the council supported total readmission, and many argued that practicing Judaism was blasphemous. Merchants feared that readmitting the Jews would enrich them at the expense of the native English.- [6] Cromwell never explicitly authorized the return of the Jews, but their readmission began in 1656.- [7] Ironically, the lack of a formal order for Jewish readmission allowed them to keep a low profile and mitigated them as a target.- [8]

The community brought the teacher Moses Athias and established a synagogue at Creechurch Lane.- [9] After Cromwell’s death in 1656, Richard Baker sent a petition to Richard Cromwell calling for the expulsion of the Jews. When Charles II returned to England, the Lord Mayor and the Corporation of the City of London presented him a petition complaining about the increase of Jews, their interference with the citizens’ trade, and their correspondence with their co-religionists abroad. However, Charles II ignored their demands, because he was not very strict on the subject of religion and was tolerant of Jews.- [10] When his Portuguese wife Catherine of Braganza came to England, she was accompanied by wealthy Jews like the da Silva Brothers, who handled her dowry. Along with them came the Mendes and the Da Costas from Spain and Portugal, who united their families as the Mendes Da Costa.- [11] In 1664 Parliament passed the Conventicle Act which forbade prayer services not in accordance with the Church of England. The Earl of Berkshire and Paul Rycault, a merchant associate, tried to use it to blackmail Jews into paying protection money. In response the Privy Council released a written authorization of Jewish presence in England for the first time. Charles II, like Cromwell, recognized the Jews’ value in trade, the same reason he kept the Navigation Act, the Commonwealth’s only surviving policy.- [12] Most English Jews were Sephardi, though Ashkenazi Jews, like the magnate Benjamin Levy, started coming to England.- [13]

The London Sephardi Jewish community drew up its first body of Ascamot or regulations and brought Jacob Sasportas as their first rabbi in 1663. There was a degree of philo-semitism among the English in this period.- [14] As the Ottoman Empire expanded in the second half of the 17th century, there was a belief among English theologians, like Nathaniel Homes, Isaac Newton, Increase Mather, William Sherman, Samuel Lee and Henry More that the Jews could help fight the Ottomans, and these theologians wanted to restore the Jews to Palestine. Nonconformists were heavy restorationists, seeing themselves as theological exiles like the Jews.- [15] Some English writers like Margaret Fox viewed the restoration prophecies allegorically, and saw England itself as the New Zion. Restorationists wanted Jews to convert to Christianity once they reached Palestine.- [16] However, many theologians opposed the idea of Restoration, particularly after 1660 with the return of Anglicanism. One example is Henry Hammond, who criticized Thomas Brightman in 1659 for imposing his own subjective theology on the Bible and argued that the Book of Revelation was talking about Christendom’s violent past- [17]. So while there was some support for Jewish settlement in England, they were not totally secure and were often subject to suspicions. In February 1672, a Declaration of Indulgence permitting freedom of worship to Catholics and dissenters was issued by Charles II but withdrawn the next month due to its controversy. In the next winter the Jewish community’s leaders were convicted of a riot because they had met for worship, and the Grand Jury issued a bill against them, but they petitioned the king, who ruled in the Jews’ favor.- [18]

With the ascension of James II, the Jews’ opponents saw an opportunity for further measures against them. The Falmouth customs official Samuel Hayne had investigated the ship called the Experiment which carried cargo belonging to Jews. Hayne calculated that the ship was cheating the crown of almost £154 in duties. However, he was arrested. Hayne wrote to James II proposing that the Jews be made to pay duty fees. He said that Jews were importing goods from the West Indies, transferring them to Holland and listing them under the name of one endenized Jew, which allowed them to avoid alien duties and make their cargo 20% cheaper. However, this question was put aside for the moment. Another scheme against the Jews was devised in October 1685 by Thomas and Carleton Beaumont, who took advantage of Queen Elizabeth’s Act of 1581 mandating the payment of £20 for religious dissenters to issue a writ against 48 Jews charging them of recusancy. 38 Jews were removed from the Exchange and made to give bail. The Mahamad, the governing body of the Sephardi congregation, appealed to the King. He forced the Beaumonts to stop their case against the Jews, giving them a Declaration of Indulgence.- [19] Jews had become established in English economic life, creating international banking and trade connections. London Jews occupied a middle position between aliens and citizens, despite the endenization of many of their leaders.- [20] While they had a somewhat fine position in England, they were still subject to suspicion by the English. The Jewish community in the Dutch Republic was more secure and powerful, and England’s Jews wished to replicate it.

The Sephardi Jewish community in the Dutch Republic was long established for nearly a century. The Dutch encouraged Jewish immigration, since they brought expertise in trade.- [21] Although officially barred from being servants of the crown, they still managed to enter positions of authority. Some of the community’s giants were Moses Machado, a key ally of William of Orange, the Delmonte ambassadorial family who were the Lords of Schoonenberg, and Francisco Lopes de Suasso. Holland was the source of loans for Europe’s needy princes, with some of the continent’s key financiers being the Pintos, Delmontes, Bueno de Mesquita, Francis Mels and several others.- [22] From about 1674 the key contractors for the Dutch Republic’s land forces were the Jewish firm of Machado and Pereira. It was owned by Moses Machado and Jacob Pereira, who played important roles in the Glorious Revolution. Suasso loaned two million crowns to William to fund his invasion of England, and refused any security whatsoever, asserting that he would accept the monetary loss if William failed. Another Sephardi contractor, Jeronimo Nunes da Costa, managed the transit costs of the Duke of Wurttemberg’s reinforcement army.- [23] Solomon de Medina was William’s banker and paid off his debts to the Duke of Marlborough.- [24] Amsterdam’s Jews prayed for the success of the Revolution in their synagogues. Some Jews, like Joseph Penso de la Vega and Duartes Lopes-Moseh Roseh even wrote poems dedicated to William and his triumph. Another key Jewish ally of William was Joseph de la Penha, who may have saved him from drowning around this time. - [25] For this reason, William later granted de la Penha, who owned a large fleet of vessels, land in Labrador in 1697.- [26]

After William landed at Torbay, his Jewish allies continued to aid him. Jacob Pereira sent his relative Isaac Pereira to look after the company’s operations in England. Anglo-Dutch Jewish military contractors remained William’s key suppliers during James II’s invasion of Ireland and the start of the Boyne Campaign in spring 1690. Isaac Pereira was helped by Isaac Israel de Sequeira, who was in turn aided by his relative, David Machado de Sequeira, and Jacob do Porto, his grandson. Pereira was the best positioned, as he had a strong personal relationship with the duke of Schomberg, the commander of the English army sent to Ireland, who recommended him to William. Pereira was a key supplier and handler of the bread, wagons, and fodder of the army. He contributed £36,000 to the Boyne Campaign, as part of his official position as the ‘Commissary-General of the bread for their Majesty’s Forces in Ireland’. Pereira had his twenty-eight bakers bake the bread for the army in Waringstown, County Down, in ovens constructed in spring 1690. From March 1690 his brother William aided him, and in England the Gentile Mr. Bridges served as his agent.- [27] From September 1690 to August 1691, Pereira earned £95,000 for his supplies and shipping services.- [28] At times the campaign faltered without Pereira. The earl of Danby worried about the army’s bread in February 1691, and told the Earl of Nottingham that without Pereira, the campaign wouldn’t advance. David Machado de Sequeira looked after the Pereira interests in Ireland and supplied money and materiel to the Anglo-Dutch army in the Boyne Campaign, as did Jacob do Porto, who stayed in Ireland for a while after it.- [29] Overall, William III increased the ties between the court and rich Jews.- [30]

However, the new Dutch Jewish community that came with William was disconnected from the already established English Jewish community. William’s Toleration Act of 1689 exempting non-conformist Protestants from political penalties excluded the Jews for denying the Trinity. The provision was meant to deal with Unitarianism and Socinianism, but still affected the Jews. The House of Commons in 1689 also proposed a special tax of £100,000 for English Jews to fund the campaign in Ireland. The Jews presented a counter-petition to this tax, and by December 30, the bill was dropped. The Earl of Shrewsbury sent the Lord Mayor of London a letter requesting that the Jews be made to provide a loan at more than £20,000. Michael Levy replied that the Jews could not even pay this smaller amount. A customs official named Thomas Pennington tried to make the Jews pay alien duties amounting to £58,000. The Jews presented a counter-petition, and William ordered the Attorney General to stop this plan. In 1690, King William again levied customs duties on Jewish merchants, who had to pay £20, the same amount as bishops and barons, and ordinary Jews were taxed at ten times the rate of the rest of the population. However, this disappeared in the Poll Tax of 1691 which made no special demands on the Jews.- [31]

These schemes were not anti-Semitic in nature, as evidenced by the heavy Dutch involvement in William’s war effort already discussed. Rather, the crown needed money between Louis XIV’s declaration of war against England on July 25, 1689, and William’s return to England on September 6, 1690. They believed that the Sephardi Jews of London were an easy source for this wealth. Despite this, the Sephardi Jews continued to show support for the Revolution, even banning Jewish brokers from using insurance policies to protect the community from a possible fall of William’s govt with the argument that this was contrary to Jewish welfare, since the Jews depended on the King’s tolerance and goodwill.- [32] The Sephardi Jewish community was the backbone of the war effort. While they did not really fight in the armies themselves, their funds & supplies were essential to keeping William’s war effort going. It is very likely that without the help of the Sephardi Jews, William’s campaign would have failed. William amply repaid this tolerance. He may have been the statesman who was most instrumental to the advancement of religious toleration and intellectual freedom in the early modern Western world.- [33] The Jews felt more secure with such a statesman in charge, because not only was William religiously tolerant, but he also fostered an economic environment favorable to mercantile trade, which the Jews thrived in.

The success of the Glorious Revolution overall yielded positive results for the English Jewish community. The popular attention towards Jews in England was reduced, and Jews found more tolerance. William Lloyd, the Bishop of St. Asaph, spoke of his belief that the Jews were divinely called. Others like Robert Boyle and John Evelyn were interested in the Jews’ millennial destiny. John Locke argued for the toleration of the Jews in a letter he wrote in 1689.- [34] Jews in England were more secure than those in other parts of Europe.- [35] Because of the newfound Jewish acceptance in England, the Restorationist idea of the Jews’ return to Palestine lost steam and was refuted by thinkers. The Presbyterian non-conformist Richard Baxter criticized Restoration as a man-made doctrine and wondered why Jews would leave their religious freedom and economic opportunity in England for a remote, small, barren land like Palestine, which he compared to Wales. Baxter was tolerant of the Jews, accepting that the majority retained their religion. The fallout of the idea of Restoration shows the newfound security of Jews in England. Baxter echoed the English monarchy and government’s official view of the Jews as a significant source of income for the exchequer, which was behind the community’s official protection.- [36] Josiah Child, the chairman of the East India Company, supported the Jews because they improved England’s commercial standing, as he said in a pamphlet that he published in 1693. He credited the Dutch Republic’s economic prosperity to their tolerance of different religions and hoped for Jewish assimilation into English society.- [37]

As a result of the Revolution, the English Sephardi community increased from about 400 to 600 individuals, a 50% increase. Of the Ashkenazi, the majority of the 225 “Tudescos” in London in 1695 were likely recent immigrants.- [38] Jews benefited from William’s less strict implementation of harsh laws against Dissenters, as the focus of controversy & persecution stayed on Roman Catholics. This was a glaring exception to William’s general policy of religious tolerance. Things were not perfect for the Jews: they were barred from holding political office or entering universities and couldn’t easily become lawyers. As aliens, Jews were also unable to inherit real estate and they paid higher duties. Jews could become English nationals to remedy this, through either endenization or naturalization. While naturalization was more advantageous as it could be inherited, most Jews chose denization because naturalization required taking Christian sacraments and oaths.- [39] As leverage and gratitude for the tolerance shown to them, the Jewish community donated gifts to the Lord Mayor, and presented the Chief Magistrate with a silver salver embossed with the congregational arms. Jews were often elected to the office of Churchwarden, but since they did not wish to serve in this role, Jews paid large fees instead.- [40] The Jews’ preferred milieu was in the economic sectors rather than political offices.

Jews revolutionized trade and finance in England. William III established the Bank of England in 1694 at the suggestion of Dutch Sephardi Jews so he could repay them for getting him into power.- [41] Sephardi Jews quickly gained the main shares in the Bank. Solomon de Medina was the first Jew to subscribe to the bank’s stocks after it’s books had been opened, and his stock went from £1,000 in 1694 to £28,000 in 1701. Between 1695 and 1712 the Sephardi Jew Peter Henriquez Jr was often the largest holder in the bank, and by this final year his holdings amounted to £50,189.- [42] In 1701, Jews made up more than 10% of the group owning the minimum amount of stock to qualify for governorship of the Bank.- [43] Jews also dominated the London Stock exchange by the end of the century and were responsible for its growth.- [44] Jews consolidated their economic position and thrived in England’s commercial life. Their most important overseas trade was in Indian diamonds. The later discovery of diamonds in Brazil in the 1720s saw South America become the key hub of diamonds until South Africa replaced it much later. Although the Portuguese had a monopoly on the diamond industry, Jews were still important, since as many as half of the diamonds had been smuggled, many being moved from Amsterdam to London. The East India Company allowed the diamond trade to go on if a licensing fee was paid. The diamonds were exchanged for silver or coral, which were re-exported after coming to London. The diamond exporters were usually Sephardim, and they sold the diamonds to Ashkenazi dealers. Many of the most famous Anglo-Jewish families started in the diamond trade: the Sephardi Franco, Salvador and Mendes da Costa, and the Ashkenazi Franks, Moses, Salomons, and Goldsmid.- [45]

The diverse array of business England’s Jews were involved in is shown by the career of the prominent Ashkenazi Benjamin Levy. He was admitted as a broker on the Royal Exchange and endenized in March 1688/9. He was involved in every area of English commercial enterprise, being a significant shareholder and the second name on the register list of the newly formed East India Company in 1698. He was part of the Royal African Company from 1688.- [46] Two important events for English Jewry occurred in the last 3 years of the 17th century. Firstly, in 1697 the House of Commons limited the office of broker, which the Jews had long dominated, to 100 English brokers and 12 Jewish brokers, the same number that all other aliens in London received. Before this reform, twenty-eight Jews had achieved broker status. The Jews would have to endure one more major controversy in 1698, due to their exclusion from a 1698 parliamentary bill against blasphemy. An anti-Semitic amendment to the Bill was defeated by 140 to 78 votes, despite Samuel Hayne encouraging the opposition. On November 18, 1699, Solomon de Medina became the first Jew to dine with an English monarch when he shared a meal with William III at Richmond. He also became the first Jew to be knighted when William gave him the honor at Hampton Court on June 23, 1700. William owed lots of money to his Jewish contractors, and Medina’s honors were part of this debt.- [47] The Jewish community of London dedicated a second synagogue at Bevis Marks in the autumn of 1701 due to their growing population. This new synagogue is an indication of the newfound acceptance of England’s Jewish community.- [48] Overall, the Glorious Revolution secured Jewish residence in England. Their presence in the nation was never again seriously questioned as it had been before the Revolution.

Jews played a key part in financing and supplying the last successful invasion in English history. Jews had been readmitted by Oliver Cromwell in 1656, and were tolerated, but their residence in England was not secure. Jews wanted to replicate their Dutch success in England. William of Orange’s Glorious Revolution was financed by Jews, and they were crucial to its success. The Jewish community of England was secured after the Glorious Revolution and found success in England’s financial and commercial sectors. This shows how important an organized minority is for a revolution. Although the Jewish community of Holland was small, their money financed a regime change in England. Puritanism and Calvinism were more philosemitic strands of Christianity. Puritans saw themselves as a chosen people similarly to the Jews and saw commerce as important. Calvinism also had a philosemitic theology. The Glorious Revolution replaced the more absolutist system of James II with a limited monarchical system. It also changed the economy from a protectionist to free commerce one. The decline of the Dutch Empire followed the Glorious Revolution, as Britain began to assert itself as a colonial power in the world stage. The Jews would continue to play crucial roles in the trade sectors of this empire, and England’s Jewish community would grow to become one of the most powerful and influential in the world.

Bibliography ​

  • Curtis, Rodney Malcolm. “Christian Philosemitism in England from Cromwell to the Jew Bill, 1656-1753. A Study in Jewish and Christian Identity.” PhD diss., University of Bristol, 2018.

  • Endelman, Todd M. “The Resettlement (1656-1700).” In The Jews of Modern Britain, 1656-2000, 15-38. University of California Press, 2002.

  • Friedman, L.M. “Chapter XI: The De la Penha Family and its Labrador Grants,” in Early American Jews. Cambridge, Mass., 1934. 146-51.

  • Giuseppi, J.A. “Sephardi Jews and the early years of The Bank of England.” Jewish Historical Society of England 19, (1955-59): 53-63

  • Israel, Jonathan I. European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550-1750. Oxford, 1985.

  • Israel, Jonathan I. and Tyacke, Nicholas. From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

  • Katz, David S. “The Jews of England and the Glorious Revolution.” In The Jews in the History of England 1485-1850, 145-89. Oxford University Press, 1996.

  • Matar, N.I. “The Idea of the Restoration of the Jews in English Protestant Thought, 1661-1701”. The Harvard Theological Review, 78 no ½ (Jan-Apr 1985): 115-48.

  • Perry, Norma. “Anglo-Jewry, the Law, Religious Conviction, and Self-Interest (1655-1753)”. Journal of European Studies xiv (1984). 1-23.

  • Roth, Cecil. A History of the Jews in England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941.

  • Sombart, Werner. The Jews and Modern Capitalism. Translated by M. Epstein Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2001. First published 1911.

  • [1] Todd M. Endelman, “The Resettlement (1656-1700),” in The Jews of Modern Britain, 1656-2000 (University of California Press, 2002), 15.

  • [2] Ibid, 18-9.

  • [3] N.I. Matar, “The Idea of the Restoration of the Jews in English Protestant Thought, 1661-1701,” The Harvard Theological Review, 78 no ½ (Jan-Apr 1985): 116.

  • [4] Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism, (Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2001, first published 1911), 63.

  • [5] Endelman, “Resettlement,” 24.

  • [6] Cecil Roth, A History of the Jews in England, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), 162-3.

  • [7] Ibid, 166.

  • [8] Ibid, 171.

  • [9] Endelman, “Resettlement,” 27.

  • [10] Roth, History, 167-9.

  • [11] Sombart, Capitalism, 42.

  • [12] Roth, History, 171.

  • [13] Sombart, Capitalism, 42.

  • [14] Roth, History, 173.

  • [15] Matar, “Restoration,” 124-5.

  • [16] Ibid, 131-2.

  • [17] Ibid, 134-5.

  • [18] Roth, History, 180-1.

  • [19] David S. Katz, “The Jews of England and the Glorious Revolution,” in The Jews in the History of England 1485-1850 (Oxford University Press, 1996), 146-151.

  • [20] Ibid, 156.

  • [21] Ibid, 156-7.

  • [22] Sombart, Capitalism, 42.

  • [23] Katz, “Revolution”, 157.

  • [24] Rodney Malcolm Curtis, “Christian Philosemitism in England from Cromwell to the Jew Bill, 1656-1753. A Study in Jewish and Christian Identity” (PhD diss., University of Bristol, 2018), 35.

  • [25] Katz, “Revolution”, 157-8.

  • [26] L.M. Friedman, “Chapter XI: The De la Penha Family and its Labrador Grants,” in Early American Jews (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), 147-9.

  • [27] Katz, “Revolution,” 158-9.

  • [28] Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550-1750, (Oxford, 1985), 129.

  • [29] Katz, “Revolution,” 159-61.

  • [30] Sombart, Capitalism, 42.

  • [31] Katz, “Revolution,” 161-70.

  • [32] Ibid, 171-2.

  • [33] Jonathan I. Israel and Nicholas Tyacke, From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 131.

  • [34] Katz, “Revolution,” 172-5.

  • [35] Endelman, “Resettlement,” 37.

  • [36] Matar, “Restoration,” 141-4.

  • [37] Katz, “Revolution,” 175-6.

  • [38] Ibid, 185.

  • [39] Norma Perry, “Anglo-Jewry, the Law, Religious Conviction, and Self-Interest (1655-1753),” Journal of European Studies xiv (1984): 7-8.

  • [40] Roth, History, 191-2.

  • [41] Sombart, Capitalism, 52.

  • [42] J.A. Giuseppi, “Sephardi Jews and the early years of The Bank of England,” Jewish Historical Society of England 19, (1955-59): 57-60.

  • [43] Katz, “Revolution,” 187 (note 133).

  • [44] Sombart, Capitalism, 64.

  • [45] Katz, “Revolution,” 176-7.

  • [46] Ibid, 180-1.

  • [47] Ibid, 187-8.

  • [48] Matar, “Restoration,” 146-7.