Note 177 — Chapter XXXII · A.D. 1500-1600. THE JEWS IN ASIA AND AFRICA.

Some Observations of a London Merchant about the Bill for the Naturalization of the Jews, A.D. 1753. The writer had probably conversed with persons who remembered the state of things in England before the readmission of the Jews. As regards the assertion of the Spanish historian, therefore, there is very reasonable likelihood of the Jews having been allowed to live without molestation in England during the reigns of the Tudors. Indeed, as Disraeli has remarked, if there had been no Jews in England, Sir E. Coke would hardly have insisted so forcibly on their not being admissible as witnesses. But the statement respecting the building and public use of synagogues must be taken with reservation. The expulsion from Spain occurred a little before the close of the fifteenth century. Scarcely more than fifty years afterwards we find Cromwell’s divines declaring that ‘for the Jews to have synagogues, or any public meetings for worship, was not only evil, but scandalous to Christian churches.’ Surely they could not have said this, if synagogues had so recently existed in London, and worship been celebrated in them!