Cromwell Readmits Jews to England

1655

Oliver Cromwell quietly permitted Jewish merchants and their families to return to England after an exile of three hundred and sixty-six years. No formal edict was published; instead, individual permissions accumulated. The readmission was driven as much by Puritan millenarianism and commercial pragmatism as by any enlightened tolerance, but it reopened a door that Edward I had slammed shut in 1290.