The Sephardim of England

A History of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Community 1492-1951

Albert M. Hyamson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000043846
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología judía

Originally published in 1951, this book explores the development in England of the Sephardi branch of the Jewish community, the co-heirs, with their kinsmen in Holland, in Italy, in North America and in the Middle East, of the Golden Age of Jewish history in Spain. Based on archival history from within the community, it was the first full-length history of the Sephardi community in England and describes how this little Jewish community, the first in England since the Middle Ages, grew, prospered and contributed the wealth and influence of London, and eventually producing in Disraeli one of England's greatest Prime Ministers.

Chapter I

The Earliest Sephardim in England

THE TWO GREAT groups into which Jews are divided are called Sephardim and Ashkenazim. In essentials their differences are in liturgy and in pronunciation of Hebrew. The Sephardi and Ashkenazi liturgies—their teachings are identical—derive, it is said, in the one case from the great Jewish centre that was set up in Babylonia by the exiles settled there by Nebuchadnezzar after the fall of the Kingdom of Judah in 586 B.c., and in the other from the revived community established in Palestine by the returning exiles who accompanied or followed Ezra and Nehemiah. The development of Judaism or rather of the liturgy thus followed two separate courses, and as communications between Spain, where the Sephardim originated, and Babylonia seem to have been closer than those between Spain and Palestine, the influence of the Babylonian prevailed among the Sephardim. The pronunciation of Hebrew, the language widely used in prayer and otherwise by both communities, also developed differences, but never sufficient to make language of the one group unintelligible to the other. The Sephardim in their travels moreover came into contact with more widely scattered Jewish communities than did the Ashkenazim, who until comparatively recent times were never established outside of Europe. The Sephardim and these smaller communities were originally distinct from one another, but when the Sephardim found new homes in other parts, they assimilated as a rule with the local communities. In northern Africa, in Turkey proper, and in Italy, where the Sephardi settlement was relatively considerable, it seems on the other hand to have absorbed the local communities, so that, for instance in Italy, where the Jews originally adhered to the Ashkenazi rite, the whole community in the end became Sephardi. Thus today all Italian Jews are Sephardim, but their origins to an appreciable extent do not derive from either Spain or Portugal.

The separation of the Sephardim from the other principal group in Jewry, the Ashkenazim or Jews of central and eastern Europe, goes back for a very long period, probably to the beginning of the present era, possibly even earlier. The Jews, who left Spain in 1492 and Portugal five years later, settled for the most part in North Africa, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire. After them for two centuries and even longer came the Marranos, Jews and the descendants of Jews, sometimes of mixed ancestry, who had adopted Christianity more or less voluntarily, often under great pressure, and had remained in their homes, only to find sooner or later that, despite their submission to circumstances, life in supportable conditions in their old homes was impossible and that the choice lay no longer between partial conversion and exile, but between complete renunciation and death at the stake; often the latter fate was imposed without an alternative. The new emigration of the Marranos to some extent followed the course of the earlier one, but it entered also new fields. Marranos settled in increasing numbers in South and Central America and the West Indies where, although still under Spanish and Portuguese rule, they thought that the hand of the Inquisition and of its secular supporters would be lighter. From the Spanish and Portuguese territories in the New World a number of these refugees from martyrdom spread into North America and those islands of the West Indies in which under the English or the Dutch flag they were safe from persecution. Other Marrano refugees remained in Europe, overflowing into southern France or taking ship and settling in the ports of the North Sea with some of which they already had commercial relations. It was Marranos such as these who founded the English Sephardi community, indeed the Anglo-Jewish community as a whole, the first Jewish communities in England after the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdom in 1290 being established in London and Bristol.

The last day on which an unbaptized Jew was free, according to the decision of the King, Edward I, to reside in England was 10 October 1290, and that may be taken as the date of the expulsion of the Jews from England. Practically every Jew left the country, and it was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that the lawyers gave the opinion that there was no bar to the residence of Jews in England. A few of the exiles found their way to Spain and Italy, where the surname Ingles, denoting an English origin, occasionally appeared, and it may be that when a new Jewish community was formed in England some centuries later, a few of the new-comers were returning unknowingly to the land of their ancestors. Although from October 1290 until early in 1657 no open Jewish community existed in England, during almost the whole of the intervening period individual professing Jews from time to time were to be found in the country. Most of these came from the neighbouring France, but a few came from farther afield, in some cases, Spain. The House of Converts in Chancery Lane was active—with intervals in the later years—throughout this period, and residence in England and the profession of Judaism were conditions for admission to this institution. Among the earliest of the inmates of this House after the Expulsion was Janathus (? Jonathan) of Spain. In 1348 Theobald, a convert from Turkey, was admitted. A few years later, in 1356, John of Castile was an inmate. At the end of the fourteenth century most of the not very numerous inmates had come to England from Spain, and Jews from Spain and Portugal and other southern lands continued to appear until the beginning of the reign of James I. Prominent among these was Sir Edward Brampton (né Brandão or Brandon), who after baptism, with King Edward IV as his godfather, became a prominent Yorkist general, Governor of Guernsey, and knight. After the fall of the Yorkists he retired to his native Portugal, after an interlude in Flanders. Brampton’s entrancing story has been told by Mr. Cecil Roth.¹ There was also Rabbi Solomon haLevi, far more famous after his baptism as Paul of Burgos, Chancellor of Castile, Bishop of Cartagena and of Burgos, Archbishop Primate of Toledo and persecutor of the kinsmen he had deserted. He was also known as Paul de Santa Maria, taking this name as a tribute to his membership of the same tribe in Israel as that of the Mother of Jesus, whom he claimed as a collateral ancestress. He was in London late in the fourteenth century, and a letter from him complaining of his consequent lack of opportunity for the celebration of Purim,² written to Don Meir Alguadez, a rabbi and physician of Castile, is extant.

With the expulsion from Spain in 1492, however, a few of the fugitives seem to have come at once to London, where possibly before their exile they had had business correspondents who may themselves have been Marranos. The presence of this small group soon became known in Spain and protests against the harbouring of its members were made by his Most Catholic Majesty. The marriage of the Prince of Wales and Catherine of Aragon was then being negotiated, and as a part of the agreement Henry VII undertook to break up the small community to whose existence his attention had been directed. No particular action seems, however, to have been taken, but the group was too small to take root and was either absorbed into the surrounding population or left the country. In fact it was from the exiles from Portugal of 1496 more than from those from Spain four years earlier that the new Sephardi settlements in England and elsewhere were drawn. The Jews of Portugal had been especially prominent in international commerce, and in the course of their activities, especially after the Expulsion, had appointed agents in foreign centres, in particular on the coasts of the North Sea. These agents were, as a rule, relatives or close associates of the heads of the firms in Portugal, and were in consequence not avowed Jews, but Marranos. The greatest of all these Jewish or Marrano commercial, and by a natural development, financial organizations was that of Francisco and Diogo Mendes,¹ with headquarters in Lisbon and branches or agents in all the principal commercial centres of western Europe, in London as elsewhere. Through this last-mentioned agency the firm was concerned with English Government loans and finance, and seems to have given the English authorities such satisfaction that when, in 1532, Diogo Mendes, the head of the important Antwerp branch, was threatened with prosecution on a charge of Judaizing, the King of England, Henry VIII, himself intervened and helped to free Mendes from the threat. Three years later Francisco, Diogo Mendes’ brother and head of the firm in Portugal, died, and his widow, Beatrice de Luna, better known as Dona Gracia, perhaps the most distinguished of Jewish women of all time, left Portugal with her daughter and other relatives, intending to settle in Antwerp. The security of the Marranos in the Low Countries at that time suffered frequent variations, and it was the custom for vessels carrying Marranos from Portugal to call at Southampton or Plymouth, to learn there whether it was safe for them to proceed farther. At these ports one of the Mendes agents used to advise the Marranos on board the vessels whether to continue their journeys or to await in England a more favourable opportunity for proceeding. Dona Gracia received such a warning and she and her party, which included her nephew and future son-in-law Joao Miguez, to become in later years Joseph Nasi, Duke of Naxos, the trusted adviser of Ottoman sultans and the prospective King of Cyprus, in consequence landed in England and for a time enjoyed English hospitality. This was in 1536. By then there was already a small secret Jewish community in England. It centred in London round the agents of the firm of Mendes, of whom passing mention has already been made. That it was continuous with the small Sephardi immigration on the morrow of the Expulsion from Spain is improbable, especially as the members whose names survive seem to have been not Spanish Jews but Portuguese Marranos. One of the new group was Jorge Anes or Ames, the head of a family that attained to some distinction in English public life.¹ Jorge Anes settled in London at the latest in 1521. They were encouraged by the business relations between the financial house of Mendes of Antwerp and Henry VIII of England which gave the Marranos some feeling of security. This community was somewhat fluid, for members were continually leaving to settle in Antwerp, but there was a core of permanent residents who, like the Anes family, were ultimately absorbed into the surrounding population. Gaspar Lopes was a cousin of Diogo Mendes and his agent, Antonio della Rogna, another agent of Mendes, acted as financial adviser to the Marranos who reached England and provided them with bills of exchange on Antwerp. The names of four members of the Pinto family, including the wife of Antonio della Rogna, have survived. There were three or four physicians, but otherwise most of the members of this group were merchants. That this was not merely a group of individuals but a community is clear, for one of them, Alvares Lopes, had a secret synagogue in his house, and was himself the spiritual head, in effect if not by title, of the small community. One or two names seem to connect with later times when there was an open Jewish community in London. Christopher Garcia was a prominent merchant trading in Antwerp and London before 1550. Antonio Rodrigues Andrada (Andrade), his wife and two children were living in London ten years earlier. There were at least four members of the Lopes family in London about this period. James Casseres bore a name that appeared again among the founders of the existing Sephardi community in the middle of the seventeenth century. Anthony de Marchina had a namesake in Moses Mocatta, the first of the family to settle in England, who was known as Marchena in his earlier years. The Jewish community of London of this period probably numbered about a hundred. Sixty-nine names have survived, but in only ten instances are the names of both husband and wife given. It is improbable that only ten of the thirty-seven men mentioned were married.

¹ See Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, vols. IX and XVI.

² The festival ordained in the Book of Esther.

¹ There is much about the commercial activities of this firm in Cecil Roth’s The House of Nasi: Dona Gracia (Philadelphia, 1947), but a full-length account of Marrano commerce has still to be written.

Even in those days London Jewry was concerned not only with its own affairs. The situation of Jewry, then as always, was precarious in one quarter or another. The position of the Marranos on the Continent, outside the Iberian Peninsula, was threatened in 1540 and a sort of international Jewish conference was convened at Antwerp to consider the situation. The London community was represented at this conference by one of its members and made its contribution to the fund that was raised for the help of the Marranos who were in danger. Moreover, events on the Continent had their reaction in England. The attention of the English Government was drawn to the discovery by the Holy Inquisition of a community of secret Jews settled in London, and King Henry VIII felt compelled to act. This community was broken up and most of its members left the country. Those who remained seem very successfully to have concealed their Judaism.

¹ One of the sons of Jorge, Francis, was a secret agent of Drake in the Azores and later commanded the English garrison at Youghal in Ireland, which town he successfully defended against the rebels. Another son, Dunstan, a merchant and importer, supplied the Royal Household—in modern parlance held the Royal Warrant. A sister of Jorge Anes was the wife of the far better known Dr. Rodrigo Lopes, Queen Elizabeth’s physic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Frontispiece
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Chapter I. The Earliest Sephardim in England
• Chapter II. The Origins of the Present Community
• Chapter III. The Organization of the Community
• Chapter IV. Set-Backs and Advances
• Chapter V. The Enlargement of the Synagogue
• Chapter VI. A New Haham and a New Synagogue
• Chapter VII. Some Eighteenth-Century Personalities
• Chapter VIII. External Affairs
• Chapter IX. The Sephardim Beyond the Seas
• Chapter X. The Great Period in Sephardi History
• Chapter XI. The Internal Life of the Sephardim
• Chapter XII. More Personalities
• Chapter XIII. The Turn of the Century
• Chapter XIV. The First Decades of the Nineteenth Century
• Chapter XV. The Great Secession
• Chapter XVI. The Sephardim and the Ashkenazim
• Chapter XVII. Sir Moses Montefiore
• Chapter XVIII. A Threat to Bevis Marks
• Chapter XIX. The Penultimate Half-Century
• Chapter XX. The Last Fifty Years
• Appendix I. Changes in Ritual and Order of Services
• Appendix II. The Founders of the Congregation
• Appendix III. Seatholders in 5442 (1682)
• Appendix IV. The Earliest List of Elders
• Appendix V. List of Members of the Mahamad (1663-1951)
• Glossary
• Index