ism. The Conference was discontinued; and, though the
good Rabbi lingered on in London till April 1656, nothing could be
done. Prejudice in the religious world was too strong. Nevertheless
the Protector found means of giving effect to his own views. Not only
did he mark his respect for Manasseh Ben Israel by a pension of L100
a year, to be paid him in Amsterdam; he admitted so many Jews, one by
one, by private dispensation, that there was soon a little colony of
them in London, with a synagogue to suit, and a piece of ground at
Stepney leased for a cemetery. In effect, the readmission of the Jews
into England dates from Cromwell's Protectorate.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Merc. Pol._ Nov. 1-8, 1655; Council Order Book,
Nov. 13; Godwin, IV. 243-251; Carlyle, III. 136, note. Prynne opposed
the Readmission of the Jews in a pamphlet, in two parts, called _A
Short Demurrer to the Jews' long discontinued Remitter_ (March
1656); and Durie published, in the form of a letter to Hartlib, _A
Case of Conscience: whether it be lawful to admit Jews into a
Christian Commonwealth_ (June 27, 1656). I have not seen Durie's
letter; but Mr. Crossley (_Worthington's Diary_, I. 83, note)
reports it as moderately favourable to the Jewish claim. The letter
is dated, he says, from Cassel, Jan. 8, 1655-6.]

Although making no great pretensions to learning himself, Cromwell
seems to have taken especial pleasure in that part of his powers and
privileges which gave him an influence on the literature and
education of the country. Here, in fact, he but carried out in a
special department that general notion of the Civil Magistrate's
powers and duties which had led him to declare himself so strongly
for the preservation and extension of an Established Church. The more
thorough-going champions of Voluntaryism in that day, Anabaptists
and others, had begun, as we have seen, to agitate not only for the
abolition of a national Church or State-paid clergy of any kind, but
also for the abolition of the Universities, the public schools, and
all endowments for science or learning. But, if Cromwell had so
signally disowned and condemned the system of sheer Voluntaryism in
Religion, it was not to be expected that the more peculiar and
exceptional Voluntaryism which challenged even State Endowments for
education should find any countenance from _his_ Protectorate.
Nor did it.

The two English Universities had been sufficiently Puritanized long
before Cromwell's access