Читать книгу Menasseh ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell. Being a reprint of the pamphlets published by Menasseh ben Israel to promote the re-admission of the Jews to England, 1649-1656 онлайн

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Cromwell at once referred this petition to the Council, but the Lord President, apparently recognising that the Jewish question was coming up in a new form, held it back until the Robles case had been dealt with.^[142] The fact that Robles was a Jew had, indeed, already been ascertained, and the belief that the prosecution was aimed at all his co-religionists was gaining ground owing to a new outburst of activity on the part of the anti-Semites. The anxiety of the Marranos at the shelving of their petition became accentuated by this agitation, and especially by the doubts which it seemed to be producing in the minds of some of their best friends. The wavering feeling in high places was made disagreeably manifest to them by a letter addressed to Menasseh ben Israel by John Sadler, in which that friend of the Jews pointed out that the charges of ritual murder and quasi idolatry preferred by Prynne and Ross were being widely discussed, and that a public answer to them was urgently necessary.^[143] Before Menasseh’s reply was written Colonel Jones presented an interim report to the Council, from which it appeared inter alia that Knevett had filed a further information denouncing other Marranos as Spanish subjects.^[144]