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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At a very early epoch Marranos reached England. We hear of them, almost immediately after the expulsion from Spain, figuring in a lawsuit in London.^[7] In 1550 a Marrano physician was discovered living in London. Another, Roderigo Lopes, was court physician to Queen Elizabeth, and the original of Shakespeare’s Shylock.^[8] When the Earl of Essex, after the sacking of Cadiz in 1596, brought the Spanish Resident, Alonzo de Herrera, a prisoner to England, he turned out to be a Marrano. After his liberation, this descendant of the great Captain Gonsalvo de Cordova proceeded to Amsterdam, entered the synagogue, and spent his old age in the compilation of cabalistical treatises.^[9] Amador de los Rios states that the Marranos founded secret settlements in London, Dover, and York;^[10] and it has been shown that they possessed a secret synagogue in London early in the seventeenth century, if not before.^[11] As in Amsterdam and Antwerp, they were largely concerned in the development of the Spanish trade, in the importation of bullion, and in the promotion of commercial relations with the Levant and the New World.