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Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, in a painting by Samuel Cooper, 1656
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At any rate, the thirteenth century saw in England a rapid decline of Jewish financial power and at the same time an official animosity toward them… The final step came when their special license to practice usury was withdrawn by Edward I in the earlier part of his reign; and at last, in 1290, after increasing severities, they were all expelled from the country under pain of death…They returned, as everybody knows, under Cromwell. Their numbers, and still more their wealth, increased at the end of the seventeenth century and concomitantly with this, partly as an effect of it (but here we must not exaggerate), a number of novel financial features appeared in the English State each of which shows the increased power of the Jews. The institution of the Bank, of the National Debt, of speculation in Exchange, and in fluctuation of stock… There were, of course, many other causes contributory to the peculiar position which the Jews came to enjoy in modern England, a position which he has not yet lost in external circumstance, though it is so badly shaken morally. There was the fact that England was the Protestant power of the West. This religious motive played a great part. Between the Catholic Church and the Synagogue there had been hostility from the first century. In so far as it was possible to take sides in that quarrel it was natural for the Protestant power to take sides against the Catholic tradition and therefore in favour of the Jews. Again the English were not only Protestant, their middle classes were steeped in the reading of the Old Testament. The Jews seemed to them the heroes of an epic and the shrines of a religion. You will find strong relics of this Provincial England to this day.
Hilaire Belloc, The Jews (pp.185-187)
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