Jewish readmission and Huguenot refugees
Jewish Readmission Under Cromwell
England had officially excluded Jews since Edward I’s expulsion of 1290. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, circumstances were changing. A small community of Sephardic Jews — Jews whose families had been expelled from Spain and Portugal — was already living in London, practising their faith covertly and passing as Spanish or Portuguese merchants. In 1655, Menasseh ben Israel, a distinguished Amsterdam rabbi, travelled to London to petition Oliver Cromwell directly for formal readmission.
Cromwell’s motivations were mixed. He saw commercial benefit — Dutch and Sephardic Jewish merchants had proven highly effective in Amsterdam’s trading empire and might benefit England similarly. He was also influenced by millenarian Protestant theology, which held that the conversion of the Jews was a necessary precondition for Christ’s return — readmission was seen by some Puritans as a step towards that goal. A conference of lawyers and clergy was convened in December 1655 but reached no formal resolution.
The readmission of 1656 was “de facto” rather than legally formal: Cromwell issued no proclamation but let it be known that Jews could worship privately and remain. When a Sephardic merchant petitioned for his property to be protected, Cromwell’s government upheld his claim — in effect acknowledging Jewish residence as legitimate. This quiet readmission had lasting consequences: the Jewish community in London grew steadily through the Restoration period.
The Huguenots: Protestant Refugees from France
The largest and most visible refugee community to arrive in early modern England was the Huguenots — French Calvinist Protestants who had enjoyed limited legal protection under the Edict of Nantes (1598) until Louis XIV revoked it in October 1685. The revocation left Huguenots facing forced conversion, destruction of their churches and the closure of their schools. Estimates suggest around 200,000 left France; approximately 40,000–50,000 settled in England, primarily in London, Canterbury, Southampton and Norwich.
Huguenot refugees arrived in several waves across the late seventeenth century. The most concentrated influx followed directly after the 1685 revocation, when tens of thousands fled across the Channel. English reception was broadly positive — the refugees were fellow Protestants, many were skilled craftspeople, and their arrival generated political sympathy against the Catholic French king. Parliament passed acts granting naturalization to many Huguenot refugees.
The Huguenots transformed several English industries. In Spitalfields, east London, Huguenot weavers established a sophisticated silk-weaving trade that had not previously existed in England on such a scale. Families like the Courtaulds (originally Courtault) became synonymous with textile manufacturing — the Courtauld company grew eventually into a major industrial firm. Huguenot silversmiths, including Paul de Lamerie, brought high-quality French metalworking techniques to London. Huguenot medical practitioners contributed to English medicine, and several Huguenot families founded banks and insurance businesses.
However, this broadly positive narrative requires qualification. Native English silk-weavers in Spitalfields resented Huguenot competition and there were periodic riots. Some Huguenots remained economically marginal — not all were wealthy craftspeople; many were poor labourers who struggled to find work. Reception was shaped partly by economic context: when trade was good, Huguenots were welcomed; when times were hard, they faced hostility.
The Palatines: Economic Refugees of 1709
The Huguenots were Protestant religious refugees. The Palatines who arrived in 1709 represented a different category: economic and environmental refugees. The Rhine–Palatinate region of Germany had suffered terrible winters in 1708–09 and decades of military ravaging during the War of the Spanish Succession. Around 13,000 German Protestants arrived in London in the summer of 1709, many hoping to be transported to the American colonies.
The Palatine arrival provoked a sharp public debate about the limits of English hospitality. The Whig-led Parliament had just passed a general naturalisation act for foreign Protestants and welcomed them as fellow Protestants, but the sheer scale of arrivals strained charitable resources and generated hostility. Many were housed in tented camps. About 3,000 were eventually transported to Ireland; several thousand more to America. The episode showed that English opinion on refugees was not uniformly welcoming — public attitudes depended heavily on numbers, cost and the perceived cultural similarity of the arrivals.
The Huguenot legacy is visible across England today. Surnames including Bosanquet, Courtauld, Ligonier, Papillon and Du Cane entered British life via Huguenot refugees. The French Protestant Church in London, now in Soho Square, was founded by charter of Edward VI in 1550 and grew again with the refugees of the 1680s. The Huguenots assimilated relatively quickly — within two or three generations, most English Huguenot families had anglicised their names and integrated into broader English Protestant society.
Looking across the Jewish readmission, the Huguenot influx and the Palatine arrival, a recurring pattern emerges. Economic utility and religious sympathy encouraged welcome; perceived cultural difference and economic competition generated hostility. Jewish readmission was permitted quietly, without fanfare, because it served commercial interests. The Huguenots were broadly welcomed as skilled Protestant craftspeople. The Palatines, arriving in large numbers with fewer skills and greater economic needs, faced a more mixed reception.
This pattern of conditional welcome — where the reception of migrants was shaped by what they could contribute and how similar they appeared to the host society — recurs throughout British migration history. It is worth bearing in mind when comparing across the full 1000-year sweep of this thematic study.