There were undoubtedly several auxiliary causes which made the readmission of the Jews possible, and the general conditions of the time and the country were assuredly favourable. Still, the fact remains that Manasseh’s powerful imaginative impulse and his emotional Messianic conception were the most important driving force in the wonderful story of the resettlement of the Jews in England.¹ It is true that he did not succeed in obtaining that formal permission for the resettlement which he wanted, but by the publicity of his appeal he brought the subject prominently before the ruling minds of England, and thus indirectly led to the recognition of the fact that there was nothing in English law against the readmission of the Jews.² ¹ Not that there had not been Jews in England since the expulsion. The researches of Sir Sidney Lee and Mr. Lucien Wolf have shown that hardly for a single year was English soil without Jewish inhabitants, some of them of considerable distinction: Dr. Rodrigo Lopez (_ob._ 1594), Antonio Fernandez Carvajal (1590?‒1659), Manuel Martinez Dormido [David Abrabanel] (_ob._ 1667); but they were tolerated only as privileged individuals. ² Mr. Lucien Wolf, to whose researches our knowledge of the secret services of Carvajal and his friends to Cromwell and the Commonwealth is due, is inclined to give them all the credit for the readmission. But it is clear that had not public opinion been aroused on the side of Jewish rights, nothing could have been done. One can say, without exaggeration, that there was a Biblical and Messianic idea at the very root of this great event. In effect, Zionism stood at the cradle of the resettlement of the Jews in England. This is clear to everybody who has studied Manasseh’s writings, particularly in the original _Hebrew_, the language in which he can best be understood and appreciated. His favourite idea was that the return of the Jews to their ancient land must be preceded by their general dispersion. The Dispersion, according to the words of the Bible, was to be from one end of the earth to the other, and must therefore include the British Isles, which lay in the extreme north of the inhabited world. Manasseh made no secret of his Messianic hopes, because he could and did reckon upon the fact that the “Saints” or Puritans wished for the “assembling of God’s people” in their ancestral home and were inclined to help and promote it.