expression. Men greeted each other with old-fashioned Bible greetings; they named their children after those ‘great ones gone,’ or with even quainter effect in some simple selected Bible phrase; the very tones of the Prophets seemed to resound in Whitehall, and Englishmen to have become, in a wide, unsensational sense, not men only of the sword, or of the plough, but men of the Book, and that Book the Bible. Liberty of conscience, equality before the law for all religious denominations, had been the unconditional demand of that wonderful army of Independents, and although the Catholics were the immediate cause and object of this appeal, yet Manasseh, watching events from the calm standpoint of a keenly interested onlooker, thought he discerned in the listening attitude of the English Parliament, a favourable omen of the attention he desired to claim for his clients, since it was not alone for political, but for religious, rights that he meant to plead. He did not, however, actually come to England till 1655, when the way for personal intercession had been already prepared by correspondence and petition. His _Hope of Israel_ had been forwarded to Cromwell so early as 1650; petitions praying for the readmission of Jews to England with full rights of worship, of burial, and of commerce secured to them, had been laid before the Long and the Rump Parliament, and Manasseh had now in hand, and approaching completion, a less elaborate and more impassioned composition than usual, entitled, _Vindiciæ Judæorum_. A powerful and unexpected advocate of Jewish claims presently came forward in the person of Edward Nicholas, the clerk to the Council. This large-minded and enlightened gentleman had the courage to publish an elaborate appeal for, and defence of, the Jews, ‘the most honourable people in the world,’ as he styled them, ‘a people chosen by God and protected by God.’ The pamphlet was headed, _Apology for the Honourable Nation of the Jews and all the Sons of Israel_, and Nicholas’s arguments aroused no small amount of attention and discussion. It was even whispered that Cromwell had had a share in the authorship; but if this had been so, undoubtedly he who ‘stood bare, not cased in euphemistic coat of mail,’ but who ‘grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, with the naked truth of things,’[19] would have unhesitatingly avowed it. His was not the sort of nature to shirk responsibilities nor to lack the courage of his opinions. There can be no doubt that, from first to last, Cromwell was strongly in favour of Jewish claims being allowed, but just as little doubt is there that there was never any tinge or taint of ‘secret favouring’ about his sayings or his doings on the subject. The part, and all things considered the very unpopular part, he took in the subsequent debates, had, of course, to be accounted for by minds not quick to understand such simple motive power as justice, generosity, or sympathy, and both now and later the wildest