with Spain had rendered it impossible for them to continue, in their guise of _Nuevos Cristianos_, to attend the services in the Spanish Ambassador’s chapel, and as they were bound by the Act of 1650 to resort to some place “where the service or worship of God is exercised,” they were confronted by the necessity of either posing as pseudo-Protestants or frankly practising Judaism. The former course was out of the question, especially after Hugh Peters’s condemnation of their hypocrisy at Whitehall. Hence their request to be permitted to worship as Jews. By Cromwell’s acquiescence in this request and his promise of protection a secret beginning in the way of Readmission had been informally accomplished. This arrangement was, however, not destined to endure. It was an evasion of the will of the Whitehall Conferences—an attempt, as Graetz has well said, to readmit the Jews “nicht durch das grosse Portal sondern durch eine Hinterthür.”[133] It was condemned to failure, too, because its secret could not be kept. Even before the end of 1655 Cromwell’s intentions were known. In a scrap of a Royalist letter of intelligence, dated December 31, and preserved in the State Papers, the writer says, “The Jews, we hear, will be admitted by way of connivancy, though the generality oppose.”[134] The secret arrangement with regard to divine worship was also soon bruited abroad. In a despatch dated January 28, 1656, Salvetti, the diplomatic agent of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, informed his master that “the affair of the Jews continues in the state I have already described; meanwhile they may meet privately in their houses, but they have not yet established a synagogue.”[135] In a later despatch (February 4) he confirms this information and amplifies it. “It is thought,” he writes, “that the Protector will not make any declaration in their favour, but tacitly he will connive at their holding private conventicles, which they already do, in their houses in order to avoid public scandal.”[136] From the Royalist spies and the diplomatists the news was quickly conveyed to the anti-Semites in the City. Although the dangers of a Jewish immigration _en masse_ and the scandal of a public synagogue had been averted, the enemies of the Jews—especially their competitors in trade—were not inclined to acquiesce without a struggle in the tacit toleration of even a small community of Hebrew merchants. But what could be done? As Jews the position of the intruders was legal, and any attempt to persecute them in that capacity would probably be resented in a disagreeable fashion by the masterful Protector. Moreover, as the most serious evils of the Jewish problem had been provided against, and the public mind was preoccupied with the war with Spain, it might be difficult to enlist a large measure of support in an agitation against the strangers. An opportunity for showing their teeth soon presented itself to the City merchants, and they were not slow to avail themselves of it.