The history of the Jews in England goes back to the Norman Conquest. The first written records of Jewish settlement in England date from the time of William the Conqueror in 1066, although Jews may have lived there since Roman times. The Jewish presence continued until King Edward I's Edict of Expulsion in 1290.
After the expulsion there was no Jewish community, apart from isolated individuals who practised Judaism secretly, until the reign of Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell never officially readmitted Jews to Britain, but a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London was identified in 1656 and allowed to remain due to Cromwell's need of their financial assistance.
The Jewish Naturalisation Act of 1753, an attempt to legalize the Jewish presence in England, remained in force for only a few months. Mennaseh ben Israel, a famous leader of Dutch Jewry, intervened with Cromwell to allow Jews to remain in the country.
The oldest functioning synagogue in Britain is Bevis Marks in the City of London, which was built in 1702.
Due to the lack of anti-Jewish violence in the country in the 19th century, Britain acquired a reputation for religious tolerance. In the 1930s and 1940s, some European Jews fled to England to escape the Nazis. The Jews of England now number 300,000.
