February 4 1657 – 1 Adar 5417
Oliver Cromwell gave Antonio Fernandez Carvajal assurance of the right of Jews to remain in England. Carvajal, originally from Portugal, was a Jewish merchant who’d made a fortune in the Canary Islands and settled in England, ostensibly as a Christian. In the atmosphere of tolerance under Cromwell, he and his two sons were the first Jews to receive British citizenship, on August 17 1655. His extensive trade in the West Indies was extremely beneficial to Cromwell’s government, and as a result when Carvajal’s estates in the Canary Islands were threatened with seizure during hostilities between England and Spain, an English ship was sent flying a Dutch flag to bring back all his goods.
Carvajal was essentially the founding member of the British Jewish community – he was one of three signatories to the original petition for a Jewish burial ground submitted to Cromwell, and joined Menasseh Ben Israel’s efforts to gain official permission for Jews to reside in the British Isles, despite the fact that his own position was secure. The note in the parliamentary diary recording that permission was dated February 4 1657.
Carvajal died after surgery to remove a gall-stone, on November 10 1659, and his funeral was recorded by the English famous diarist Samuel Pepys, who was operated on by the same surgeon, for a similar complaint:
“Being this morning (for observacion sake) at the Jewish Synagogue in London I heared many lamentacions made by Portugall Jewes for ye death of Ferdinando ye Merchant, who was lately cutt (by the same hand wth my selfe) of ye Stone.”