Following the Conquest of 1066, a sizable Jewish community appeared in England. William the Conqueror (威廉一世, 1028–1087) needed moneylenders to provide liquidity to the English nobles. Since, according to the Bible, lending money at interest was considered sinful and un-Christian, and the Jewish religion attached no such stigma to the act, the Jews were the perfect people to provide this service that was needed by the society at the time. Therefore, William the Conqueror offered the Jews special protection under the law and made them direct subjects of the King.

As medieval Europe shifted more towards religious heterodoxy — exemplified by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 where Jews and Muslims were required to wear special dresses to distinguish themselves from the Christians — resentment towards the Jews, especially by the large landowners who owed significant money to the Jews, received official support.

In 1285, the Statue of Jewry banned all usury, even by Jews.

In 1287, King Edward I seized all Jewish property and transferred all debts owed to the Jews to his own name.

On 18th July 1290, King Edward I issued the Edit of Expulsion and forced all Jews to leave the Kingdom of England. The record showed about 3,000 Jews left during this period; others stayed while keeping their religion secret.

This expulsion edict led to over 200 years of antisemitism throughout Europe.

It was not until 1656, 366 years later, that Jews were allowed to return to England.

During this time, for all intents and purposes, Holland was the only country in Europe where Jews could practise their faith in the open and live in peace. As they fled persecution, many sought protection in Amsterdam, the city where Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel (马纳塞,1604–1657) called home. As a result, the Dutch metropolis was often referred to as the Jerusalem of the north.

Amid the Inquisition, Rabbi Menasseh believed other havens must be developed for his co-religionists. England was considered a prime candidate — while the general impression of the Jews was still not positive, its new Puritan regime offered more sympathy towards the Jewish people. Furthermore, Rabbi Menasseh had a strong messianic reason to convince England to reverse the Edict of Expulsion.

In September 1655, the Amsterdam rabbi arrived in London to discuss the readmission of Jews with Oliver Cromwell (克伦威尔, 1599–1658) and other important figures in the British Parliament. Lord Cromwell was the head of the army of the Parliament of England against King Charles I during the English Civil War (英国內战, 1642–1651). From 1653 to his death in 1658, he served as the Lord Protector (护国公) of the British Isles.

According to Professor Michael Pollak, in Mandarins, Jews and Missionaries, “the Book of Daniel foretells that a widespread dispersion of the Jews would precede their restoration to their homeland. Theologians had connected this prediction with the Deuteronomic reference to a scattering of the Israelites from one end of the earth to the other."

With the Jesuits' discovery of the Jewish colony in the Middle Kingdom, this more than adequately completes the theory that the Israelites reached the continent of America by passing through China. Professor Pollak continued, that according to Rabbi Menasseh, “it was now clear that the Israelites who had come to South American by way of China must be considered as having been scattered to one of the two ends of the earth and to have fulfilled one component of the two-sided dispersion requirement prescribed in Deuteronomy.”

More importantly, in its relevance to Rabbi Menasseh’s audience, Professor Pollak wrote, “The other end of the earth, quite obviously, would have to be England; but the sad fact, as everybody knew, was that although there were unquestionably Israelites in the end of the earth that was South American there were none, at least legally, in the end of the earth that was England. The time for the coming of the Messiah, he (Rabbi Menasseh) now declared, agreeing with the Christian Messianists, was drawing nigh. ‘It is said,’ he (Rabbi Menasseh) ruefully informed his readers, ‘that although the Messiah were lame, he might have come by this time.’ But he had not come — and the blame for this, Menasseh hinted rather broadly, could well be laid at the feet of the English.”

Rabbi Menasseh then went on to conclude that if the God-fearing English people really wished for the coming of their Messiah, they would have to invite the Jews to come back to England and dwell in that end of the earth in which the English themselves lived.

Indeed, Rabbi Menasseh, persuasive and influential, successfully convinced Lord Cromwell. Antisemitism, however, permeated the nation at the time, causing much opposition to the idea. For instance, an anti-Jewish group created a conspiracy theory that the Jews wanted to take over both Oxford University's Bodleian Library and London's St. Paul's Cathedral and turn the latter into a synagogue.

Nevertheless, despite this strong opposing force, in 1656, Oliver Cromwell readmitted Jews into England under the Cromwellian Protectorate.

According to Professor Pollak, “without the Chinese Jews, however, his (Rabbi Menasseh) case would have held up less well than it did, and the readmission of the Jews to England may well have been put off to a much later time.”

Of course, the Jews in Kaifeng had no idea, at the time at least, of the rather significant role they had played in finding their co-religionists a safe home in England.