Jewish settlement in England.- Menasseh ben Israel. Vindiciae Judaeorum, or a Letter In Answer to certain Questions...touching the reproaches cast on the Nation of the Jewes, first edition, woodcut device on title and woodcut headpiece, some light foxing and soiling, modern mottled calf, gilt, 4to, [Wing M381], Printed by R[oger] D[aniel], 1656.*** Very good copy of this important work which initiated the unofficial English acceptance of Jewish settlement and led to the granting of an official charter of protection to the Jews of England in 1664 and to the formal recognition of Jewish settlement in England. Cromwell, in fact, had already been moved to sympathy with the Jewish cause, arguably for commercial reasons, and despite Prynne’s able but unfair attack on the Jews (in the ‘Short Demurrer’, a mingling of learning and gross stereotypes), the Whitehall Conference declared that ‘there was no law that forbade the Jews return to England’.Menasseh, born in Lisbon about 1604, grew up in Amsterdam. His family suffered under the Inquisition but found asylum there and Menasseh rose to eminence not only as a rabbi and an author, but also a printer. He established the first Hebrew press in Holland and numbered Grotius and Rembrandt amongst his friends (the latter painted his portrait).