Thread
Recusancy laws in England targeted Catholics but also caught nonconformists; and on at least two occasions Jews were fined for recusancy, in 1577 and 1686. The first case is curious, because there weren't supposed to be any Jews in England at the time (thread)
In November 1577 'Thomas Ball, an Jewish gent.' was fined for recusancy. In theory, there weren't supposed to be any Jews in England between 1290 and 1656, but as several scholars have shown this did not reflect reality
In particular, Jewish merchants and traders from the Portuguese Sephardic Jewish community in the Netherlands routinely visited London, and some may have settled there under the radar
It's unclear who Thomas Ball was, but just like any Catholic or Protestant independent refusing to attend church, by not going to church he made himself subject to the application of the recusancy laws
The case of Alice Penicoate of Fisherton Anger, Wiltshire, 'a reputed Jew' is in some respects even more interesting. For one thing, de facto toleration of Jews existed by that point
The Jewish community at the time was confined to London, and largely Portuguese-speaking; which raises the question of how Alice came to be living in rural Wiltshire. One possibility is that she was one of a handful of people who converted to Judaism during the Interregnum
We know that during the period of unrestricted religious liberty after the Civil War, some people came to believe (for millennialist reasons) that they should become Jews. Was Alice Penicoate one of those people?
Or was Alice simply 'reputed a Jew' because she denied the Trinity or repudiated the Old Testament? Again, there is much we don't know...
