Perpetual Infidel Aliens?

In 1655, Oliver Cromwell’s government refused Jews the freedom to establish a Jewish judicial system. Instead, Jews were to be granted the ‘condition of strangers’ that permitted some non-native-born subjects to sue in the king’s courts. However, a potentially fatal litigation hurdle entitled defendants to argue that Jews were perpetual alien infidels who, according to Lord Coke in Calvin’s Case (1608), could never litigate in the king’s courts. This article examines how legal rhetoric based on imaginary Jews was disavowed by mid-to-late eighteenth century English courts because of several factors – an emerging expansionist commercial empire, natural law principles and the presence of real Jews as litigants in the courts and in English society – which led courts to re-evaluate banning litigants from the courts based on their religious belief.