The Story of the Jews Volume 2: When Words Fail: 1492--Present

by Simon Schama

When the screws tightened in Flanders, people and capital moved back to the Thames; when there was trouble in England, as there would be in 1542, the flow was reversed. When the de Luna sisters arrived in London, they found the double life they would already have known in Lisbon.9 By day and in business dealings with merchants, courtiers and impecunious nobles, the tiny community of about seventy were publicly and necessarily ‘Portuguese’ since a statute dating from the reign of Henry IV, De haeretico comburendo, specified the death sentence for any Christian practising Judaism.10 So as in Lisbon, while they married strictly within their community, they had an initial ceremony in a parish church. In the spirit of this double life Gonsalvo Anes, who became Dunstan Anes or ‘Ames’, had a surname which commonly meant ‘son of John’ in Portuguese but to those in the know also alluded to the ‘anusim’, as forced converts were known in Judaism. Under Elizabeth I the family name became Amis; Dunstan, a high-class grocer, had a coat of arms registered with the College of Heralds and was described as ‘Purveyor and Merchant’ to the queen’s household.11 But their position was always precarious. In 1542, a number of ‘Portuguese’ merchants were arrested on suspicion of being secret Jews, and although none were executed, their property was confiscated. And yet, despite the precautions, on Friday nights caped figures knocked on the door of Luis Lopes’s house near the Tower of London. In the...