It was supposed that there were no Jews in Elizabethan England in Shakespeare’s time. Edward I had expelled them in 1290 and they did not return until Cromwell invited them back in 1650.

However, Lucien Wolf [historian of English Jewry] writes that the Spanish Jews came to London almost immediately after the Spanish merchant. Marranos were legally not allowed to leave Spain but they left whenever they could. Lucien Wolf also reports the return of group of learned, converted Jews to England in connection with the divorce of Henry VIII.

According to Wolf, Henry VIII brought back this group of learned Jews, together with a copy of the Talmud, to Westminster Abbey, in order for them to interpret a passage of the Talmud which deals with "sisters-in-law" which was applicable to his own situation.

Wolf writes that one of the reasons for the settlement … of Marranos is England at this period was that Diogo Mendes participated in the loan transactions of the English Treasury, which were largely carried on in Antwerp. This afforded a certain security to the Marranos, who were always sure of Diogo’s public-spirited intervention on their behalf … When the head of he Mendes firm in Lisbon, Franciso Mendes, died in 1535, his illustrious widow, Beatriz de Luna, better known in Jewish history as Gracia Mendesia, paid a visit to England on her way to Antwep … In London, Gracia not only found agents of her late husband’s house, but also a small community of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, some of whom were so devoted to their prescribed religion that they had actually established for themselves a secret synagogue.

Lucien Wolf then proceeds to give a list of Marranos living in London; a total of 69 Marranos are mentioned in the above lists.

In 1556, the prosecution of Thomas Fernandez, a Marrano, resulted in the discovery of two secret Jewish communities in England, one in Bristol and another in London.

Among the Marranos of London, Wolf mentions "Dr. Hector Nunes," the distunguish Protuguese physician and friend of Walsingham. "At the time covered by this list he was a young, unmarried licentiate of medicine."

The family of "Nunes" is referred to by Marlowe in The Jew of Malta as "Nones in Portugal," (Jew of Malta163) whom Marlowe describes as very rich.

Wolf writes of Dr. Hector Nunes:

"Dr. Hector Nunes, a figure which is rapidly becoming one of the outstanding personalities of Western Jewish history … a devoted and enthusiastic Jew … All the Marranos mentioned in the Bristol list were observant Jews. Dr. Henrique Nunes held in his house a sort of secret Synagogue, in which all the local Marranos assembled on the Sabbaths and Festivals, and spent the whole day of Yom Kippur in praying and fasting."

The soul of this Bristol community was Beatrice Fernandes, the wife of Dr. Henrique Nunes. "She gave deponent to understand that she would not eat anything but what Jews are accustomed to eat according to their rites."

Thomas Fernandes further remimbers that a licentiate named Nector Nunes, physician, a young unmarried man living in London, sent word every year to his uncle of the days on which Jewish festivals would fall.

The existence of this Marrano community was confirmed also by two writers who lived in England at the time of Marlowe; they were Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey. They describe these Marranos. Nashe states:

"An other misery of Pride it is when men that haue good parts, and beare the name of deep scholers, cannot be content to participate in one faith with all Christendome, but because they will get a name to their vaineglory, they will set their self-loue to studie to inuent new sects of singularitie: [there are] a number more new faith founders that haue made England the exchange of Innouations, and almost as much confusion of Religion in every Quarter, as there was of tongues at the building of the Tower of Babell" (Italics mine) (Pierce p.: I, 171f).

Harvey makes a similar accusation. In Pierce’s Supererogation he writes:

"The Jews are subtle and mischievous people, and have cunningly inveigled some students of the holy tongue, with their miraculous Cabal from Moses, their omniscious Cosmology from Solomon, their Chaldean sapience from Solomon, their Chaldean sapience from Daniel and their profound secrets of great pretence; but their liberal gifts bite like their usury, and they are finally found to entertain them best, that shut them are quite out of doors, with their Sanhedrim and all (G. Harvey, Pierce’s Supererogation 116).

I have also found a reference to this "Judaizing" in the works of Francis Bacon, who was a contemporary of Marlowe. Albert M. Hyamson, in his book The Sephardim of England, relates that equally prominent with the Anes family. "Dr. Rodrigo (Ruy) Lopez, who had married Sarah Anes, was Queen Elizabeth’s trusted physician."

Marlowe mentions Dr. Lopez in the A-text (1604 version of Dr. Faustus) when the Horse-courses compares him to Dr. Faustus and says that Faustus cheated him of "forite Dollars" but that "Doctor Lopus was never such a Doctor" (Jew of Malta, 1150).