The history of the Jews in England can be reliably traced to the period following the Norman Conquest of 1066, when England became integrated with the European system for the first time since the Roman evacuation of 410 CE, and thus came to the awareness of the Jewish communities of Continental Europe.The first Jews likely came to England circa 70 CE during the time of Roman rule, but were probably wiped out in the tumultuous period that followed the Roman evacuation, when the Anglo-Saxons gradually took power from the Romano-Celts.
In 1290 King Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion, expelling all Jews from the Kingdom of England. After the expulsion, there was no overt Jewish community (as opposed to individuals practising Judaism secretly) until the rule of Oliver Cromwell. While Cromwell never officially readmitted Jews to the Commonwealth of England, a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London was identified in 1656 and allowed to remain. The Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753, an attempt to legalise the Jewish presence in England, remained in force for only a few months. Historians commonly date Jewish emancipation to either 1829 or 1858, while Benjamin Disraeli, born a Sephardi Jew but converted to Anglicanism, had been elected twice as the prime minister of the United Kingdom in 1868 and in 1874. At the insistence of Irish leader Daniel O'Connell, in 1846 the British law "De Judaismo", which prescribed a special dress for Jews, was repealed.