The Maranno

On the 18th July, 1290,  King Edward I unilaterally issued an edict expelling all Jews from England, the culmination of a lengthy period of persecution of a people who were characterised as extortionists and money-lenders and diabolic haters of Christ. The 1218 edict of Henry III requiring all Jews to wear a special marking badge has, in this respect, a particularly chilling premonitory quality about it.

And there matters rested. In the late fifteenth century, the Inquisition began its work, and the Jews of Spain and Portugal were expelled, fleeing to other European countries, and to the realms of the far more welcoming Ottoman Empire. 

Spitalfield, London in the nineteenth century. Spitalfield had a very large
Jewish community, including members of the Valentine family.
From the Ultimate History Pages

It was a Portuguese Rabbi,  Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657), who finally persuaded Oliver Cromwell, to adopt a more welcoming approach. Not only did the Jewish merchants have the potential to benefit the economy, Cromwell himself, for all his Puritanism, by and large, held the belief that an individual’s relationship with God was his own business. For Menassah ben Israel, who was based in Amsterdam, it was the last act of his career. He died there in 1657, the very year that Edward I’s edict was quietly buried in the archives. 

Menassah and perhaps also Cromwell would have been aware that there was a Maranno community already in London. These Maranno were Sephardic Jewish immigrants, who bypassed the existing laws by concealing their true religion, which they reverted to with the liberalisation of the laws. 

One of their number seems to have been a Daniel Henriques Valentine (1645-1679) who married Judith Judita. He in turn was the son of  The "Sephardi' Henriques Valentines (born 1620, place unknown) who is seen as the founder of the family line. These were the direct ancestors of the Jacob Valentine who was to marry Amelia Gertrude Wombwell.