his experience in this post. Jews and Hebraists Dury met Manasseh ben Israel in 1644, and heard from him an account of Antonio de Montesinos's alleged discovery of the Ten Tribes in America. Dury wrote in favour of a Hartlib Circle project, for a College of Jewish Studies. Parliament was lobbied for funds. The proposed faculty were Johann Stephanus Rittangel, Christian Ravius and Menasseh ben Israel. In 1649 Dury addressed a further inquiry to Manasseh on the subject of the Ten Tribes, which resulted in the publication of The Hope of Israel. In 1650 appeared Thomas Thorowgood's Jewes in America; Dury read it in manuscript, and contributed to later editions. He included information on the Karaites, in whom he had a particular interest, from Rittangel. Dury is considered to have been one of those around Cromwell influencing the decision to allow Jews to enter England officially (they were expelled by Edward I). He was the cautious author of a pamphlet of 1656, A Case of Conscience: Whether It Be Lawful to Admit Jews into a Christian Commonwealth, in it he laid down certain conditions that Jews must fulfil in order to be admitted (no blasphemy or proselytism etc). To a question put to him by Hartlib, as to the general lawfulness of their admission, Dury replied in the affirmative; but from the point of view of expediency, he considered that circumstances as to a particular time and place might render their admission unwise. Irenicism and millenarianism Dury's long ecumenical efforts have earned him a name as an irenicist.<ref>S. Mandelbrote, John Dury and the practice of Irenicism, in Religious change in Europe 1650–1914: Essays for John McManners, ed. N. Aston, 41–58. (Oxford, 1997); A. Milton, The Unchanged Peacemaker? John Dury and the politics of Irenicism in England, 1628–1643 in Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: studies in intellectual communication, ed. M. Greengrass, M. Leslie, and T. Raylor, 95–117. (Cambridge 1994).</ref> This territory he shared, to an extent, with his contemporary Hugo Grotius. Dury made contact with Grotius through his follower Samson Johnson (1603–1661). That relationship soured, since Dury had a hand in Johnson's dismissal as chaplain to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, suspected of Socinianism. According to Trevor-Roper,Dury, like Grotius, was an idealist, but their ideals were not quite the same. He wished to achieve not reunion for the peace of the Church but union of all Protestants for the holy war: in