Meanwhile, the Continent was undergoing the spiritual travail which resulted in the tremendous explosion of the Crusades. England, as a member of the Catholic family of nations, and in many ways under Continental influence, could not long remain deaf to the cry which rang throughout Christendom. The unsettled condition of the country under the first three Norman kings, and the convulsions to which it fell a prey under the fourth, had hitherto prevented England from responding to the Pope’s call in an adequate manner; but the religious fever was infectious, and on reaching England it translated any vague sentimental dislike of the Jews that may have existed into an open and determined hostility, which led to deeds of violence such as had already disgraced the Continent. The atrocious charge of sacrificing Christian children and using their blood in their mysterious Passover rites, or in medicine, is now for the first time heard under the definite form which has since become familiar; and the English town of Norwich seems to be entitled to the unenviable credit of its birth. The populace of that city was one day, in 1144, horrified by the rumour that the Jews had kidnapped and murdered a boy, named William, for the purpose of obtaining his blood. A renegade Jew brought forth the libel, and the local bishop adopted it. The sheriff considered the evidence insufficient, and refused to sanction a trial before the Bishop’s Court. But the people, encouraged by the clergy, took the law into their own hands, and, despite the sheriff’s efforts to protect the Jews, many of the latter were slaughtered, while the rest fled in fear for their lives. ♦1155–1189♦ Within the next thirty-four years the same blood-accusation recurred at Gloucester and Bury St. Edmunds, and led to a similar catastrophe.[65] But during the reign of Henry II. anti-Jewish feeling, with the last exception, was firmly checked. That King, renowned in history as “the greatest prince of his time for wisdom, virtue, and abilities,” followed in the footsteps of William the Conqueror and William Rufus, and, in the opinion of the monastic chroniclers, sullied his otherwise stainless character by the favour which he showed to the Jews. He delivered them from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts and granted to them the privilege of settling their disputes in their own _Beth Din_, or Religious Tribunal, and of burying their dead outside the cities in which they dwelt. Henceforward the Jews were to be regarded as the King’s own chattels, and to enjoy the protection of the King’s officers, as they did in Germany, and on the same terms.