Thus, living as semi-aliens, growing rich as usurers, and observing strange customs, they occupied in the twelfth century a position that was fraught with danger. But, almost from their first arrival in the country, they had enjoyed a kind of informal Royal protection,[8] though, as to the nature of their relations with the King during the first hundred and thirty years of their residence, very little is known. It was probably less close than it afterwards became, for the liability to attack and the need for protection had not yet manifested themselves. But, at the end of the eleventh century, there began to spread throughout Europe a movement which, when it reached England, converted the vague popular dislike of the Jews into an active and violent hostility. While the Norman conquerors were still occupied in settling down in England, the King organising his realm, and the barons enjoying, dissipating, or forfeiting their newly-won estates, popes and priests and monks had been preaching the Crusade to the other nations of civilised Europe. At one of the greatest and most imposing of all the Church Councils that were ever held, where were present lay nobles and clerics of all nations, attending each as his own master, and able to act on the impulse of the moment, Urban II., in 1095, told the tale of the wrong that Christians had to suffer at the hands of the enemies of Christ. He told his hearers how the Eastern people, a people estranged from God, had laid waste the land of the Christians with fire and sword; had destroyed churches, or misused them for their own rites; had circumcised Christians, poured their blood on altars and fonts, scourged and impaled men, and dishonoured women.[9] Such denunciations, followed by the appeal to all present to help Jerusalem, which was “ruled by enemies, enslaved by the godless, and calling aloud to be freed,” excited, for the first time in Europe, a furious and fanatical hatred of Eastern and non-Christian races. The Jews were such a race, as well as the Saracens, and between the two the Crusaders scarcely distinguished. Before they left home and fortune to fight God’s enemies abroad, it was natural that they should kill or convert those whom they met nearer home. Through all central Europe, from France to Hungary, the bands that gathered together to make their way to the Holy Land fell on the Jews and offered them the choice between the sword and the font.[10]