In England the relation of the Jews to the Christians underwent somewhat the same changes as in Continental Europe. Before the thirteenth century the Jews in England had, as has been said above, been free from molestation by the Church,[198] and their chief danger had been from the brutality and greed of the disorderly populace, of desperate outcasts, and of marauding Crusaders.[199] The first great attack made on them by any constituted power came from Stephen Langton, who, not content with passing at his Provincial Synod a decree which, in accordance with the regulations of Innocent, enforced the use of the badge and prohibited the erection of new synagogues, went so far as to issue orders that no one in his diocese should presume, under pain of excommunication, to have any intercourse with Jews, or should sell them any of the necessaries of life. The Bishops of Lincoln and Norwich issued the same orders in their dioceses.[200] Many other bishops in the reign of Henry III. did their best, partly by legislation in their diocesan synods and partly by the use of their personal and spiritual influence, to check intercourse between Jews and Christians.[201] Of course the king’s guardians, in the interest of the royal income, a considerable part of which was derived from the Jewry, interfered to prevent the measures of Langton and his colleagues from being carried into effect. And Henry, when he took into his own hands the work of government, while, on the one hand, he showed his sympathy with the fears of the Church by building a house for the reception of Jewish converts,[202] and by lending the sanction of the civil power to the decree that ordered the use of the badge,[203] nevertheless followed the example that his guardians had set, and protected the Jews against the aggression of the Church.