In 1614 a serious riot broke out in Frankfort-on-the-Main, led by the guilds, which accused the patricians controlling the municipal council of partiality to the Jews. The council, aided by imperial troops, succeeded in suppressing the rebellion after considerable difficulty. Vincent Fettmilch, the leader, was quartered, his home demolished, and his family expelled from the city. Other ringleaders were beheaded. While the city council thus showed its sincere intention to have the law respected even with regard to the Jews, the new legal regulation for the Jews of Frankfort, “Juden-Staettigkeit,” was a specimen of mediæval ideas, maintaining the usual restrictions on occupation, marriage, residence and quite a number of measures, like the yellow badge, meant to disgrace a Jew. It remained in force until 1807. The political condition of the Jews at this time nevertheless shows steady improvement, although their threatened expulsion from the city of Metz and their actual expulsion from Vienna and the province of Lower Austria in 1670 were a relapse into the conditions of the fifteenth century. Still, such events are local and few and far between; on the other hand, an improvement is manifest in various instances where Jews were admitted to countries or cities from which they had been expelled in mediæval times. Particularly important was their settlement in Hamburg and Berlin at this time. In Hamburg the municipal council gave to some Portuguese Marranos, who came there to escape from the Inquisition, the right of residence in spite of clerical protest. The first settlers were soon followed by Jews from Germany in the course of the seventeenth century, and finally (1710), they formed a legally-organized congregation. Similarly Portuguese Jews had found a haven of refuge in various cities of Southern France, although there in a Catholic country they had to conceal their Judaism. In Berlin and the Margravate of Brandenburg, the Elector Frederick William I allowed some Jews, expelled from Vienna, to settle in his states on their plea that they were persecuted for conscience’ sake (1671). Still more important was the readmission of the Jews to England by Cromwell in 1654; and, although the bill for their readmission did not pass, their settlement was quietly overlooked and declared by jurists to be legally justified. Another new country was opened to Jewish settlement by the end of the sixteenth century when the Spanish Netherlands had made themselves independent of the Spanish crown. The constitution of the new country was based on perfect religious freedom, and naturally fugitives from the Inquisition were among the first to avail themselves of this opportunity. They were soon joined by the settlers from other countries, and in the seventeenth century Amsterdam was one of the leading Jewish communities of the world.