It was evident that the feeling against the Jews was once more growing to the fatal height it had attained in other lands. In 1468 the Jews of Sepulveda, a town near Segovia, had, it was averred, seized on a Christian infant, carried it to a sequestered spot, and there, after barbarous ill-usage, crucified it. Their Rabbi, Solomon Picho, was declared to have been the instigator of the deed. The Bishop of Avila put the accused, sixteen in number, to the torture, and having elicited the usual confession, caused some to be burned and some hanged. But these severities did not satisfy the people of Sepulveda, who required the extermination of the Jews. They rose accordingly, and massacred all who did not save themselves by flight. Similar insurrections took place in Cordova, Jaen, Toledo, Segovia, and other cities. The spirit thus evoked was allayed for a time—probably because Henry not only lent it no help, but was in his heart favourably inclined to the Jews. A deputation, composed of converts to Christianity and those who still professed their ancient faith, residing in Valladolid, waited on him, to ask his protection against the oppression and injustice of the partisans of his sister Donna Isabella, and were kindly received. Though no satisfaction was given them for the wrongs they had undergone, injustice for the future was restrained. When at a Cortes, held in 1469, a petition was presented to him, praying him to forbid the Jews thenceforward to farm or collect tithes, he paid no heed to it. But the spirit of persecution was checked for a time only. In 1473 it broke out again, and deluged all Andalusia with blood. A new feature was now manifested, likely to produce the gravest consequences. The storm of persecution had hitherto fallen on those only who persisted in refusing to adopt the Christian faith. But persons were now included in it who had lately become converts to the Church, and who were known by the title of the ‘New Christians.’ Their fidelity to their new belief was greatly suspected; and, it cannot be denied, with a good deal of reason. And, besides, these New Christians were, after all, guilty of that gravest of all Jewish offences—acquiring wealth at the expense of the old Christians. The mobs in the Andalusian cities attacked old and new Jews alike. In Jaen, the constable of the town, Franza by name, who interfered to protect them, was assassinated while hearing mass in the cathedral itself, and the pillage and murder went on unchecked. The example was soon followed in Castile. In Segovia, in 1474, Don Juan de Pachecho, wishing to provoke a rising for the execution of a political intrigue, thought the most likely mode of succeeding was by exciting an armed attack on the converted Jews, it being easy then to divert the rabble to his purpose. The insurrection was put down by the royal forces, but not before great numbers of the Jews had been slain.