rights to travel within the kingdom and, in 1641, Ashkenazi Jews were given equivalent rights. Christian V rescinded these privileges in 1687, specifically banning Jews from Norway, unless they were given a special dispensation. Jews found in the kingdom were jailed and expelled, and this ban persisted until 1851. The European Enlightenment led to moderate easing of restrictions for Jews in Denmark-Norway, especially in Denmark's southern areas and cities. Some Jewish families that had converted to Christianity settled in Norway. Writers of the time increased their interest in the Jewish people, including Ludvig Holberg, who figured Jews as comical figures in most of his plays and in 1742 wrote The Jewish History From the Beginning of the World, Continued till Present Day, presenting Jews to some extent in conventional, unfavorable stereotypes, but also raising the question about mistreatment of Jews in Europe. Consequently, as stereotypes against Jews started entering the awareness of the general public during the Enlightenment, there were also those who rose in opposition to some, if not all, of the underlying hostility. Lutheran minister Niels Hertzberg was one of those who wrote against Norwegian prejudice, ultimately influencing the later votes on the constitutional amendment to allow Jews to settle in Norway. Constitutional ban There was a blanket ban on Jewish presence in Norway since 1687, except with a special dispensation, and Jews found in the kingdom were jailed and expelled. The ban persisted until 1851. Based on short-lived hopes that Denmark's concessions at the Treaty of Kiel in 1814 would allow for Norwegian independence, a constituent assembly was convened in Eidsvoll in the spring of 1814. Although Denmark had only a few months earlier completely lifted all restrictions on Jews, the Norwegian assembly, after some debate, went the other way, and Jews were to "continue" to be excluded from the realm, as part of the clause that made Lutheranism the official state religion, though with free exercise of religion as the general rule. The ban was against Jews and Jesuits entering the country. Sephardim were exempt from the ban, but it appears that few applied for a letter of free passage. On 4 November 1844, the Norwegian Ministry of Justice declared: "…it is assumed that the so-called Portuguese Jews are, regardless of the Constitution's §2, entitled to dwell in this country, which is also, to [our] knowledge, what has hitherto been assumed." Several of the framers had