World Jewry took a warm interest in the Barros Basto enterprise, with British Jews taking the lead in a plan to forge a link between the Marranos and the Jewish community that had sprung up in Portugal since the end of the Inquisition. Jewish settlement in Portugal was renewed around 1800: a corner of the British cemetery in Lisbon contains Hebrew tombstones dating from 1804. The first settlers, who held British nationality, had been buried in a separate plot allotted to them in the English cemetery. Later, in March of 1833, a Portuguese nobleman by the name of Antonio de Castro let to Abraham de Jose Pariente, at an annual rent of 4,000 reis, a plot of land to serve "as a cemetery for the tenant, Abraham de JosePariente, his descendants, and relatives." It was used as a general Jewish cemetery. By a decree published in 1868, the Jews of Lisbon were permitted to "construct a cemetery for the burial of their coreligionists." Official recognition was not accorded to the Jewish community until 1892, when a decree was published entitling it "to hold religious services, maintain a cemetery for the burial of Jews resident in or in transit through Portugal, to establish funds for the assistance of the poor, and to keep registers of births, deaths, and marriages." After the establishment of the republic by the revolution of Oct. 5, 1910, the government of Portugal approved the community's statute presented to it in 1912. In accordance with the approved statute, the community was authorized to maintain places of worship, a cemetery, and a hevra kaddisha, to slaughter in accordance with the Jewish law, to keep registers of births, deaths, and marriages, and to establish charity funds. Beginning in the 1920s, cases of conversion to Catholicism were not infrequent and several families were split into Jewish and Catholic branches. However, after 1950, this tendency declined to a great extent.