Penelope Carson - The East India Company and Religion, 1698-1858-Cambridge University Press (2013)

Worlds of the East India Company Volume 7
The East India Company and Religion,

1698–1858
Worlds of the East India Company
ISSN 1752–5667
Series Editor
H. V. Bowen (Swansea University)
Editorial Board
Andrew Cook (British Library)
Rajat Datta (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)
P. J. Marshall (King’s College, London)
Nigel Rigby (National Maritime Museum)
This series offers high-quality studies of the East India Company, drawn
from across a broad chronological, geographical and thematic range. The
rich history of the Company has long been of interest to those who engage
in the study of Britain’s commercial, imperial, maritime, and military past,
but in recent years it has also attracted considerable attention from those who
explore art, cultural, and social themes within an historical context. The series
will thus provide a forum for scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds,
and for those who have interests in the history of Britain (London and the
regions), India, China, Indonesia, as well as the seas and oceans.
The editors welcome submissions from both established scholars and

those beginning their career; monographs are particularly encouraged
but volumes of essays will also be considered. All submissions will receive
rapid, informed attention. They should be sent in the first instance to:
Professor H. V. Bowen, Department of History and Classics, Swansea Univer-
sity, Swansea SA2 8PP
Previously published titles

are listed at the back of this book
The East India Company and Religion,
1698–1858
Penelope Carson
The boydell press

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Note on Hinduism ix
Abbreviations x
Map of India xii
Introduction 1
1 A Christian Company? 7
2 The East India Company, Britain and India 1770–1790 18
3 The 1790s: A Time of Crisis 34
4 The Pillar of Fire Moves Forward: The Advent of British 52
Missionaries 1793–1806
5 The Wisdom of the Serpent and the Innocence of the Dove: 70
The Vellore Mutiny and the Pamphlet War 1806–1808
6 Troubled Years 1807–1812 90
7 Battle Lines Drawn: Missions, Dissent and the Establishment 110
8 The 1813 Renewal of the Company’s Charter: The Religious 130
Public Takes on the Company
9 A Turbulent Frontier: The Company and Religion 1814–1828 151
10 A New Dawn? The Era of Lord William Bentinck 1828–1835 183
11 Between Scylla and Charibdis 1836–1858 206
Conclusion and Epilogue: Strangers in the Land 237

Appendix 1: Presidents of the Board of Control 245
Appendix 2: Governors-General and Governors of Madras 246
and Bombay
Appendix 3: Aide Memoire to Names 248
Appendix 4: ‘The Pious Clause’ 250
Bibliography 251
Index 261
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My interest in India was aroused by my parents, who met there during the
Second World War. My Roman Catholic father was serving with Hodson’s
Horse and my Anglican mother was a VAD nursing auxiliary. I was born at
an American Baptist mission hospital in the Shan States, Burma. Through
my husband’s membership of the Skinners’ Company, a London livery
company, I have another connection to India. James Lancaster was a Skinner,
as were Thomas Smythe and William Cockayne, who served as ‘Governor’
(Chairman) of the East India Company for many of the first 50 years of its
existence. The Company also met in the house of Thomas Smythe for some
years. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Skinners’ Hall became
important again when challengers to the ‘Old Company’ met there. These
‘Dowgate adventurers’ were instrumental in the formation of a rival ‘New
Company’, which was granted a charter in 1698. This met at Skinners’ Hall
and eventually both Companies had to accept an Instrument of Union in
1702.
This book has been a long time in gestation and there are two people whom
I cannot thank sufficiently. The first is Professor Peter Marshall, who has long
been a friend and mentor. He has encouraged me to write this and kept me
going when I have been ready to give up. His perceptive comments have helped
immeasurably and stopped me from making some stupid errors. Likewise, my
husband, Hugh, has kept me at it, read the chapters time and again and made
many helpful comments. He has slaved over the map. I am so grateful to Peter
and Hugh for all the time they have given me. Margaret Humphrey, a former
English teacher, has checked the text for spelling, grammar and comprehen-
sibility. I take full responsibility for any errors that remain.
Aspects of this study have appeared in print over the years. ‘An Imperial
Dilemma: The Propagation of Christianity in Early Colonial India’ for the
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History in 1990 gave an overview of some
of the problems faced by the Company, as did ‘Missionaries, Bureaucrats and
the People of India 1793–1833’, in Orientalism, Evangelicalism and the Military
Cantonment in Early Nineteenth Century India (1991), edited by Nancy Cassells.
My article, ‘Christianity, Colonialism and Hinduism in Kerala: Integration,
Adaptation, or Confrontation’, in Christians and Missionaries in India: Cross-
Cultural Communication since 1500 (2003), edited by Robert Frykenberg goes
viii Acknowledgements
into considerable detail about the situation in Kerala. I discuss the Anglicist/
Orientalist educational controversy in ‘Golden Casket or Pebbles and Trash?
J. S. Mill and the Anglicist/Orientalist Controversy’, in J. S. Mill’s Encounter
with India (1999), edited by Martin Moir, Douglas Peers and Lynn Zastoupil.1
Over the years I have been helped by many librarians and scholars and I
received a grant from the Irwin Fund of the University of London to travel
to India. I am grateful to the Isobel Thornley Bequest for a grant towards
publication costs. My thanks must also go to all our friends who have been so
understanding while I completed this project. Finally, I thank Huw Bowen,
my editor, who has shown extreme patience while waiting for the manuscript.
I dedicate this book to Hugh, my long-suffering husband, Peter and my
parents.
Back of Ecton, October 2011
1 Full citations are given in the Bibliography.

NOTE ON HINDUISM
When the British arrived in India, the bulk of the people seemed to follow a
variety of sects and cults that formed a monolithic religion that they began to
refer to as Hinduism. It was assumed that these sects and cults were ancient
in origin and had characteristics and religious ideas in common, complete
with scriptures that could be referred to. By the late eighteenth century we
find Company officials beginning to refer to the ‘Hindoo’ faith and religion.
The word ‘Hinduism’ gradually became a word of rapid reference that began
to have wide use by the early nineteenth century, signifying the existence of
an all-embracing religious system. Recent studies have shown that such ideas
about ‘Hinduism’ did not reflect reality.1 The development of Hinduism as
we know it today took place over many centuries and under many different
influences. Official documents and correspondence also use the term ‘Hindoo’
as a generic reference to the Indian people, most of whom were believed to
be followers of ‘Hindooism’. The term ‘Hindoo’ was also used to refer to
Indians generally. For the purpose of simplicity, I shall use the term to refer to
those Indians who followed the various sects and cults that gradually became
accepted as coming under the umbrella of Hinduism.
1 A useful discussion can be found in G. A. Oddie, ‘Constructing Hinduism: The Impact

of the Protestant Missionary Movement on Hindu Self-Understanding’, in Christians and
Missionaries in India: Cross-Cultural Communication since 1500, ed. R. E. Frykenberg (Grand
Rapids, MI and Cambridge, 2003).
ABBREVIATIONS
A Archives
ABCFM American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
Add. Additional
ALRPC Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford University
B&FBS British and Foreign Bible Society
BL British Library
BMS Baptist Missionary Society
BP Bentinck Papers
BUL Birmingham University Library
col. column
CMS Church Missionary Society
CMSA Church Missionary Society Archives, University of
Birmingham
CSBCA College Street Baptist Church Archives, Northampton Record
Office
CUL Cambridge University Library
CWMA Council for World Mission Archives
EUL Edinburgh University Library
Eur. European
fn. Footnote
GCPI General Committee of Public Instruction
H. Misc. Home Miscellaneous
IOR India Office Records
LMS London Missionary Society
MS Manuscript
MSS Manuscripts
NLS National Library of Scotland
NLW National Library of Wales
NUL Nottingham University Library
para./paras paragraph/paragraphs
PD Parliamentary Debates from the Year 1803
PSPRL Protestant Society for the Protection of Religious Liberty
RH Rhodes House, Oxford University
SOAS School of Oriental and African Studies
Abbreviations xi
SPCK Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge

SPG Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
SRO Scottish Record Office
SSPCK Scottish Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge
WMMS Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
I have tried to retain consistency with the primary sources in order to make
comprehension easier for the reader. Spellings of Indian place names are
those used most frequently in the sources. There will inevitably be some
inconsistency.
Places named in text
INTRODUCTION
Yesterday the Christians were in the ascendant,

World-seizing, world-bestowing,
The possessors of skill and wisdom,
The possessors of splendour and glory
The possessors of a mighty army.
But what use was that,
Against the sword of the Lord of Fury?
All their wisdom could not save them,
Their schemes became useless,
Their knowledge and science availed them nothing-
The Tilangas of the East have killed them all.
Azad: 24 May 18571
The East India Company’s worst fears came to gruesome fruition in

1857 when many of the sepoys of its Bengal army mutinied and killed not
only their officers but also their wives and children. After two and a half
centuries, the Company was about to be ejected from India in ignominy. It
was clear that whatever the precise motives were behind the actions of those
who rebelled, the Indian Uprising of 1857/8 was for many, at least in part,
a war of religion. The British similarly regarded their own brutal retaliation
as revenge for the slights to Christianity as well as for the murders of their
people. Religious language predominated in the rhetoric of both Britons and
Indians.
When the merchant venturers of the English East India Company began
to set up factories on the Indian subcontinent from 1600, India was not the
united country we have today. The subcontinent was politically fragmented,
formed of a myriad of princely states, many of which owed allegiance to
the Mughal emperor. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were times
of great fluidity with shifting alliances as various groups, Indian and non-
Indian, tried to take advantage of new opportunities. The English merchants
played an increasingly important role in events in the subcontinent as time
went on. They encountered societies that operated in very different ways to
their own and peoples of many faiths. These included, amongst others, Jains,
Parsis, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews, Muslims and Christians. Because of the power
exercised by Muslim princes, the British tried to ensure that Islam was not
2 Introduction
offended. They had long regarded Muslims as bigoted and fanatical and
particularly sensitive of any perceived insults to their religion. The bulk of the
inhabitants, however, were not Muslim but seemed to follow a variety of sects
and cults, which today have come under the umbrella of Hinduism. By the
late eighteenth century Company officials were referring to the ‘Hindoo faith’
and the ‘Hindoo religion’. They believed that the followers of this supposed
monolithic religion clung tenaciously to their religious beliefs and were under
the sway of ‘the Brahmins’ or priestly caste. The story of how the Company
dealt with the fact that it was a Christian Company, trying to be equitable
to the different faiths it found in India, has resonances for Britain today, as it
attempts to accommodate the religions of all its peoples within the Christian
structure and heritage of the State.
Most Company officials quickly came to believe that it would be counter-
productive to interfere with Indian religious beliefs and practices. Once the
Company began to assume territorial rights, Indians were assured that they
would be allowed freedom of worship. The Company also permitted Roman
Catholic priests and missionaries to provide services for its Roman Catholic
subjects. Thus, while the focus of the East India Company’s encounter with
India was trade, it could not avoid addressing questions of religion: for its own
servants and later its mixed-race subjects and for the way it should treat the
Indian religions with which it came into contact. The need to develop some
sort of policy towards Indian religions was heightened when the Company
started recruiting a sepoy army to defend its interests. Company officials
believed that Indians would acquiesce in British suzerainty, provided they
were left alone on the vital issue of religion. They were never under any
illusion that the Company’s continuance in India was dependent upon its
sepoy army remaining loyal and the population believing in British power.
It became an early Company maxim that offending Indian religious beliefs,
particularly those of its sepoys, was the surest way to incite trouble and might
even lead to the loss of India. Religion was never far from the surface in a
land where religion and culture were so closely entwined as to be virtually
indistinguishable.
The story that follows addresses how the Company dealt with religious
issues from its early mercantile beginnings to the bloody end of its rule in
1858. It examines the pressures in both Britain and India that shaped its
policy towards religion. Officials were torn in two directions. On the one hand
they wanted to keep their Indian territory as secure and stable as possible. On
the other hand, they were Christian and while some saw much to admire in
Hinduism and Islam, there was also much they abhorred. The stakes became
much higher once the Company became a sovereign power in the mid-eight-
eenth century. By this time, pressure from both India and Britain forced the
Company and the British government to address the question of how far
Britain’s presence in India could be justified. The conclusion was that British
Introduction 3
rule could only be justified if it led to the ‘happiness’ of the people. How this
somewhat nebulous concept was to be achieved was contested by the different
groups with a stake in India. By the late eighteenth century various interests
in Britain contested the Company’s monopoly, not just of trade but also of
the right to decide who should enter India. Strong emotions were aroused
when the Company appeared to be putting obstacles in the way of the new
British Evangelical missionary societies who wanted access to India. Some
missionaries managed to arrive clandestinely and local officials had to decide
what to do with them. They were permitted to carry on once they arrived
in India, but by 1810 the Company appeared to be adopting a harder line
against them. Missionaries and their Evangelical friends in Britain came to
the conclusion that Parliament had to force the Company to revise its policy
towards Christianity.
In 1813, as part of the negotiations for the renewal of the Company’s
charter, Parliament was therefore asked to decide whether or not the acquisi-
tion of empire carried with it a bounden duty to promote Christianity. The
religious public, aroused to an extent never before seen in Britain, had forced
this question on the Company and Parliament. Petitions poured into both
Houses. A related and very important question was what kind of Christianity
this should be: that of the Established Church or embracing all Protestant
denominations? Issues of toleration, liberty and equality were at the heart
of this discussion. Various religious groups argued that it was their right to
have free access to India and operate there without restriction. The Company
argued that it was the right of Indians to worship as they wished, without
being put under any pressure to become Christian. Another emotive issue was
the extent to which it was acceptable for a Company of Christians to involve
itself in Hindu festivals. The support of a wider British public was obtained
by publicising harrowing descriptions of practices such as the burning of
Hindu widows and female infanticide. Some time will be spent discussing the
way in which the powerful religious public in Britain was able to force the
Company and Government to admit that they had a duty to provide for the
religious and moral improvement of India. Most histories of the Company
and India treat the 1813 religious campaign as a mere footnote. However, the
unprecedented 908 petitions with over half a million signatures presented in
Parliament in 1813, demonstrated the strength and organisation of the reli-
gious public in Britain, which was determined to have its say in the running
of empire. The Company’s 1813 charter was a significant turning point. In
addition to losing its monopoly of trade to India, it was now required to
provide for the ‘religious and moral improvement’ of its Indian subjects.
The final chapters examine the extent to which this ‘pious clause’ forced
the Company to change its religious policy. The Evangelical lobby kept up
constant pressure. They demanded protection and rights for Christian converts
and an end to Hindu practices considered to be inhumane and abhorrent.
4 Introduction
Perhaps the most emotive issue for Evangelicals was the Company’s participa-
tion in the management of Hindu temples and festivals. In the 1830s Evan-
gelicals began to succeed in their demands and the Board of Control insisted
that the Company’s involvement with ‘idolatry’ should come to an end. Thus,
Evangelicals confronted Indians head-on in an area where emotions ran high
and blood was likely to be spilt. Many Indians came to believe that the British
intended to convert them forcibly. Clashes began to be more numerous and
often violent. Despite the Company’s protestations that Indians were free to
worship as they wished, Indians began to feel that the Company had broken
faith with them. Eventually, in 1857 resentment over this and other matters
boiled over. For some time it looked as if Britain would lose India. The East
India Company paid the price and its rule came to an end.
The Company’s policy towards religion was affected by the two worlds in
which it had to operate. The first world was the world of domestic politics,
in which the Established Church, Church Evangelicals, Dissenters, Govern-
ment and the Company pursued complex aims. The second was the world of
British India. This was a world in which territory was held by a mainly sepoy
army and one in which the distance from England precluded close oversight
of the actions of Company officials. In India there were many competing
interests as individuals and groups attempted to manipulate the situation to
their benefit. Whatever religious rhetoric both Indians and British employed,
questions of economic and political advantage were never far away. This
study concentrates on the religious controversies that occurred, putting them
into context as far as possible. Inevitably much has to be left out.
Missionaries feature prominently in what follows. They are widely
regarded as the ‘bogey-men’ of the story. One can argue about whether or
not missionaries should have been in India in the first place. However, as with
the legacy of British rule as a whole, the record is not wholly bad. One should
recognise that these men and women came to India fervently believing that
Indians would perish both spiritually and materially if they did not follow
the tenets of Christianity. Evangelicals believed they would be answerable to
God for any failure to look after God’s people, who included the whole of
humanity. Many missionaries suffered greatly, became ill, died young and lost
wives and children. They agonised over the best way to impart Christianity.
Yes, they were insensitive, treated Indian religions with contempt, lobbied
Government for support and social change and brought upon themselves
much hatred. However, they also improved the conditions of many Indians
as they fought for justice, brought medical aid, education, training and gener-
ally fought for ‘the poor and oppressed’, as Christianity enjoined them to
do. It was inevitable that dominant groups would resist any changes to the
status quo. However, both Hindus and Muslims would be the first to admit
that religion permeates the whole of life if it is to have any meaning. Some
missionaries, such as William Carey and James Long in Bengal, are revered
Introduction 5
by non-Christians as well as Christians in India to this day. So the story is

not straightforward. Arrogance and misunderstanding went side by side with
devotion and kindness. Religious rhetoric on both sides concealed as much
as it revealed.
Note
1 Cited in W. Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of Delhi, 1857 (London, 2006), p. 162.
Azad was referring to the Company’s sepoys when he used the term ‘Tilangas’.
One
A CHRISTIAN COMPANY?
Happy will it be, if our conquests should open the way for a farther
introduction of the Gospel, and for the extension and enlargement
of Christ’s Kingdom …What a lustre would such an accession give
to British conquests in the Eastern world!1 (Dr Glasse)
A century before this quotation, Humphrey Prideaux, who was to

become Dean of Norwich, castigated the East India Company for bringing
down God’s curse on it for neglecting to propagate Christianity in India. He
pointed out that the English East India Company had fallen from wealth
and power while the Dutch company, which furthered Christianity in its
territories, was thriving. Prideaux put forward nine proposals to bring the
English company back into God’s favour. Amongst them, he recommended
that the Company should provide chaplains, set up schools and establish a
seminary to supply Protestant ministers who would ‘oppose the Popish priests
who swarm in India’. Consonant with the spirit of the age, with its rash of
societies for the improvement of England’s morals and manners, Prideaux
sought to improve the morals and manners of India. He also advocated the
appointment of a bishop in order to ensure a proper Anglican footing for
the clergy. Prideaux, however, was sceptical of the Company fulfilling its
Christian obligations voluntarily and urged his readers to ensure that a law
was passed in Parliament to force the East India Company into action.2 His
fears were well founded. It took more than a century before parliamentary
pressure forced the inclusion of a ‘pious clause’ into the Company’s charter.
Some of Prideaux’s proposals were acted upon in the 1698 charter granted
to the new East India Company. It reiterated earlier requirements that the
merchants should maintain a minister and schoolmaster in every garrison
and superior factory, together with ‘a decent place for divine service’. The
Company also had to provide a chaplain, approved by the Archbishop of
Canterbury or the Bishop of London, for every ship of 500 tons and upwards.
There was no mention of a seminary or of any ecclesiastical hierarchy. It is
surprising at this early stage, and in the light of subsequent history, to find
8 The East India Company and Religion, 1698–1858
the clause going on to state that ministers ‘were to learn the Portugueze and
Hindoo languages, to enable them to instruct the Gentoos &c in the Christian
religion’.3 Thus, Parliament had laid down that the Company was not only
to provide ministers for its own servants and to pay for them, but also that
these ministers should try to propagate Christianity to the Indian people.
However, it was one thing for Parliament to decree and quite another for the
Company to act. From the outset, the Company evaded the stipulation about
providing chaplains for its ships. Indeed, Philip Francis tells us in the debates
at the 1793 renewal of the Company’s charter that this stipulation was the
reason why the registered tonnage was always below the cut-off tonnage.4
The Company was also reluctant to build churches at its own expense. Most
were built via private subscription.5
It was not until 1712 that the Court of Directors wrote a despatch to India
regarding the Christian terms of the charter. By this time subtle changes to
the wording had occurred. The Court stipulated that ministers were to learn
the native languages in order to instruct the ‘Gentoos’ that ‘shall be serv-
ants or slaves of the Company’s’ (rather than ‘Gentoos’ generally) ‘as their Agents
in the ‘Protestant religion’ (rather than ‘Christianity’).6 As far as the Company
was concerned, combating Roman Catholicism was at least as important as
converting the non-Christian population to Christianity. In the event, the
Company paid lip service to the charter’s religious clause. It provided very few
chaplains, was reluctant to provide churches and, as we shall see, soon relied
heavily on Roman Catholic and German Lutheran missionaries to provide
essential religious services.
Much as most Englishmen would have liked to see the Company act as a
bulwark of Protestantism, the Company was under a legal obligation to look
after the interests of the Roman Catholics in the Bombay Presidency. The
1661 cession of Bombay from Portugal to England had been conditional upon
Roman Catholics having the ‘free exercise of their religion’.7 Although the
Company Directors in England regretted the necessity of making concessions
to Catholicism, as the inclusion of the word ‘Protestant’ above demonstrated,
its servants in India felt that it would be counter-productive to alienate the large
numbers of mixed-race Portuguese-Indian Catholics living and working in its
territories, whose knowledge of Indian languages and customs was so useful.
Roman Catholic priests were also required to minister to the Company’s
Catholic soldiers. The Company’s forces contained Spaniards and Frenchmen
as well as many Roman Catholic Irishmen.8 ‘Inducements’ offered to attach
Roman Catholics to the Company’s interest included land for houses and
the services of a priest. Support for Roman Catholicism, however, only went
so far and relations with the Portuguese were often strained. Various offi-
cials tried to prevent priests from making new converts amongst Europeans.
The political loyalty of the Portuguese priests was often suspected. Catholic
missionaries had to have the permission of the Company to reside in its
A Christian Company? 9
territories and to take an oath of obedience to his Britannic Majesty. Despite

taking this oath, in 1715 some Portuguese clergy who were under the juris-
diction of the Portuguese Padroado (the right granted by the Vatican to the
Portuguese crown to exercise patronage and control over dioceses in the East)
were implicated in a Hindu plot against the British. The Court of Directors
secretly approached the Vatican and in 1720 formally expelled the Portu-
guese clergy, replacing them with more politically acceptable Carmelites from
Surat, who were subject to the jurisdiction of the Vatican’s Propaganda Fide,
which had been set up in 1622 to provide missionaries under vicars apostolic
of episcopal rank.9 Later, when the Company worried that Roman Catholics
might be seduced into sedition by Catholic France, the Court of Directors
made it clear to the Madras government that it would not ‘suffer’ any priest
of the Church of Rome except those of the Capuchin order, stating that it
had heard that ‘the Capuchins now with you are in your interest and will
not secretly endeavour to do you mischief ’.10 Thus even in these early days,
a ‘yo-yo’ situation existed in which the Company veered between allowing
Padroado and Propaganda clergy to operate in its territories. How far this could
be described as allowing Roman Catholics the ‘free exercise’ of their religion
is open to debate.
The Carmelite Vicar Apostolic of the Great Mogul invited to Bombay
after the Portuguese priests were thrown out in 1720 realised that he had
to assure the Company of his loyalty and that of his priests. Accordingly,
he swore that they ‘would neither meddle nor busy ourselves in anything
concerning the Government, nor in any other thing that might any way
prejudice the interest of his Majesty or the Hon’ble East India Company.
We shall, as far as in our power, strive to render the Christian inhabitants
Faithful and Loyal subjects to the Hon’ble Company.’ In addition, the Vicar
Apostolic asked for the Company’s protection. Not content with the Vicar
Apostolic’s expressions of loyalty, the Company also insisted that each priest
take the following individual oath of allegiance:
At all times I will pay implicit obedience to his Britannic Majesty, that I will
not directly or indirectly insinuate nor maintain anything whatever contrary to
the honour and dignity of his Britannic Majesty nor to the interest of the …
Company, that I will pay due obedience into all orders issued by the Governor
and his successors at all times.11
We shall see later that the Protestant missionaries wanting to work in

Company territory were also careful to stress their loyalty to the Government
and were well aware that they needed the Company’s protection. The Court
of Directors summed up the Company’s position on religious matters in 1744
when it informed the Madras government that ‘the Church must never be
Independent [of] the State, nor the French suffered to Intermeddle in our
affairs’.12 Paranoia about the French reached an extreme in 1756 in the wake
of the loss and recapture of Calcutta when the Governor-in-Council forbade

its Roman Catholics to practise their faith. The Court of Directors censured
this action, in 1758 telling the Bengal Council: ‘We cannot approve of you so
generally interdicting the progress of the Roman Catholic religion within the
whole bounds, as such a step may be attended with many inconveniencings . .
. As to Fort William itself, it will be a prudent measure so long as the French
war subsists not to suffer any person professing the Roman Catholic religion,
priests or others, to reside therein, and this you are strictly to observe.’13 It
was one thing to stop Roman Catholics from residing in Calcutta temporarily
but quite another to interfere with the practice of their faith.
The Early Years of Protestant Missionary Interest
Earlier Catholic empires had imposed Catholicism on their conquered terri-

tories, asserting the state’s duty to bring the benefits of Christianity to subject
peoples in order to further the progress of the ‘Corpus Christianum’. In Britain
it was assumed that its colonial expansion would include the expansion of
its Established Church and Humphrey Prideaux was not the only Anglican
thinking about propagating the Gospel abroad in the late seventeenth century.
In 1699 the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) came
into formal existence. Although a private society, the SPCK had a high
number of clergy members and was led by the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the Bishop of London.14 It can be regarded as a halfway house between
the government-patronised Catholic societies of continental Europe and the
Protestant voluntary societies of late eighteenth-century Britain. In 1701 the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) was incor-
porated by royal charter to operate in Britain’s colonies and its work was
supported by parliamentary grants. Its aim was to enhance the standing of the
Anglican Church overseas, to counter the influence of Protestant Dissenters
and to provide for the religious instruction of ‘heathens’ in British dominions.
It is significant that the religious instruction of heathens comes last in the
list, while the first two aims concerned the status of the Established Church.
The Church of England was determined to claw back ground it believed it
had lost to Dissenters at home and abroad, especially in America. Church/
Dissent rivalry was to become an important element in determining attitudes
towards the propagation of Christianity. While the SPCK considered the
needs of England its primary role, it was induced to look towards India after
reading reports of the work of some German Lutheran missionaries who had
arrived in the Danish enclave of Tranquebar in 1706 under the auspices of
the Royal Danish Mission, which had been founded by the Danish king, Fred-
erick IV. Mission reports circulating in Britain via Anton Böhme, chaplain to
Queen Anne’s consort, Prince George of Denmark, encouraged the SPCK
to support the fledgling mission. From 1709 the SPCK gave direct financial
aid to the Royal Danish mission via public subscription, arranged for large
numbers of a Portuguese translation of the New Testament to be sent out
and purchased a printing press for the mission. The Company allowed these
to be carried freight free.15
It was not long before these Lutheran missionaries spread out from Danish
into British territory, partly as a result of the hostility they encountered from
both Danish officials and the Indian population. The Company had to decide
whether or not to let them work in its territories. Contrary to what one might
have expected from subsequent events, the missionaries received a favourable
reception. In 1712 the SPCK approached the Company, requesting it to
protect and encourage ‘the Protestant missionaries’ and to allow them to erect
charity schools in Madras. The Court, aware that the Society was patron-
ised by key bishops and other influential people, thought the ‘designs of the
Society truly great and Noble’ and was willing to help. Its despatch reminded
the Fort St George Council of the requirement in the Company’s charter to
provide ministers who would learn the languages so that they could instruct
the Company’s Indian servants in the Protestant religion. It instructed the
Council to give the Protestant missionaries ‘countenance and protection’ and
to ‘do what else you think proper for strengthening their hands in this difficult
but honourable work of spreading the Gospel among the Heathen’. A free
passage for Plutschau, a Royal Danish missionary, was also approved. The
Court did not grant the SPCK’s further request that any ‘natives’ instructed
by the missionaries should be preferred over other ‘natives’. The Court felt
that a decision on this could wait until the success of the endeavours was
known.16 At the same time pressure was also being put on the Company
to support the work of the Tranquebar missionaries by George Lewis, the
chaplain at Fort St George. He told the Company that:
The missionaries at Tranquebar ought to be and must be encouraged. It is the
first attempt the Protestants ever have made in that kind. We must not put out
the smoaking [sic] flax. It would give our adversaries, the papists … too much
cause to triumph over us.17
It seems from this comment, and the fact that the Court’s despatch had told
Fort St George to provide Portuguese liturgies for the missionaries, that there
was less concern for converting Hindus and Muslims than with staving off
the influence of ‘Papism’. Although the Company felt that it had to tolerate
Catholicism for the pragmatic reasons discussed earlier, it would have much
preferred to see Protestantism expand. Any inroads Protestant missionaries
could make on the dominance of Catholic Christianity in India were to be
encouraged.
The official reply of the Governor-in-Council to the Court’s exhortations
was that it was happy to give pecuniary support and was sure that others
would do the same, provided that the missionaries were of ‘tempers and
qualifications fit for the undertaking’. In 1715, Harrison, Governor of Fort St
George, told the Tranquebar missionaries that there would be no impediment
from him. In 1717 the Court was informed that the German missionaries
had set up a charity school at Cuddalore and two at Madras.18 However,
it seems that there was a certain amount of Indian hostility to missionary
activity even in these early days. In 1716 the chaplain, William Stevenson,
told the SPCK that if ‘the itinerant missionaries, catechists &c’ were not to
be ‘molested nor interrupted in their work, they must be powerfully recom-
mended to the favour and protection of the Governors at Fort St George and
Tranquebar’.19 This was contemporaneous with the Carmelite Vicar Apos-
tolic’s request for the Company’s protection for its work in the Bombay area
mentioned earlier.20 Little is known about the details of the hostility about
which both Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries had complained.
However, it was evidently not of a degree to give the Company cause for
concern about supporting their efforts.
The SPCK decided to put its relationship with some of the Royal Danish
missionaries on a more formal basis. In 1727 it took on Benjamin Schulze as its
official agent, who had settled in Madras with the Company’s permission. The
Lutheran missionaries taken on by the SPCK, however, only had a nominal
relationship to the Anglican authorities and were essentially independent of
their control, a situation that was to cause tension once an Anglican bishopric
was set up in 1813. The SPCK again asked for the Company’s protection.
This, as before, was granted on condition that missionaries would ‘behave
respectfully and suitable to the Rules of the place’.21 The SPCK-sponsored
Lutheran missionaries were well regarded by Madras officials and the Court
of Directors expressed its satisfaction and the hope that ‘all in your several
stations will give due Countenance to their laudable undertaking’.22 By 1740
the work of SPCK agents was well established and replacement of deceased
or retired individuals had become routine. For instance, in 1744 the Court
of Directors permitted Mr Klein and Mr Breithaupt to take passage on one
of their ships in order ‘to carry on that good work among the Indians’.23 The
Company was generous, granting the missionaries free passages, a free mail
service, and allowances for performing divine service and running charity
schools and asylums in its territories. It also helped with land and buildings.
By 1752 the Court of Directors seemed so convinced of the positive effects
of Protestant missionary work that it informed the Madras government:
As further encouragement to the said missionaries to exert themselves in propa-

gating the Protestant religion, we hereby empower you to give them, at such
time as you shall think proper, in our name, any sum of money, not exceeding
500 pagodas, to be laid out in such manner and appropriated to such uses as
you shall approve of.
However, as with the Roman Catholic priests and missionaries, this was not
without caveat and the Governor was also instructed to ‘give us from time to
time an account of the progress made by them in educating children and
in increasing the Protestant religion, together with your opinion on their
conduct in general, and what further encouragement they deserve’.24
In other words, by the 1750s the Company had approved the principle
of missionary work, and was prepared to support it financially, provided the
missionaries behaved well in the eyes of the local officials. Indeed, Robert
Clive invited John Kiernander (1710–1798), a Swede who had trained at
Halle and for seventeen years had been maintained by the SPCK at Cudda-
lore, to Calcutta in 1758. Clive thought highly enough of Kiernander to agree
to be godfather to one of his children. Kiernander opened schools for Euro-
pean and Indian boys and erected a church at his own expense, which became
known as the ‘Old Mission church’.25 It is often forgotten that, without the
Company’s consent and material help, missionaries, Catholic or Protestant,
would have been hard pushed to carry on in India. Their chief limitation was
a chronic shortage of money and men. However, Roman Catholic mission-
aries did not fare as well as their Protestant brethren when political expedi-
ency demanded that priests and missionaries of one nationality be removed
and replaced with those of another. The Company’s right to expel those
it considered unfit later became a source of friction between it and other
Protestant societies wishing to work in India, who started arriving from 1793.
The new societies believed that ‘worldly’ politicians were not the people
to make such a judgement. The propagation of Christianity throughout
the world was to them a positive command of God, which should not be
hindered by man.
The definition of what constituted ‘fitness’ was subjective, and hinged on
perceptions of who was considered ‘respectable’ at this time. Anyone wishing
to be licensed to reside and work in India had to be deemed ‘respectable’
or ‘fit’ by the officials of the East India Company. The German Lutheran
missionaries sponsored by the SPCK seem automatically to have been consid-
ered respectable. They were men of learning and had patronage from both
the Danish king and the British royal family. Their conduct in India rein-
forced their initial acceptance and they gained the respect of the Company
chaplains, local officials and the SPCK. As representatives of the Established
Church of England, the Company chaplains held the key to their acceptance
or otherwise. Denominational rivalry did not appear to be an issue at this
point, possibly because German Lutherans were not seen as a threat to the
status of the Church of England at home.
Missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, were also useful for the smooth
running of Company affairs. This must have been an important factor in
gaining them acceptance and standing in the local community. There were
far too few Company chaplains to minister to the needs of the Europeans and
missionaries were prepared to step into the breach. They also set up charity
schools and hospitals for indigent Europeans and the mixed-race population.
Concentrating on Europeans inevitably restricted their work amongst the
Indian people and was the cause of considerable heart-searching and contro-
versy. Yet, because the Company paid them for their services, it provided
much needed money which, in turn, enabled them to do more work amongst
the ‘heathen’.26
A constant problem for the SPCK was lack of funds. In 1771 it was ‘embold-
ened’ to ask for further assistance from the Company. Its petition to the Court
of Directors bears repeating because it demonstrates that the Society felt that
the Company would respond best to arguments of expediency. In addition to
pointing out that the missionaries provided useful services in the Company’s
settlements, and were a bulwark against ‘Popery’, a new argument appears.
The SPCK contended that Christianity would unite Indians to the British
and help provide a Protestant bastion against the Catholic French who were
threatening British interests:
In this urgent necessity therefore they bethought themselves of soliciting the

Honourable East India Company for their encouragement and assistance in
an undertaking which tends so manifestly to the advancement of the glory of
God, at the same time that it eventually conduces to the good and benefit of
the East India Company. For, besides promoting Christian knowledge among
the natives, who as they become more acquainted with our religion, will be
likewise united in a more close and friendly manner with our settlers; the
Missionaries are successfully employed in making converts from Popery, and
thereby contribute in some measure towards the establishment and furtherance
of the Protestant interest in those parts: whilst, in the midst of their labours,
they are always ready to minister to the spiritual wants of the Europeans, and
to render every other service in their power to the Company’s settlements; for
which they have been frequently honoured with singular marks of favour from
the several governors abroad.27
The Company agreed to pay them 500 pagodas.

The East India Company also had to develop a policy towards the indig-
enous religions of India. As a private trading corporation, the merchants
wanted trade to be carried on as smoothly as possible in a land where they
were vastly outnumbered. Company officials enunciated a pragmatic policy
of what they termed ‘toleration’ or ‘religious neutrality’ towards all religions.
Such a policy recognised the reality of the early Company’s vulnerability and
its fears of alienating Indian rulers, but it was also elevated into a principle. In
the wake of the Glorious Revolution and the subsequent 1689 Toleration Act,
and with the influence of the Enlightenment beginning to be felt, a key word
in debates about India was the concept of ‘toleration’. Englishmen liked to
contrast their own ‘toleration’ with what they took to be the ‘persecution’ of
the Portuguese: hence the Court’s instructions to Calcutta not to stop Roman
Catholics from practising their faith.28 Maxims about the Company’s obliga-
tions to ‘tolerate’ Indian religions were to have a very long life.
Yet, as Evangelical Christians were to argue strongly in the future, Company
policy went much further than mere toleration towards Indian religions as it
tried to conduct itself as a sovereign power from the late eighteenth century.
The Company was anxious to legitimate its rule in Indian eyes and to be
seen as an element of continuity rather than change. It therefore wanted
interference to be kept to a minimum. Warren Hastings, the first Governor-
General of Bengal, expressed this when he wrote that he believed that the
duty of the British was ‘to protect their [Indian] persons from wrong and to
leave their religious creed to the Being who has so long endured it and who
will in his own time reform it’.29 Increasing the sum of Indian ‘happiness’
by allowing Indians the freedom to exercise their religions was a pragmatic
response to the reality of trying to control its millions of Indian subjects
by means of a few Europeans and a mainly sepoy army. This policy was
not new. Indeed, in 1662 the Company ordered that there were to be no
compulsory conversions, no interference with Indian religious prejudices and
cow killing was forbidden in ‘Hindu’ areas.30 This long-standing policy of
non-interference was eventually codified in Section 1 of Bengal Regulation
III of 1793. This was later included in the Company’s charter of 1813 and
became known as the Company’s ‘compact’ with the Indian people. As part
of its consolidation of control, the Company continued Hindu and Muslim
processes of state making by absorbing religion into state structures.31 The
endowment and protection of religious institutions was an important func-
tion of Hindu kingship, which the Mughals had also chosen to follow. Many
sacred sites had massive endowments. The Company attempted to cement
local loyalties by confirming the tax-exempt status of such endowments,
collecting pilgrim taxes for the upkeep of shrines and their priests, giving
police support and showing marks of respect, such as firing salutes at the
major festivals associated with many of the temples. In Indian society such
transactions conferred benefit on both patron and recipient. They affirmed
the power of the patron to act as kingmaker and alliance-builder and gave
enhanced prestige and legitimacy. The Company was certainly involved
in Hindu festivals and temples in the 1780s and probably well before that.
Warren Hastings mentioned the supervisory role played by Company officers
at the Gaya pilgrimage and in 1784–5 the Company gave the Collector at
Gaya permission to collect the pilgrim tax as part of the excise tax. In 1788
Christopher Keating, the Collector of Beerbohm, took upon himself direct
management of the temple of Deoghar.32 The increasing Company involve-
ment in attending festivals and managing Hindu religious activity played a
crucial part in the construction of what we now know as ‘Hinduism’ as a
recognisable official entity.33 It also provoked a growing campaign of protest
in Britain against official connection with ‘idolatry’, which it was argued,
went well beyond the bounds of ‘toleration’ and was done mainly for financial
gain. Discontent with this policy was first aroused with Wellesley’s takeover
of Orissa and the temple of Jagannath in 1803. As a result of the takeover
of this important temple, the Company researched precedents set by earlier
Muslim and Maratha rulers and eventually decided to collect the pilgrim tax
at Jagannath and codified the way in which this should be done.34 As Evangeli-
cals rightly pointed out, this was more than ‘toleration’ or ‘neutrality’. By the
early years of the nineteenth century it seemed to many British Evangelicals
as if the Company could scarcely be regarded as Christian. In their eyes it
was running British India as a Hindu-Muslim state in which there were three
government-supported religions: Christianity for Europeans and Hinduism
and Islam for Indians. The perception that professedly Christian governors
were treating Hinduism and Islam on a par with Christianity was anathema
to Evangelical Christians. However, the inconsistencies were not all on the
Company’s side. Both Protestant and Catholic missionaries asked for more
than toleration for themselves. Their receipt of government salaries and other
concessions and requests for protection took the Company out of its professed
policy of religious neutrality. As the next chapter will demonstrate, a new era
was dawning in the relations of the Company with Christianity.
Notes
1 Dr Glasse’s Charge to Rev. Mr Paezold, 29 January 1793, An Abstract of the Annual

Reports and Correspondence of the SPCK from the Commencement of its Connexion with the East
India Missions, AD 1709 to the Present Day (London 1814), p. 361.
2 ‘An Account of The English Settlement in the East Indies, Together With Some
Proposals for the Propagation of Christianity in Those Parts of the World’, 23
January, 1694/5, The Life of the Reverend Humphrey Prideaux DD . . . (London, 1748),
pp. 161–81.
3 A précis of the text of this charter can be found as Document 30, in P. J. Marshall.
ed., Problems of Empire: Britain and India 1757–1813 (London, 1968), pp. 194–6.
4 P. Francis, 13 May 1793, The Senator or Parliamentary Chronicle, 7 (1792–3), 810. This
evasion was a long-standing one.
5 S. Neill, A History of Christianity in India 1707–1758 (Cambridge, 1985), Chapter 5.
6 Extract of General letter to Bengal, 1712/13, para. 195, BL, IOR, H. Misc. 59, pp.
195–7.
7 E. R. Hull, Bombay Mission History (Bombay, 1927), 2 vols, 1, 20.
8 K. Ballhatchet, Caste, Class and Catholicism in India 1789–1914 (Richmond, 1998), p. 14.
It is thought that by the nineteenth century some 40% of the Company’s European
troops were Irish Catholics.
9 Hull, Bombay Mission History, 1, p. 27. There were perhaps two million RC Christians
in India and Ceylon by 1700.
10 Court to Madras, 25 January 1716, Neill, Christianity in India, p. 96.
11 Hull, Bombay Mission History, 1, 31.
Notes to Chapter 1 17
12 Court to Madras, 7 February 1744, para. 42, BL, IOR E/3/109. This was in response
to the Madras decision not to allow a Frenchman sent out by his order to superintend
the RC missions in India and Persia. In 1744 fighting broke out between Britain and
France at sea and moved to the mainland in 1746. From 1746–1761, when the British
gained the upper hand, France and Britain fought for supremacy in the south.
13 Neill, Christianity in India, fn. 28, p. 490.
14 M. Dewey, The Messengers: A Concise History of the United Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel (London and Oxford, 1975). Subscription lists indicate that it was in existence
from at least 1696.
15 F. Penny, The Church in Madras, 3 vols (London, 1904–22), vol. 1 (1904), p. 181.
16 Court to Madras, 2 February 1712, paras 144–6, BL, IOR, E/3/97.
17 Penny, Church in Madras, 1, p. 184. Tranquebar is on the Coromandel coast about 150
miles south of Madras.
18 Penny, Church in Madras, 1, pp. 185–8.
19 SPCK Abstract, p. 22.
20 See above, p. 9.
21 Court to Madras, 14 February 1727, para. 93, BL, IOR, E/3/104.
22 Court to Madras, 11 February 1731, para. 75, BL, IOR, E/3/105.
23 Court to Madras, 20 March 1744, para. 6, BL, IOR E/3/109.
24 J. C. Marshman, The Life and Times of Carey, Marshman and Ward, 2 vols (London, 1859),
1, p. 39.
25 Neill, Christianity in India, p. 108.
26 The greatly loved and respected missionary, Christian Schwartz, was appointed chap-
lain to the Europeans at Trichinopoly in 1767 with a salary of £100 p.a., which he
put into the funds of his mission. In 1786 he was granted a salary of £100 p.a. as
interpreter at Tanjore, plus 20 pagodas for a palanquin. The Company also supported
his schools. Neill, Christianity in India, pp. 45–56.
27 SPCK petition, 3 December 1771, SPCK Abstract, pp. 120–3.
28 See above, p. 10.
29 A. Wild, The East India Company, Trade and Conquest from 1600 (London, 1999), p. 162.
30 A. Mayhew, Christianity and Government in India (London, 1929), p. 39.
31 See discussion in S. Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South
Indian Society, 1700–1900 (Cambridge, 1989).
32 For a full discussion of the collection of the pilgrim tax, see N. G. Cassels, Religion
and the Pilgrim Tax Under the Company Raj (Delhi, 1987). The details cited can be found
on pp. 18–21.
33 There is a large literature on this question. A good overview can be found in G.
Oddie, ‘Constructing Hinduism, The Impact of the Protestant Missionary Move-
ment on Hindu Self-Understanding’, in Christians and Missionaries in India: Cross Cultural
Communication since 1500, ed. R. E Frykenberg (London, 2003), pp. 155–82.
34 Cassels, Pilgrim Tax, Chapter 2, pp. 35–55.
Two
THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, BRITAIN

AND INDIA: 1770–1790
What is England now? – A sink of Indian wealth, filled by nabobs

and emptied by Maccaronis! A senate sold and despised! A country
overrun by horse-races! A gaming, robbing, wrangling, railing nation
without principles, genius, character or allies.1 (Horace Walpole)
By the 1770s there was growing concern about the way in which the
Company was ruling its Indian territories. As the above effusion from Horace
Walpole demonstrates, no holds were barred. Language was racist and intem-
perate and spared no one, least of all the British. As Company wealth and
power increased, mounting concerns were expressed about the corruption of
Company officials. Returning Company servants were referred to as ‘nabobs’
(a corruption of ‘nawab’ or ruler). These nabobs arrived home laden with
Indian riches, which enabled them to buy country estates and purchase parlia-
mentary seats above the ‘going rate’. This was alleged to make entry into
British politics even more expensive than it was already. It was widely held
that nabobs and their wealth were harmful to political life both in Britain
and India. The numbers of nabob MPs rose steadily to about 45 between
1784 and 1790. While they never acted as a combined ‘interest group’ and
their ability to affect Indian legislation was, therefore, limited, these nouveaux
riches aroused resentment. Fears began to be expressed about the effect that
possession of India might have on the British constitution and liberties. Pitt
the Elder expressed the opinion of many when he maintained that ‘The
riches of Asia have been Poured upon Us; & have brought with them not
only Asiatic luxury, but I fear, Asiatic (i.e., despotic and corrupt) principles of
Government.’2 Pitt’s concern was not, however, for the welfare of the people
of India, but for the preservation of the status quo in Britain. The charge of
despotism was a potent one to make against the nabobs. Despotic rule did
not sit easily with Britain’s self-perception as a free and incorrupt people.
There had been great changes in the Indian situation in the years after
The East India Company, Britian and India 1770–1790 19
the battle of Plassey (1757). In 1765 the Mughal Emperor, Shah Alam II,
granted Clive the diwani of Bengal and the Company thus became a revenue
collector and territorial administrator as well as a trader. The Company now
had effective control of the provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in addition
to the Madras and Bombay Presidencies. It had become a sovereign as well
as a commercial power. This meant that there was much more at risk. Indian
matters began to take more parliamentary time as MPs tried to exercise some
measure of oversight while the Company staggered from one financial crisis
to another, culminating in the dramatic collapse of 1772. The Company only
survived with the aid of Bank of England loans, granted because of fears
that its demise might pull the whole credit system down. India was proving
to be not quite the golden egg everyone had expected. A Select Committee
examined the misconduct of leading Company servants. A Secret Committee
was also set up, which compiled nine detailed reports on Company affairs. In
1773 a Regulating Act was passed (13 Geo.III, c.63), which began the process
of clipping the Company’s wings. Until this time the Company had been run
by a Court of twenty-four Directors, holders of East India stock, who were
elected annually by the Court of Proprietors. In 1772 a Governor-General
was appointed (Warren Hastings), supported by four councillors appointed
by the Crown and Company. In addition, a Supreme Court was set up in
Calcutta with its chief justice and three judges appointed by the Crown.
The Regulating Act also provided for ministerial perusal of all incoming
despatches from India.3
Despite these measures oversight was minimal, perhaps because the Amer-
ican War diverted attention. The loss of the American colonies in 1783 was a
searing experience for Britain. In addition, the French had gone on the offen-
sive in both the West and East Indies and Ireland was causing considerable
concern. There was a sharp decline in overseas trade and increasing unem-
ployment in many areas at home. It seemed to some that the British Empire
was on the brink of collapse. Christopher Brown, in his recent book on the
abolition of the slave trade, Moral Capital, goes into great detail about the
changes in atmosphere in Britain and the impact of the loss of the colonies on
the zeitgeist.4 Many argued that Britain’s irreligion had led to the debacle. By
1780 the clergy were preaching that the colossal failure of the American War
proved that only a national reformation could retrieve Britain from further
shame. There were efforts to restore the moral authority of Church and State
and to rehabilitate Britain’s reputation. It was argued that Britain needed to
atone for her national sins. The moral character of imperial authority and the
ethics of British conduct started to figure in public discussions on empire with
increasing frequency. The growing numbers of Evangelical Christians seized
on the crisis to reinforce their arguments that only the proper observance of
Christianity could solve the nation’s ills. Charles Grant (1746–1823), a senior
Company servant, was the key figure in extending this idea to India.
There was much to criticise about Company rule. In 1769/70 millions of

Indians in Bengal had died in a famine and Company officials were accused
both of profiting by the disaster and doing little to help. Warren Hastings,
the new Governor-General, was charged with misgovernment and criticised
for his actions during the Maratha War (1775–1782). In southern India, the
Second Mysore War of 1780, the Nawab of Arcot’s debts to British creditors,
and other scandals, created great unease in Britain about the way in which the
East India Company was managing its affairs. A new rhetoric, influenced by
the Enlightenment, appeared as Britain tried to justify its imperial rule. Thus,
it was not denied that Britain hoped that India would bring it great wealth.
However, it was argued that in return Britain would look after the welfare
of its native inhabitants far better than the previous rulers. Charles James
Fox and Edmund Burke castigated the Company for its failure to protect the
happiness of the Indian people. Burke argued that Company rule seemed
to have led to their oppression and impoverishment and had destroyed the
very fabric of Indian economy and society.5 From this time the concept of
trusteeship appeared more and more in writings and speeches. In 1781 a
new Select Committee on India and a Secret Committee chaired by Henry
Dundas were set up to enquire once again into the affairs of the Company. At
Burke’s insistence the Select Committee’s remit later included a consideration
of ‘how the British Possessions in The East Indies may be held and governed
with the greatest Security and Advantage to this Country, and by what Means
the Happiness of the Native Inhabitants may best be promoted’.6 From this
time, the term ‘happiness’ became a commonplace of debates over the welfare
of Britain’s subjects. As Rosselli has percipiently remarked, what was meant
by this phrase was not always explicit. It meant different things to different
people. For William Pitt, providing happiness for India meant providing peace
and tranquillity. For Henry Dundas, it meant ensuring prosperity. For Lord
Cornwallis it meant judicial and land revenue reform. Private merchants
argued that India would be happier and more prosperous if the Company’s
trading monopoly were ended. For most Company officials who had served in
India, happiness meant that Indian institutions should be left alone as far as
possible and that Indians should be left to worship in freedom.7 Evangelicals
took a ‘higher’ line, arguing that what was at stake was not the material happi-
ness of Indians but their immortal souls. They believed that spiritual salvation
would only be ensured through the inculcation of the Christian faith, which,
at the same time, would improve Indian morality and prosperity. A common
religion would then create a bond between rulers and ruled. These diverse
interpretations and interests would inevitably lead to changing policies as the
balance of power between the different interest groups shifted. The question
of how far the inculcation of Christianity would lead to Indian happiness
was emotionally charged, with Evangelicals and ‘old-India hands’ taking up
entrenched positions against each other. Nonetheless, it is important to note
that opponents of missionary activity took care to state that they wished to
see India ultimately become Christian. There is no evidence to suggest that
they were being hypocritical in expressing this desire.
In 1782 the Commons demanded the dismissal of Warren Hastings as
Governor-General because he had ‘acted in a Manner repugnant to the
Honour and Policy of this British nation’.8 Parliament tightened the noose
on the Company a little more with Pitt’s India Act of 1784, which set up a
Board of Commissioners under Henry Dundas as president. This became
known as the Board of Control and was composed of six Privy Councillors,
who had effective responsibility for the development of policy for all civil,
military, and revenue matters in India. This set the scene for an increasingly
close entanglement of the affairs of Britain and India. At the same time as
Parliament was flexing its muscles towards India, certain manufacturing and
shipping interests were also determined to curtail the Company’s monopoly
of trade. They wanted their share of the Indian export markets and there
was increasing pressure on the Company from the outports (provincial ports).
Thus, during the 1770s and 1780s the Company was under siege and clung
even more tenaciously to the rights and privileges it was able to retain. This
was to have implications for the Company’s future relationship with those
wishing to propagate Christianity.
The renewed interest in India and concern for a moral government aimed
at ensuring the ‘happiness’ of the Indian people encouraged certain bishops
and eminent Anglicans to turn their attention to the subcontinent. In 1784
Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, in a sermon before the House of Lords,
urged the propagation of Christianity in India, as did Joseph White in his
Bampton lecture on ‘Mahometism and Christianity’.9 In 1786 Thomas
Thurlow, the Bishop of Lincoln, preached a sermon before the SPG pointing
out Britain’s ‘duty of conversion’ now that Indians were British subjects. At
this point the SPG was not prepared to take up the challenge, maintaining
that it was not its intention to interfere with the SPCK’s work in south India.10
However, just as an awakening of interest in India as a mission field seemed
to be developing, the East India Company appeared less than enthusiastic
about the prospect.
Most Company officials believed that the happiness of India would best
be safeguarded by a policy of non-interference with Indian religions. Hast-
ings had taken over his role as first Governor-General firmly of the view that
British rule of India should be ‘Indianised’ if the people were to be reconciled
to it. He believed that Indian society contained viable political and judicial
institutions that only needed to be rejuvenated to work well. It followed from
this that British officials needed to learn the languages, culture and traditions
of India in order to be able to rule effectively and to disturb the status quo
as little as possible. This meant leaving Indian religions alone. However, he
also believed that it was important to uphold Christianity. Hastings, while
probably a deist, took care to attend church regularly and died a communi-
cant member of the Church of England. He also subscribed generously to
the building of Calcutta’s St John’s church.11 Edmund Burke, similarly, had
urged Parliament to restore peace in Bengal by giving Indians laws that were
in accordance with the ‘genius, the temper and manners of the people’. He
drafted a bill with the aid of the polymath, William Jones (1746–1794),12
who had yet to go out to India, to protect Indians in the ‘enjoyment of all
their ancient laws and usages rights and privileges’ (21 Geo.III, c.70 sec.
1).13 Although not specified, this meant by implication that they would be
allowed the ‘free exercise of their religions’. Such views were in conflict with
any perceived duty to transmit the Christian religion to the peoples of India.
Other events conspired to make officials wary of the effects of Christianity
on subject peoples. By the late 1780s the propagation of Christianity was
also a live issue in the West Indies where there were growing concerns about
the impact of the egalitarian tenets of Christianity on social relations with
the slaves, who were becoming increasingly restive.14 The Company did not
want similar problems with its Indian subjects. The abolition movement was
gathering force in Britain and was also being taken up by political radicals.
Many of the same people involved in the abolition campaign were later to
be instrumental in campaigning for the propagation of Christianity in India.
The Company would be wary of any schemes put forward by them.
Even more significant for attitudes towards those wishing to propagate
Christianity in India were fundamental changes in the religious landscape
in Britain. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the rapid growth of
Methodism and the new Evangelical Dissenting congregations, commonly
termed ‘New Dissent’, not only challenged the pre-eminence of the Church
of England, but also the leadership of the old Dissenting congregations, which
were in serious decline by 1740.15 The appeal of Methodism and New Dissent
to the lower orders was seen as a threat to both the political and Anglican
establishments. Old Dissent16 was losing its hard-earned respectability by the
late eighteenth century by its determination to achieve the repeal of the
hated Test and Corporation Acts, which restricted their freedom of worship.
Dissenters also suffered civil and political disabilities. No longer content with
mere toleration, Dissenters were increasingly demanding equal religious and
civil liberties, which they regarded as ‘natural rights’. Considerable popular
opinion was mobilised behind repeal. Dissenters had failed to have the Test
and Corporation Acts repealed in 1787 but came close to winning in 1789,
losing the vote in the Commons by only 20 votes. The support given to the
French Revolution by some Dissenters, together with their involvement in
the new constitutional societies demanding parliamentary reform, resulted in
a violent conservative backlash (the Church and King riots) against Dissent
and delayed success for a further 20 years. Dissenters were also prominent in
attempts to end the Company’s monopoly of trade.
Against all this, it is perhaps not surprising to find that the Company’s atti-
tude towards those wishing to live and work in India seemed to be hardening.
It had a powerful weapon at its disposal because Parliament’s control did not
extend to the licensing of individuals to reside in India. The Company had
always insisted on the right to determine who should enter its domains and
it maintained this right with increasing vehemence from the late eighteenth
century. Its aim was to limit commercial competition and to keep out unde-
sirable Europeans. Almost annual instructions to send unlicensed persons
home were issued. To some extent the Company had well-founded fears that
the disreputable character of many of the interlopers who managed to find
their way to India would lower Europeans in the eyes of Indians. It feared
that this could lead to disaffection. Lord Cornwallis, who succeeded Hastings
as Governor-General in 1786, certainly believed that there were too many
Europeans in India and that there was a need for more control. Concern
for the security of British India was never far from the minds of the men
responsible for its government and appears countless times in both private
letters and public pronouncements. Another great concern was the activities
of the French, who were presumed to be ever ready to foment trouble. Lack
of money and men dictated that British India be defended by a mainly sepoy
army. Fearing disaffection amongst the sepoys, few Company officials were
prepared to interfere with Indian religions. Lord Cornwallis, for instance,
in a letter to Henry Dundas, President of the Board of Control, stressed
the need for good officers, ‘perfect’ in the appropriate Indian language, who
would give ‘a minute attention to the customs and religious prejudices of the
sepoys’, because ‘you need not be told how dangerous a disaffection in our
native troops would be to our existence in this country’.17
The Governors of Madras were particularly concerned to conciliate its
large Catholic population. Sir Archibald Campbell, Governor 1786–1789,
believed that it ‘must be of great consequence to the Government to attach
such a considerable body of people to our Interest’ because of their numbers
and the fact that they were co-religionists with the French. He was also aware
that Roman Catholics of the Fisher caste largely ran the port and harbour of
Madras. Campbell ordered that Roman Catholics should be afforded ‘every
protection & support which good and faithful subjects deserve’. However,
while he permitted Catholics freedom of worship, Campbell had no hesita-
tion in interfering in internal church affairs. He was not at all happy that
the superior of the Capuchins at the French station of Pondicherry usually
appointed the Capuchin superior at Madras. When Campbell learned that
a French bishop in partibus had been sent to overcome the influence of the
Padroado bishop of St Thomé, he was determined not only to restore the power
of the Bishop of St Thomé but to extend it. He set in motion regulations
that placed the spiritual affairs of all Roman Catholics in the Presidency
under the supervision of the Bishop of St Thomé. These decreed that all
priests must obtain the Governor’s permission to exercise their functions and
they would have to swear an oath that they would not act contrary to British
interests. It was more difficult for Campbell to overcome the power of the
French over the Capuchin house. When some church disputes were referred
to him for arbitration, he took the opportunity of ‘defeating this project’ by
appointing four prominent Catholic merchants syndics or churchwardens of
the Capuchin church. These men were ‘directed by Government to call upon
the Capuchins for an explicit account of their finances and to manage and
control the affairs of the Capuchin house in future’. The Capuchins’ 50,000
pagodas were put on deposit in the Company’s treasury.18 Such direct inter-
ference in the affairs of an individual church was probably not a wise move.
While it might have put paid to French sedition in the short term, in the long
term Roman Catholics and others realised that Company officials could fairly
easily be manipulated into involvement in time-consuming church disputes.
Campbell’s measures also drew protests from the Governor of Pondicherry,
which were given short shrift. Campbell retorted that, far from being ‘Angels
of Peace’ as described by the French Governor, French missionaries had been
acting as spies for Tipu Sultan. The Madras government therefore ‘thought
it necessary to take such measures as would in future prevent those wolves in
sheep’s clothing from doing further mischief, and to appoint a careful Pastor
to guard the Flock against their future voracity’.19 While all this was going
on, SPCK missionaries continued to operate freely in Campbell’s Presidency.
The Bombay government was also being put under pressure to restore the
authority of the Archbishop of Goa during this period. The home govern-
ment was anxious to counter criticism that it was neglecting its historic ties
with Portugal in favour of France. In order to redress the balance, Carmelite
priests were removed from their posts. Aggrieved parishioners appealed to the
Court of Directors, who reversed the decision and reinstated the Carmelites,
leaving the Archbishop of Goa with jurisdiction over Salsette. More protests
followed and, in 1793, the Court of Directors decided it would be wise to
‘reinstate all parties’ by transferring the jurisdiction of two of the four Cath-
olic churches in Bombay to Goa, leaving two under the Propaganda. The local
government was to settle disputes by paying attention to the wishes of the
parties concerned, ‘which was always to be consulted on religious subjects’.
As Ballhatchet comments, this decision opened the way for detailed official
interventions in Roman Catholic church affairs.20
While the few missionaries present in India in the 1780s, both Catholic
and Protestant, continued much as before, both Campbell in Madras and
Lord Cornwallis in Bengal maintained the long-held Company view that
tranquillity could best be achieved by ‘respecting’ Indian religious traditions
and customs. This attitude, when taken together with increased fears for secu-
rity, the Company’s right to refuse licences, and increasing antipathy towards
Dissent, was to prove a stumbling block to the attempts of Evangelicals to set
up missionary stations in India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth

centuries.
The Evangelical Army
As far as the Company’s relationship with Christianity was concerned, the

ongoing battle in Britain between Church and Dissent was to have a signifi-
cant impact on official attitudes towards the new Evangelical missionary soci-
eties wishing to set up in India. The rapid growth of Evangelicalism from
the 1730s, at the same time as providing the impetus for an awakening of
missionary zeal towards the ‘heathen’ at home and abroad, contributed to
open and sometimes bitter hostility from members of the Established Church,
who feared for the continuance of its dominance. Evangelicalism is difficult
to define because it meant different things to different people and changed
over time. However, there was a religious awakening in Britain, America and
the Continent that can be dated to the 1730s. While it had links with earlier
Protestant traditions and was heavily influenced by German Pietism, David
Bebbington contends that British Evangelicalism was a ‘new phenomenon
of the eighteenth century’.21 The term ‘Evangelical’ came into wide use in
Britain in the late eighteenth century to describe the doctrines and members
of this new revival movement both inside and outside the Established Church.
Along with the word Methodist,22 the term Evangelical was often used pejora-
tively of those who seemed to be ‘over-enthusiastic’ in their Christianity.
Evangelicalism cut across denominational boundaries and Bebbington has
shown how varied and adaptable it was. Thus we find Evangelicalism making
considerable inroads amongst Protestant Dissenters. The fundamental divi-
sion between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Dissent was that the ‘new’ Dissenting congre-
gations grew out of the Evangelical Revival.23 Evangelicals also formed a
significant group within the Anglican Church. William Wilberforce and the
other members of the Clapham Sect (commonly known as the Saints) were
the most famous of the Church Evangelicals. What bound these disparate
groups of people together was a deep-seated awareness of sinfulness, a feeling
of spiritual insufficiency and a desire for a personal assurance of salvation
through the atoning death of Christ on the cross. Some sort of spiritual
crisis was reached, either gradual or sudden, after which the Evangelical was
converted or ‘reborn’ and turned his whole life to God. Charles Grant had
undergone an Evangelical conversion experience in India after losing two
of his children to smallpox within ten days and ruining the family finances
through bad investments and heavy gambling. All Evangelicals strove towards
the highest standards of piety and personal morality. Christianity stood at
the centre of their lives: they were not ‘nominal’, but ‘vital’ Christians. Evan-
gelicals believed they were accountable to God for their actions. This led to
what Bebbington describes as ‘activism’, which gave a sense of urgency to the

Evangelical missionary movement.24 Evangelicals believed that the ‘heathen’
at home and abroad would perish in everlasting hell if they did not turn to
Christ and it was their duty to do something about it.
Many people both in the Established Church and ‘Old Dissent’ felt distaste
towards the activities of Evangelicals generally. Although by the eighteenth
century Dissent was almost ‘respectable’, the Evangelicalism of Methodism
and ‘New Dissent’, with its extempore preaching, appeals to the heart, use of
poorly educated laymen and lack of respect for parish boundaries, reminded
many of the Puritan fanaticism of the previous century and challenged the
existing leadership. The feelings of distaste were compounded when the lower
social status of the new Evangelical leaders was observed. It was felt to be
dangerous for such men to be leading their fellows and believed to be against
the natural order.
There were considerable tensions and differences in ethos between the
various groups of British Evangelicals, which affected the course of events
in India as well as in Britain. While all Evangelicals looked back to the
primitive, apostolic purity and zeal of the early Christian church and the
simplicity and vitality of the Puritan tradition, there were significant differ-
ences between them. Revd Thomas Gisborne described the missionary move-
ment as ‘parallel columns of a combined army, marching onward, side by
side for the subjugation of a common foe’.25 The common foe, Satan, in the
guise of ‘heathenism’ at home and abroad, permitted the cooperation of
‘regiments’ of Christians across a wide spectrum of doctrine and practice.
Despite the great unity of heart that undoubtedly existed amongst Evangeli-
cals, they also had the pride of soldiers in their own denominations and, as
with military regiments, great rivalry could ensue between them, especially
when one was seen to be encroaching on the domain of another. Church
Evangelicalism was a more restrained phenomenon. Church Evangelicals,
on the whole, were at one with the mainstream of the Established Church
in their dislike of ‘enthusiasm’. They mistrusted the hysteria that sometimes
accompanied Methodist and Dissenting Evangelicalism and most were not
prepared to disrupt church order. They disapproved of the use of poorly
educated lay-preachers, supported the Episcopate and believed in the Church
of England’s role as the established church of the State. They were further
distanced from other Evangelicals by the fact that they were generally of
higher social standing. For many Churchmen, the reaction against Evangeli-
cals went much further than distaste because the rapid increase of Methodism
and New Dissent from the 1770s was seen as a very real threat to the position
of the Church of England as the national church. This was compounded by
the strong opposition of many Dissenters to the principle of a state church
and their renewed attempts to have the Test and Corporation Acts repealed.
High Churchmen regarded an attack on the Church as an attack on the State.
Schism was therefore to them both a sin and a crime. Most opprobrium was
reserved for the Methodists because of their ‘enthusiastic’ ways, appeal to
the lower orders, and disregard for Church order. Those fellow Churchmen
who were not prepared to go as far as Methodists, but who were neverthe-
less Evangelical in outlook, also came under attack. They were regarded by
many as the Church of England’s ‘Trojan Horse’, sabotaging its position from
within and in the process undermining the very foundations of the State. With
all these competing interests at stake, a victory or defeat over who could send
missionaries to India could be seen as a shift in the balance of power at home.
The religious climate from the 1770s to beyond the turn of the century was
thus one of great ferment. Dissenters were regarded with dislike and suspicion
and during the 1790s had replaced Catholics as the scapegoat of ‘the mob’
in Church and King riots. Prejudices that Evangelical activity was fanatical
and subversive of the established order would naturally have implications
for Indian officials, responsible for preserving the security of Britain’s new
empire in the East. Both Warren Hastings and his successor, Lord Cornwallis,
made it clear that Indians should be left free to practise their religions. This
combination of a distaste for and distrust of Evangelicalism at home, the
growing determination of the Church of England to reassert its dominance,
and the Company’s caution about upsetting Indian religious sensibilities were
not good omens for the progress of Christianity in India. At this point new
missionary societies had yet to be formed. However, the East India Company
was about to be put under pressure to do more for Christianity, a pressure
that was greatly to increase over ensuing decades.
A Missionary Proposal for Bengal
In 1772 George Livius, intimate friend of Charles Grant and Philip Francis
and brother-in-law of Edward Wheler, who was Chairman of the Company
and later a member of the Supreme Council in Bengal, discussed with the
Moravians26 the prospect of setting up a mission in Bengal. As a result of
Livius’s encouragement, the Moravians set up a mission in the Danish terri-
tory of Serampore, hoping in due course to start a mission in British territory.
Livius then offered them his country house in Calcutta for a mission settle-
ment. However, in order to take this up, the Moravians required licences.
It was intimated to them that George Wombwell MP, the Chairman of the
Company at the time, was not in favour of introducing ‘sects’ into the East
Indies. This is the first indication that Dissenting missionary societies might
experience problems if they tried to enter India. Despite this intimation,
the Moravians persevered and sent a memorial to the Company in 1778
requesting licences for their missionaries. However, ‘all attempts for procuring
a Passage to Bengal in one of the English Indiamen’ were unsuccessful. On
the other hand, the East India Company did not veto the proposal outright.
The Moravians therefore decided to send two missionaries to Patna in the
early 1780s without licences. In the event, the Moravian mission was short-
lived and in 1792 they gave up the Serampore mission as well.27
Other Evangelicals were also turning their attention to the plight of the
‘perishing heathen’ of India by the 1780s. Thomas Coke, the Methodist
leader, led the way in 1783 with a plan for a mission to India, which he
communicated to Charles Grant, who at that time was Commercial Resident
at Malda.28 In1786 Coke informed Grant that the Methodists could not help
with a mission to Bengal at the moment because of their commitments in
America and the West Indies. Coke advised Grant to follow the Methodist
(and Moravian) example and not to make an official application to the civil
power to go out.29 Ignoring this advice, Charles Grant, David Brown (chap-
lain of the Calcutta Orphan Asylum and of the 6th Battalion at Fort William),
William Chambers (interpreter at the Supreme Court), and George Udny (an
indigo planter), decided to put forward their own proposal for government-
sponsored missionary activity in India.30 Grant, as a close friend of Livius,
would have known of the fate of the Moravian plans. This did not, however,
deter him and by August 1787 the proposal was ready. Fourteen copies of it
were sent to various influential people, including William Wilberforce, who
was believed to be the key to success with the Government, the Archbishop
of Canterbury, the Bishop of Llandaff and others who might further the
cause, mainly Anglican clergymen. By this time Lord Cornwallis, the new
Governor-General, had summoned Grant to Calcutta where he became the
fourth member of the Board of Trade and Cornwallis’s right-hand man in
commercial matters.
The ‘Proposal to Establish a Protestant Mission in Bengal and Behar’
illustrates many of the themes just discussed. This proposal is particularly
significant because it came from members of the Established Church who
were also Company servants. Grant believed that Government support was
necessary. Echoing Stevenson’s remarks of 1716,31 Grant maintained that,
in case of converting any of the Natives, as soon as they renounce Hindooism,
they must suffer a dreadful excommunication in civil life, unless they are under
the immediate protection of the English. The converts may suffer persecution
and death, living in heathen towns under heathen landlords. They are entirely
in the power of the enemy.… Therefore, in the Proposal for a Mission, the
protection of the English Government was insisted on as material.
In Grant’s opinion, the Company had done far too little to encourage
the growth of Christianity in India. The support of the national Govern-
ment, he believed, would put pressure on the Company administration in
India to encourage and protect missionaries and converts at the same time as
increasing their respectability in the eyes of Indians. Moreover, Grant’s vision
for extensive missionary work in India required public funding. In order that
converts should escape persecution, Grant suggested that the scheme begin
with the establishment of a Christian community at Gumalti in northern
Bengal on the ‘free property of a European Christian’.32 The methods and
arguments employed in this proposal set the pattern for all those that followed
and therefore they will be examined in some detail.
Taking to heart the biblical injunction to use the wisdom of the serpent
and the innocence of the dove (Matthew X.16), the proposal was written
‘to be adapted to a particular class of Lord C[ornwallis]’s description’ and
‘accommodated to the temper of the Europeans here’.33 This acknowledged
that the good opinion of influential Europeans in India was essential. As
David Brown told Charles Simeon, the support of the Governor-General was
considered to be vital because, in Bengal,
The governor … is like the head to the body, in a more clear and intimate
manner than, perhaps, is known in any other country: whatever is undertaken
without his permission must wither and die. Those who live in England, remote
from the springs of government, will be hardly able to comprehend this. To
us it is very clear.34
This quotation reveals the impact of the new system of government for
British India. Henry Dundas, first President of the Board of Control, insisted
that India should be governed in India and not in Leadenhall Street. This
allowed the Governor-General great power, which was reinforced when the
men appointed were, like Cornwallis, members of the British aristocracy
with much personal influence both at home and in India. Lord Cornwallis
demonstrated this power when, prior to taking up his post in 1786, he insisted
on the principle that the Governor-General should be able to override his
Council in special cases and also to be able to combine the post with that of
Commander-in-Chief, if necessary. His primary concern was for the political
safety of India.35 In order to appeal to Lord Cornwallis, Brown and his friends
‘thought it needful in prudence at first to approach [him] by very gentle
gradations and initially proposed setting up schools, making no mention of
missions’. Lord Cornwallis told the Company chaplains who approached him
that he would not be ‘inimical to their schemes’. However, he also said that
he had ‘no faith in such schemes, and thinks they must prove ineffectual’.36
The arguments in favour of the missionary scheme were underpinned by
two assumptions. The first, which was rarely questioned, was that Providence
had given India to Great Britain in order to further the progress of Christi-
anity. Behind this lay the implicit threat that if Britain did not perform her
Christian duty, divine vengeance would be wreaked upon her. The second,
and this was questioned, was that the condition of Indians had become
extremely degraded under their own religions. The leaders of the missionary
movement spent much time and energy in an attempt to prove this second
point. Grant’s principal argument therefore was that the condition of the
Hindu was so depraved that a reformation of his morals through the teaching
of the principles of Christianity was the only way to reconcile him to foreign
dominion and make him a useful citizen of the British Empire. This was an
argument that could be expected to strike a chord with ‘those who counted’,
because it paralleled the argument in Britain for the necessity of a reforma-
tion of manners and the abandonment of vice, if Britons were to be made
sober and loyal citizens. In direct contradiction to the opinion of those who
opposed missionary activity in India, Grant argued that there was:
more danger of losing the Country from leaving the dispositions and Prejudices
of the People, in their present state, than from any change that the Light of
Christianity and an improved state of Civil Society would produce in them.37
Grant capped his arguments by maintaining that the security of the Compa-
ny’s rule in India could only be maintained by giving rulers and ruled a
common religion to bind them together.
Lord Cornwallis’s response foreshadowed future Government pronounce-
ments on the subject. He told Grant that, as Governor-General, he could not
actively support such a scheme, but he would not oppose it either.38 Corn-
wallis held fast to the Whig principle that power was essentially corrupting
and that government, therefore, should be minimal, restricted to ensuring the
security of life and property. Both ideologically, and because of the prag-
matic difficulties of governing such vast territories, he wanted imperial rule
to cause as little upheaval as possible by limiting its impact on the popula-
tion. This was the guiding principle behind his Permanent Settlement of
1793 which, extended to Britain’s policy toward Indian religions, meant that
Indians should be left free to worship as they wished.39 However, while the
rhetoric claimed that Britain would continue to govern India by Hindu and
Muslim law and tradition, the reality was that much would be changed, both
because the Company did not fully understand these traditions and because
of its needs. Bearing in mind Cornwallis’s views on the care to be taken over
the customs and religious prejudices of Indians, together with his aristocratic
and ‘whiggish’ distaste for enthusiasm, Grant and his friends did well to avoid
outright opposition to their scheme. This was no doubt due to the high regard
in which Lord Cornwallis held Grant.
Grant’s friend, Thomas Raikes, a wealthy Russia merchant, who was highly
regarded in the City and a personal friend of both Pitt and Wilberforce, prob-
ably put his finger on the reason why the scheme did not go further when he
warned Grant that it was likely to be impeded. He wrote that ‘on this side the
Promoters and Agents in the Scheme are of those who are called or supposed
to be Methodists’ … ‘though they may be … men of great Piety and strictest
manners; [the bishops] never like to give the reins into the hands of men of
warm imaginations’. The fact that the scheme expected state funding would
also have militated against it. Raikes told Grant that the Bishop of London
(Porteus) felt that there was more than enough to do in America and did not
want the scheme made public in case it adversely affected his plans for the
conversion of the negroes. A copy of the proposal was also sent to the SPCK,
who felt that it could not help at the moment. Raikes felt that Grant should
come home if he was to have any hope of success with the project.40
Having failed to stimulate interest in the scheme, Grant decided to finance
a mission himself, to operate from his indigo plantation at Gumalti. This also
failed. The problem was not, however, hostility from the Government or the
Company but the unsuitability of the man he had chosen to run his mission, the
Baptist, John Thomas, a former East Indian ship’s surgeon. Thomas insisted
on propagating his views against infant baptism, to the alarm of members
of the Established Church. At this early stage, the Church/Dissent rivalry
was already an issue. At no point was the missionary proposal forbidden by
Cornwallis, the Court of Directors, the Government or the Episcopate. The
greatest problem at this point appeared to be apathy. However, the seeds of
resistance were there. The new scheme was not originated by an official body
of the Established Church. Its proposers were Anglican Evangelicals, whose
strict loyalty to the Church could be questioned and whose ‘enthusiasm’ for
the propagation of Christianity could be regarded as subversive of the status
quo. This lack of support for a missionary scheme put forward by members
of the Established Church and respected servants of the Company was a
forerunner of troubles to come and events took on a worse complexion in
the aftermath of the French Revolution.
Notes
1 L. James, Raj, The Making and Unmaking of British India (London, 1997), pp. 47–8.
Macaroni was a term used to indicate dandies who, it was whispered, indulged in
the ‘Italian vice’.
2 A. Baron, An Indian Affair: From Riches to Raj (London, 2001), p. 76.
3 See C. H. Philips, The East India Company 1784–1834 (Manchester, 1940), for the
seminal study on the workings of the East India Company.
4 C. Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006).
5 For Burke’s speeches on India, see P. J. Marshall, ed., The Writings and Speeches of
Edmund Burke, vol. 5 (Madras and Bengal, 1774–1785) (Oxford, 1981).
6 Journals of the House of Commons, 38 (31 October 1780–10 October 1782), 600.
7 See discussion in J. Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck: The Making of a Liberal Imperialist
1774–1839 (London, 1974), p. 126.
8 Commons Journals, 38, 1032.
9 John Bampton founded the Bampton lectures at Oxford University in 1784.
10 Sermon by Thomas Thurlow, Bishop of Lincoln to the SPG 1786, pp. 22–3. I am
indebted to Professor Marshall for this reference.
32 Notes to Chapter 2
11 S. Neill, A History of Christianity in India, 1707–1858 (Cambridge, 1985), p. 113.

12 William Jones was to become a judge of the Supreme Court in 1783. He founded
the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784.
13 P. J. Marshall and G. Williams, eds, The Great Map of Mankind (London, 1982), p. 161.
14 J. Walvin, ed., Slavery and British Society 1776–1846 (London, 1982), p. 8.
15 This will be discussed in more detail at the end of the chapter.
16 Quakers, Presbyterians, Unitarians and most General Baptists.
17 Cornwallis to Dundas, 4 April 1790, NLS MSS, 3385, pp. 329–49.
18 Fort St George Public Consultations, 30 October 1787, BL, IOR, H. Misc. 59, pp.
35–43. Campbell estimated that there were some 100,000 Catholics on the coast and
17,000 within the walls of Madras.
19 K. A. Ballhatchet, Caste, Class and Catholicism 1789–1914 (Richmond, 1998), p. 81.
20 Ballhatchet, Caste, Class and Catholicism, pp. 48–51.
21 D. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (London and Boston, MA, 1989), p.
1. See also A. D. Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England (London, 1976) and
W. R. Ward, Religion and Society in England 1790–1850 (London, 1972). I shall follow
Bebbington’s system of capitalising the word Evangelical when referring to the new
revival movement which arose from the 1730s.
22 The term Methodist is equally problematical as it has also meant many things over
time.
23 For a discussion of the differences between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Dissent and a description
of the changes that occurred over time, see A. D. Gilbert, especially pp. 32–41 and
pp. 47–8.
24 Bebbington, Evangelicalism, p. 3.
25 J. Owen, A History of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 3 vols (London, 1816–20), 2,
310.
26 Count Zinzendorf in Saxony revived the Unitas Fratrum or Moravians, in 1727. They
were an active mission church from 1732 and had a great influence on other revival
churches.
27 J. Mason, The Moravian Church and The Missionary Awakening in England 1760–1800
(London, 2001), pp. 82–3.
28 Grant (1746–1823) arrived in Bengal in 1768 and returned to England in 1790 after
22 years’ service. As Chairman or Deputy Chairman of the Court for many years,
he exercised a powerful influence on the affairs of the East India Company.
29 Coke to Grant, 25 January 1786, John Rylands Library, WMMSA, MAM PLP
28/6/5.
30 H. Morris, The Life of Charles Grant (London, 1904), pp. 108–14 for Grant’s letter to
William Wilberforce giving details of the proposal. Another copy of the proposal can
be found in Archbishop Moore’s Papers in Lambeth Palace Library, vol. 1, pp. 195ff.
32 Letter to Thomas, Morris, Grant, p. 105–6. This was Grant’s own indigo plantation.
The text of the Proposal can be found on pp. 108–14.
33 Brown to Simeon, 24 February 1789, W. Carus, ed., The Life of Charles Simeon MA
(London, 1847), pp. 76–9. Simeon, fellow of King’s, Cambridge and priest at Holy
Trinity, was to be extremely influential in finding Evangelical chaplains for India.
34 Mrs D. Brown, ed., Memorial Sketches of the Rev David Brown (London, 1816), p. 243.
35 P. J. Marshall, The New Cambridge History of India: Bengal – The British Bridgehead: Eastern
India 1740–1828 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 134.
36 Letter from Brown to Simeon, 24 February 1789, Carus, Life of Simeon, p. 76 and
Brown, Memorial Sketches, p. 248.
37 Morris, Grant, p. 112.
38 Morris, Grant, p. 122.
39 See above, p. 15 for a discussion of the Company ‘compact’.
40 Raikes to Grant, 5 August 1788, Morris, Grant, pp. 116–17.
Three
THE 1790s: A TIME OF CRISIS
We think we have an equal right with the missionary, sent from

the English Society for Propagating the Gospel.1 (R. Haldane)
Grant’s Mission Scheme
Charles Grant returned home from India in 1790 after 22 years’ service
determined to make progress with the 1786 missionary proposal discussed in
the previous chapter. Unhappy with the reception the scheme had received
from Lord Cornwallis in India, Grant set about trying to obtain more support
for it in Britain. He had already sent a copy of the proposal to William
Wilberforce, MP and personal friend of William Pitt, the Prime Minister.
They soon met and thus began a close friendship, which was to have a consid-
erable impact on the Company once Wilberforce had taken up the cause of
Christianising India. In 1785 Wilberforce, like Grant earlier, had undergone
an Evangelical conversion experience, which changed the direction of his life.
Henceforward, his Christian beliefs would regulate everything he did and
give urgency to his attempts to rectify a myriad of social and moral evils. His
health was poor, yet he was able to direct his attention effectively for a long
period over a wide range of issues.2 Wilberforce was a mesmerising speaker
and was held in affection and esteem by most who had dealings with him.
At the time he met Grant, he was immersed in trying to get a motion for the
abolition of the slave trade through Parliament. Grant’s role as one of Wilber-
force’s ‘most trusted lieutenants’ in the abolition cause did not, however,
deflect him from India. 3 He was eventually able to persuade Wilberforce to
mastermind a parliamentary campaign to force the East India Company to
do more for Christianity. Indeed, Wilberforce was later to declare that ‘This
East Indian object is assuredly the greatest that ever interested the heart,
or engaged the efforts of man. How wonderful that a private man should
have such an influence on the temporal and eternal happiness of millions;
The 1790s: A Time of Crisis 35
literally, millions on millions yet unborn!’4 Both Wilberforce’s parliamentary

leadership and his advice were to be of immense importance to Grant and
his fellow Evangelicals.
Well-versed in political realities, Wilberforce advised Grant not to tackle
the issue head-on by mentioning missions directly at a time when Europe was
in such ‘a state of fermentation’. Grant also realised that they had to gain
the support of the Episcopate if the plan was to gain respectability with the
Government and the Company, Anglican clergymen were to come forward,
and missionaries were to be ordained. Wilberforce, therefore, advised Grant
to amend the paper to concentrate on ‘the diffusion of knowledge generally,
leaving it to be inferred that Christianity would be included in the plan’.5
In a letter to John Moore, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Grant accord-
ingly suggested ‘the leading idea of introducing the knowledge of the English
language among the natives . . . in order thereby to open to them the door
of European knowledge in general, and in particular to impart to them the
Christian Revelation’. Grant stressed to the Archbishop that there would
be no political danger from the scheme as Indians would ‘continue to yeild
[sic] a willing subjection to this country’. The ‘superior light and science of
the English’ was praised in the accompanying proposal, which expressed the
belief that Indians would be ‘well-disposed’ to accept such free and superior
instruction. Britain’s self-interest was appealed to by maintaining that the
diffusion of Christianity ‘might help give them [Indians] an attachment to the
government and detach them from neighbouring tyrannical governments’.
Britain’s rivalry with France was emphasised and the energy of the French
in making proselytes was contrasted with the indifference of ‘we who have
a purer faith’.6
Through Wilberforce’s good offices, Grant was able to meet Moore and
Beilby Porteus, the Bishop of London. The tactics seemed to have worked
and this time Moore appears to have followed up Wilberforce’s request that
he should recommend the scheme to the king. George III was evidently
sympathetic, but hesitated to countenance Grant’s scheme, ‘chiefly in conse-
quence of the alarming progress of the French Revolution, and the proneness
of the period to movements subversive of the established order of things’.7
Porteus, while expressing sympathy for the proposal, did not want it to put
his schemes for the conversion of negroes in jeopardy.8 Grant managed to
interest a number of Evangelical Anglican clergy in his mission proposal,
amongst whom was Charles Simeon at Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, who
was to encourage a number of students to offer themselves for service in India.
Once Grant became a Director and later Chairman of the Company he was
able to use his patronage to increase the number of Evangelical chaplains
employed by the Company.
Grant also had to gain the support of key politicians. While Lord Corn-
wallis was personally not in favour of the mission proposal, his high opinion
of Grant was crucial in opening doors to him. Cornwallis wrote to Dundas a

number of times extolling Grant’s virtues, telling Dundas how much he was
personally indebted to Grant and how much ‘the East India Company and the
country are indebted to his zealous services and superior abilities’. Moreover,
he recommended that Dundas ‘converse with him [Grant] frequently upon
every part of the business of this country’.9 Dundas’s opinion was critical.
He was Pitt’s right hand man, who controlled the East India Company with
an iron grip as president of the Board of Control. Dundas took Cornwallis’s
advice and Grant spent a considerable time shut up with Pitt and Dundas at
Wimbledon, helping them to sort out the details of what became the Bengal
Permanent Settlement. Grant drafted the revenue despatch, which was then
sent to the Court by the Board of Control.10 Dundas was impressed.
In 1792 Grant tried to prepare the ground for his Christian schemes with
Dundas by writing a paper, Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic
subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to Morals, and on the means of Improving
It. Written chiefly in the Year 1792. This sought to provide arguments justifying
permanent British rule in India through a comparison of the two civilisations.
Grant drew up a moral balance sheet in which he sought, with supporting
references, to demonstrate the utter degradation of ‘Hindu’ society. The
depravity and other evils that he and others had observed, Grant argued,
were caused by ‘the religion of the Hindoos’ and the caste system foisted on
the people by their priests. He pointed out that since Britain profited from
India, it had a duty to provide good government and to look after the welfare
of the people. He appealed to the growing humanitarian instincts of the time
by stressing the wretchedness of the Indian people and Britain’s duty to do
something about it. Grant’s key contention was that only the dissemination
of Christian truth could deliver the people from the evils of ‘Hinduism’ and
provide for their happiness. It was therefore the duty of the British govern-
ment to provide this. However, Grant was careful to stress that force should
not be used. Nevertheless, in direct confrontation with the prevailing ethos of
the East India Company, Grant discountenanced the idea of non-interference
with Indian religious customs. He described such an idea as ‘a vague and
hastily adopted hypothesis’ and expressed the view that ‘it may be proper
and even necessary to interfere … to look into evils and disorders which
prevail among the Hindoo people’.11 This was a view that the Company
was very reluctant to accept. Despite all his efforts, Grant did not succeed in
persuading Dundas or the Company to take up the proposal’s suggestions at
this time. Lord Cornwallis’s decided opposition, of which Grant was unaware
until told by Sir John Shore in 1794, would not have helped.12
1793 Renewal of the Company’s Charter
Despite their disappointment that the Proposal had made little headway,
Wilberforce and Grant felt that the signs were favourable enough to take the
opportunity of the 1793 renewal of the East India Company’s charter to press
for a clause recognising Britain’s duty to promote the religious and moral
improvement of the people of India. They hoped to persuade the Govern-
ment and Company to set up some form of ecclesiastical establishment for
India, financed by the Company, whereby the Established Church would
propagate the ‘purest’ form of Christianity to both the ‘dissolute’ Europeans
and the ‘depraved’ Indians. After consultation with the Speaker of the House
of Commons and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Wilberforce moved the
following resolution, which had largely been drafted by Grant:
That it is the peculiar and bounden duty of the Legislature to promote by all
just and prudent means, the interests and happiness of the inhabitants of the
British Dominions in India; and that, for these ends, such measures ought to
be adopted as may gradually tend to their advancement in useful knowledge,
and to their religious and moral improvement.13
This has become known as the ‘pious clause’. A second resolution provided
for an increased establishment of Company chaplains. The clauses were
passed in the Committee of the House and in the House itself on 14 May
1793. The only objection seems to have come from Philip Francis, who argued
that, although the object was good and could not ‘with propriety’ be opposed,
his experience told him that the measure would be evaded and its only effect
would be to create patronage and bring expense to the Company.14 At this
point the clause passed without division in a thinly attended House, as did
a second clause, introduced three days later, empowering and requiring the
Court of Directors to send out ‘from time to time … fit and proper persons
… as schoolmasters, missionaries or otherwise’. The clause further required
the Court of Directors ‘to give directions to the governments … in India to
settle the destination and to provide for the necessary and decent mainte-
nance of the persons so to be sent out’.15 It seems that this new clause was
included on the advice of the Attorney General and Solicitor General, who
were not happy with the wording of the preamble. They felt that it had to be
made more specific in order to be legally effective.16 Wilberforce and Grant
were euphoric. However, the storm was about to break. The proposed ‘pious
clause’ seemed to many to herald an alteration in the basis on which the
Company had hitherto worked. They argued that the changes would have a
detrimental impact on the Indian people and ultimately endanger the security
of the Company’s possessions.
A special meeting of the Court of Proprietors was immediately convened
in order to discuss these new additions and virtually every speech reported
opposed it. Stephen Lushington, the Company Chairman, was strongly

against this ‘very dangerous and expensive measure’. Furthermore, he fore-
told the end of British rule in India if missionaries proved to be successful
and expressed fears about the political effect of missionary activity on a
subject race. Lushington further argued that, in any case, the Hindu religion
was immutable and therefore there was no point in trying to convert Hindus.
Even the Evangelical Director of the Company, Samuel Thornton, MP and
Director of the Bank of England, found it necessary to state that the mission-
aries were not to go out to make proselytes but ‘merely to instil the virtuous
and moral principles of the religion of the Church of England into the minds
of the natives’.17 The helpful and easy-going attitude of the Company towards
missionary activity earlier in the century seemed to have passed.
As a result of the Company’s opposition, objections began to be voiced at
the Third Reading of the Bill. Richard Hussey objected because he ‘conceived
that the tendency of all religions was to make good subjects and virtuous
men’. In reply, Wilberforce lamented that Hussey ‘should have considered the
Hindoo or Christian religion merely as an useful engine for the purposes of
government, and that he should have deemed the Hindoo equally calculated
to promote that end’. In order to prove this point, Wilberforce went on to read
letters from people which, by their description of the character of Hindus
and their religious tenets, seemed to prove the necessity of their conversion
to Christianity.18
Grant’s Observations evidently had not convinced Henry Dundas, who
disagreed in Parliament with these unfavourable assessments of the Hindu
character. He argued that, on the contrary, he thought the people of India
were harmless and orderly. He went on to ask if the evils mentioned by
Wilberforce were confined to the Hindus of India and pointed out that ‘the
same imputation which was urged against them, as a plea for the establish-
ment of Christianity, applied in a great measure to those nations by whom
the benefits of that religion were already enjoyed’. In any case, Dundas went
on, the ‘beneficial object’ proposed by Wilberforce, could not be attained by
the present measure’.19 This was a volte face, for Dundas earlier had promised
to support the clauses. However, Britain was now at war with France, Dundas
was also Home Secretary and India was the least of his worries. He wanted
the bill passed quickly with the minimum of fuss and was not prepared to go
against the strong feeling of hostility from the Company. East Indian votes
were also important to Pitt’s ministry. Given such considerations, Dundas felt
it more prudent to withdraw his support.20 He had to think of the success of
the other parts of the bill. Opposition to the pious clause was not limited to
the Company. Charles James Fox considered that all systems of proselytisa-
tion were wrong in themselves, productive, in most cases, of abuse and of
political mischief.21 Wilberforce, in the face of this opposition, consented to
withdraw the ‘pious clause’. The bill was then passed and sent to the Lords.
During the debates in the House of Lords on 3 and 5 June, the Bishop
of London, faithful to his promise to Wilberforce, ensured that the religious
clauses were taken up once again. Porteus ‘lamented the lack of an adequate
ecclesiastical establishment in India for propagating the principles of Chris-
tianity’ and observed that:
Where the principles of that religion were established in their primitive purity,
the effect was beneficial both to individuals and to states: and he urged the
necessity of such a measure in the present instance from the depravity and
baseness of the general character of the Hindoos.22
However, his support was equivocal because he went on to add that he saw
‘considerable difficulty in adopting a measure … of propagating the Christian
religion among the natives’.23 The Bishop of St David’s was decidedly against
the clause, stating that he had:
great doubts indeed, as to what had been mentioned in another place, of

sending missionaries to convert to Christianity the natives of Indostan; – He
conceived the religion of a country to be connected with its Government, and
he did not think that any foreign state had a right to interfere with the Govern-
ment of another country, without an express commission from Heaven.
He went on to argue that the commission to the Apostles to spread the Gospel
had ceased with their deaths. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s support was
distinctly lukewarm. He was most concerned that his countrymen should
enjoy the ‘comforts’ of religion and ‘would not attempt to convert the natives
to Christianity unless they were disposed to embrace it’.24 There was little
disagreement that more chaplains should be provided for the main settle-
ments but great reservations were expressed about the desirability of a specific
measure for the conversion of India. The prime concern of the prelates of
England was the European population of India.
The views expressed in this debate by both supporters and opponents
of missionary activity were to be heard many times over the ensuing years.
Central to both of them was their assessment of the India character. The
Warren Hastings papers demonstrate that while few would deny many of
Grant’s conclusions, Hastings and others recognised that Grant had painted
an unfairly black picture of India and its peoples.25 At this point Evangel-
ical arguments had only succeeded in persuading Dundas, the Bishop of
London and the Archbishop of Canterbury to support an increased number
of Company chaplains. They made little impact on others and irritated many
‘old India hands’. Grant thought the main fear was not religious susceptibili-
ties but the political effect education and the Christian religion, with its belief
in the equality of man before God, might have on a subject race.26
Grant and Wilberforce were somewhat harsh in accusing the Company of
a refusal to help promote Christianity in India. They conveniently ignored the

help that the Company had given in the past to both Roman Catholic and
Protestant missionaries, help that was to continue to be given unquestioningly
to the SPCK and, to a lesser extent, to other missionaries. They also glossed
over the small increase in the inadequate ecclesiastical establishment that had
been agreed. Dundas made a fairer comment when, during the debates, he
argued that the question as far as he could see was not whether the Govern-
ment ‘wished well to the establishment of Christianity in India’ but whether
such an object ‘could best be attained by the means he [Wilberforce] was
anxious to suggest’.27 Dundas was certainly not against missionary activity
per se. He strongly advocated the propagation of Christianity to West Indian
slaves and in 1794 became a vice-president of the newly formed Society for
the Conversion of the Negroes.28 However, Dundas needed the support of the
East Indian ‘interest’ and was not going to rock the boat.29 The Company’s
position was straightforward. For a commercial company to have the discre-
tion to permit missionaries to enter India was one thing. To have to pay for
their upkeep, was quite another. The Company’s over-riding fears were for the
political stability of its possessions and the considerable increase in expense
that the pious clause implied. Embree has remarked that the clause implied
something more radical than a mere permission for the existence of mission-
aries. Grant was in effect asking Dundas and the Company to take the initia-
tive in instituting a process of social change, which aimed at the complete
alteration of the basis on which the existing social structure rested.30 While
few at the time would have seen the situation as starkly as this, by the 1830s
this was the undeniable aim not only of missionaries but also of increasing
numbers of Company servants.
It could be argued that the near passage of Wilberforce’s religious clauses
through the House of Commons in 1793 was a victory for the burgeoning
missionary movement. It demonstrated that there was wide acceptance of the
principle that Britain had a responsibility to promote the religious and moral
improvement of India. Both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop
of London had expressed sympathy for the cause even if their support was
distinctly lukewarm and in reality limited to wanting an increase in Anglican
chaplains. Their support was an important prerequisite for any action on the
part of Parliament. Charles Grant was able to make good use of the increase
in ecclesiastical establishment by employing his patronage and influence to
appoint Evangelicals to Company chaplaincies. These Evangelical chaplains
were prepared to use their official positions to preach the Gospel to Indians
as well as Europeans and were to prove crucial to the success of the mission-
aries who arrived in India without licences. The chaplains were able to assure
Company officials of their respectability and usefulness. Nevertheless, there
were signs that the path for missionaries would not be smooth. Company
opposition had been fierce and in Bengal Lord Cornwallis, feared arousing
disaffection in the native troops by upsetting their religious prejudices. Just as

the debates over the pious clause were taking place in Britain, Cornwallis and
his Council passed Bengal Regulation III of 1793, promising to ‘preserve to
[Indians] the laws of the Shasters and Koran in matters to which they have
been invariably applied, and to protect them in the free exercise of their
religions’.31 This did not bode well for a smooth path for missionaries.
So far the debate about missions had centred on two issues, both of
which involved the Established Church. First, should there be an increase
in the ecclesiastical establishment for the benefit of the growing numbers of
Europeans in India? There was no dissent from the premise that a Chris-
tian nation should provide Christianity for its own people. However, exactly
how this should be achieved was contested. Not all Christians wanted to
see an Anglican ecclesiastical establishment dominant in India. While most
Company servants did not object to such an establishment, some believed
that its official position would cause Indians to believe that it was the inten-
tion of Government to convert them. The second and most contentious issue
was the question of whether Christianity should be propagated to the Indian
people and if so, who should be permitted to undertake it and what methods
were acceptable? On the face of it, the Company had no objection to the
propagation of Christianity. It continued to permit the SPCK-sponsored
missionaries to work in its territories without hindrance. Roman Catholics
were allowed their own priests. However, the Company continued to inter-
fere in the appointment of priests if it felt political stability was threatened
in any way. In 1790 the Court of Directors preferred Italian Carmelites to
Portuguese Padroado priests in Bombay. This caused consternation and led
to large numbers of the inhabitants petitioning to return to the jurisdiction
of Goa. In a letter of June 1793 the Court of Directors told the Bombay
government that it was immaterial to it whether Padroado or Propaganda had
jurisdiction, provided the inhabitants were happy and their pastor and flock
‘conform to the Orders and Regulations of Government and conduct them-
selves in other respects, as good and faithful Subjects’. Congregations were to
be consulted ‘so far as may be consistent with the principles of sound policy
and good Government’.32 The attitude of the Company towards Roman
Catholic priests and missionaries did not seem to have changed. While it
paid lip service to allowing Roman Catholics the free exercise of their reli-
gion and their choice of missionaries, in the end political considerations
determined who was favoured. However, a third issue was about to come
into the frame: the question of what kind of Protestant Christianity should
be propagated. The arrival in India of the newly formed Baptist Missionary
Society (BMS) in 1793, followed in 1796 by the (London) Missionary Society
(LMS) was viewed somewhat differently to that of the SPCK missionaries.33
The admission of Protestant missionaries into India was but one of a number
of political issues in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which
were at least partly concerned with the relationship of religious dissent with
the ‘constitution in Church and State’.
Missions and Church/Dissent Rivalry
Just as Wilberforce and Grant were experiencing defeat over the inclusion
of a pious clause in the Company’s new charter, the Baptists William Carey
and John Thomas were setting out for Bengal as the first BMS missionaries.
They were advised not to put the matter of licences to the test and entered
India clandestinely. The LMS was similarly told that an application would
be ‘violently opposed by the Company’. Nathaniel Forsyth, its first Indian
missionary, also arrived without a licence.34 The missionaries were not happy
with the furtive nature of their arrival, which must be seen against the back-
ground of the routine admission of SPCK-sponsored missionaries, which
continued throughout the period 1793–1813. The difference between these
new missionary societies and the SPCK was that they were completely or
largely formed by Dissenters and that, unlike the SPCK, which had to rely
on German Lutherans, they were able to find Britons willing to go out to
India under their auspices.
The timing of the formation of these new missionary societies was unfor-
tunate. The overthrow of established authority in France and its chaotic
and bloody aftermath gave a powerful weapon to those who were hostile to
missionary activity carried out by Dissenters. According to Bishop Porteus,
the House of Commons did not want any innovations at this time and was
not impressed with the approbation some Dissenters had expressed towards
the French Revolution and subsequent opposition to the war with France.35
The Dissenting cause was not helped by their attempts in 1789 to have the
Test and Corporation Acts repealed, during which they set up a nationwide
network to demand their ‘rights’, publishing a multitude of pamphlets and
tracts.36 Instead of the hoped-for mass demonstration of public support for
Dissenting claims, there was widespread and violent reaction against them
and the cry was raised of ‘Church and State’ in danger. The Dissenting battle
for equal rights with Anglicans had a long way to go.
The democratic organisation of much of Dissent and Methodism and
their appeal in areas of political radicalism seemed to prove to many that
their churches were becoming, to quote John Walsh, ‘the unconscious tools
of a popular democracy that sought to destroy the existing order in church
and state’.37 The organisation of the missionary societies reinforced feelings
of distrust. In 1796, the same year that the Government prohibited Corre-
sponding Societies, Principal Hill at the General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland, made explicit the association of missionary activity with political
radicalism during the debate on a motion to involve the Church of Scot-
land in missionary activity at home and abroad. Hill accused the members
of missionary societies of meeting ‘under the pretext of spreading abroad
Christianity among the heathen’. The year 1796 had witnessed a rash of
missionary societies being formed in Scotland without the sanction of its
established church. Hill pointed out how these new societies:
are affiliated, they have a common object, they correspond with each other, they look
for assistance from foreign countries, in the very language of many of the seditious
societies. Above all, it is to be marked, they have a common fund … [which] …
certainly will be, turned against the constitution.38
After heated debate the motion was refused. No further action was taken
by the Church of Scotland to become involved in missionary activity in India
until the 1830s, when Alexander Duff went out. Hill could also have mentioned
that the missionary societies distributed cheap tracts and pamphlets, another
radical activity. Even the British and Foreign Bible Society (B&FBS), which
had the support of the bishops and many members of the aristocracy was
castigated. As late as 1810, Revd T. Sikes told Lord Teignmouth, ex-Governor-
General of India and by then president of the B&FBS, that Thomas Paine
‘might (for ought I can perceive) as easily have been admitted into your Lord-
ship’s Society as any of the bench of Bishops’.39 Many feared that preaching
Christ’s message of the equality of all men before God could only make the
lower orders dissatisfied with their position in life.
It was but one step further to connect fanaticism at home with fanati-
cism abroad. Sidney Smith, in his famous diatribe against the ‘anabaptist’
missionaries in India in the Edinburgh Review of 2 April 1808, provides the
most colourful example of this, echoing the fears expressed during the debates
over the 1793 ‘pious clause’. He deprecated the fact that the task of conver-
sion, which he admitted to be important, had devolved upon the lowest of
persons because no one else could be found to go out. These men, in Smith’s
opinion, were unlikely to carry out their task with discretion and would be
dangerous. Such ‘madness’ in his view was ‘disgusting and dangerous enough
at home:- Why are we to send out little detachments of maniacs to spread
over the fine regions of the world the most unjust and contemptible opinion
of the Gospel?’ He warned that,
even for missionary purposes … the utmost discretion is necessary; and if

we wish to teach the natives a better religion, we must take care to do it in a
manner which will not inspire them with a passion for political change, or we
shall inevitably lose our disciples altogether.40
Despite this unfavourable atmosphere, in 1796/7 Grant and Wilberforce were

trying again to get Anglican missionaries to India. Grant, David Scott and
Edward Eliot (Pitt’s brother-in-law) talked to Dundas, and Grant’s Observations
was presented as a paper to the Court of Directors. By 1797 Grant believed

they would be able to send out ten or twelve people. This seems a wildly
over-optimistic thought, given the response of Henry Dundas to the Haldane
Mission proposal.
The Haldane Mission Proposal
The connection in men’s minds between missionary activity and political

radicalism was borne out by the attitude of the Government, Henry Dundas
and the Court of Directors to a 1796 proposal for an extensive mission to
be set up in Benares. Robert Haldane, a wealthy Scottish landowner, David
Bogue, an Independent minister, and William Innes and Greville Ewing, both
Church of Scotland ministers, put this forward. These men were members of
the recently formed Missionary Society but their scheme was a private one,
to be funded by Haldane. They began by approaching William Wilberforce
via an intermediary to obtain his support.41 They then approached Henry
Dundas. In response to Dundas’s refusal to help, Haldane wrote an intem-
perate letter, telling Dundas that his other cares were ‘trifling’ compared to
this subject and entreating him to reconsider. Haldane felt that they were
being unreasonably excluded from India because they were Dissenters and
told Dundas that:
We think we have an equal right with the missionary, sent from the English
Society for propagating the Gospel [the SPCK] . . . We think our claim is not
inferior to theirs. If no bad effects have arisen from their efforts to propagate
the Gospel, why should they be feared from ours?
Haldane next threatened Dundas with applications from different societies in

support of the proposal, telling him that:
a refusal would be attended with disagreeable consequences, as there is hardly

anything that would give the religious people of the island a worse opinion
of the Government of Great Britain and of the existing administration, than
being refused liberty to propagate the religion of Jesus Christ.
Although he assured Dundas that they wanted to do things quietly and not
to agitate the public mind, he was nevertheless prepared to do so because he
was confident the Government would not ignore ‘the sentiments and wishes
of the most virtuous and respectable part of the community’. As the coup de
grace, Haldane reminded Dundas that ‘Death who knocked without distinc-
tion at the palaces of the great as well as the cottages of the poor will ere
long summon you to give an account of your stewartship.’42 Perhaps Haldane
realised that he had overstepped the mark because two days later he wrote a
more emollient letter in which he suggested that if Dundas would not give
public permission perhaps he might give a ‘silent acquiescence’.43 This also
seems to have been disregarded by Dundas.
Haldane and his friends were not about to give up. In October Wilber-
force wrote in his diary that he was trying to persuade Dundas to support
the plan. However, Haldane’s intemperate letters and the extreme political
opinions of some of the proposers had alarmed the Government. Haldane
and Bogue had welcomed the French Revolution, believing it heralded the
prospect of a better order of things. They had both spoken of their dislike of
political establishments and Haldane had also spoken out against the war with
France and the raising of volunteers for it.44 Bogue, in a 1791 sermon, extracts
of which were sent to Dundas, had presaged that ‘this generation shall not
pass away before the expiring groans of arbitrary power are heard through
every country in Europe’.45 Even William Wilberforce found them ‘all perfect
democrats, believing that a new order of things is dawning’. He was unable to
persuade Dundas to support the scheme even after advising him that it would
be better to get Haldane out of the way to the ‘back settlements to let off his
pistol in vacuo’ because ‘in Scotland such a man is sure to create a ferment’.46
Despite failing to obtain Dundas’s support, in December Haldane, Bogue and
Ewing sent the proposal to the Court of Directors, stressing that they would
not meddle in politics and pointing out how important Christianity was in ‘an
age of infidelity’. In the first threat of public action, they reminded the Court
that two million ‘pious people’ were deeply interested.47 Bogue also wrote a
pamphlet, The Peculiar Advantages of Bengal as a field for Missions from Great Britain.
The Court sent back a peremptory refusal within three weeks, stating it had
‘weighty and substantial reasons’ to decline the proposal.48
Despite this setback, Haldane, Bogue, Innes and Ewing pressed on. Oppo-
nents of missionary activity, like Revd Dr William Porteous, a prolific corre-
spondent with Henry Dundas, made the most of their political opinions. He
took the opportunity to argue that ‘this missionary business was intended to
excite … a certain description of the people …’ who, although ‘they have
not directly meddled with politics’ attack religious establishments and parish
ministers and their pamphlets inculcate ‘an aversion to the present order
of things’.49 The Duke of Atholl agreed with Porteous and also pointed out
that Haldane was seducing parishioners away from the Established Church.50
Missionary activity was regarded along with other Evangelical activities such
as Sunday schools, prayer meetings, itinerant preaching and distribution of
cheap pamphlets, as a threat to the existing order, both secular and ecclesias-
tical. The 1790s was therefore an inauspicious time for such activity, particu-
larly in Scotland where radicalism was being repressed by force. Dundas had
already been burnt in effigy and there was great similarity in Evangelical
methods and those of the Friends of the People in Scotland.51
Haldane refused to give up hope that a demonstration of public support
would persuade the Company to relent. In February 1797 he and his colleagues
prepared a circular letter to various Evangelical societies and ministers asking
them to send a respectful letter to the East India Company in support of their
application.52 In June they memorialised all the Directors and made another
formal application to the Court. The tone of this letter was very deferen-
tial. They begged the Court to reconsider and disavowed even the smallest
interference with political and commercial affairs. In a last ditch attempt to
reassure the Company of their respectability, they told the Directors that the
Scottish Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge was prepared to
take them on as missionaries and accompanied the letter with six letters of
support.53 No reply seems to have been made to this application and Haldane
gave up the idea completely in 1798. Haldane mishandled Henry Dundas, but
the proposal would probably not have succeeded in any case. The debates over
Grant’s attempts to send missionaries to India in 1793 had shown Dundas that
this was an issue that many in the Company would resist. Dundas and the
Court of Directors do not appear to have been at all worried about the threat
of public opinion. Haldane’s confidence in the religious public was misplaced
in 1797. However, he had roused some concern and the few petitions sent to
the Company presaged events in 1813 when an enormous public petitioning
movement was set in motion in favour of missions.
The effect of this decade of crisis was to put Evangelicals of all shades
on the defensive and to make them anxious to establish their respectability.
They therefore emphasised the role of Christianity as a stabilising force and
the best way of maintaining order in society. Charles Grant, in his Observa-
tions, stated this explicitly when he wrote that ‘The present circumstances of
Europe seem emphatically to point out, that nothing but such principles can
be depended upon for keeping our subjects in obedience and subordination.’54
Thomas Haweis, one of the Anglican founders of the LMS, carried the argu-
ment a stage further in his attempt to get the support of Sir Joseph Banks,
the explorer and statesman. In 1795 he ventured to suggest:
that nothing hath ever happened in this land which had a happier tendency
to divert the minds of men from the dangerous field of political contention to
the peaceable objects of general philanthropy than the Missionary Society. The
most attached friend to Government could never have wished for effects more
conducive to peace and union than have been produced, and it is obvious that
our efforts, if ultimately successful, must be of the most beneficial consequences
to the Kingdom at large.55
The suspicion and disdain with which Dissenters were regarded detrimen-
tally affected relations between Church and Dissenting Evangelicals. The
Anglican Establishment viewed Church Evangelical collaboration and friend-
ship with Evangelical Dissenters with suspicion, particularly as Dissent was
having a considerable impact on the pre-eminence of the Church of England.
The necessity for Church Evangelicals to defend their position within their
own Church led to a cooling of relations with other Evangelicals because
they felt that they could only prove their loyalty to the Established Church
by distancing themselves from association with Dissent and Methodism. This
phenomenon needs some discussion because comprehension of it is essen-
tial to understanding the tensions inherent in Church Evangelical coopera-
tion with Methodists and Dissenters in the campaign to further Christianity.
Geoffrey Best, in his article in the April 1959 Journal of Theological Studies,
has contributed to a misunderstanding of the situation by maintaining the
dubious nature of the Church Evangelical’s attachment to the Established
Church.56 A. S. Wood sets out a truer statement of their position in the
following description:
The Evangelical is essentially a Churchman. His passionate attachment to the

Revival did not dim his vision of the Established Church as the framework
within which evangelism could be most effectively prosecuted. He clung to the
traditional standards of the Church, doctrinal, liturgical and homolitical . . .
he recognized that the parochial system was basic to the whole constitution of
Anglicanism and that subordination to episcopal authority and jurisdiction was
the lynchpin of the Church’s discipline. He therefore disapproved of itinerant
preaching.57
The corollary of all this was that he also wanted missionary activity to
be carried out under the superintendence of the Church of England. This
feeling directly led to the formation of the Church Missionary Society (CMS)
in 1799. Church Evangelicals experienced tension because they believed
that the Established Church provided the purest form of Christianity, at the
same time as feeling spiritually much closer to pious Dissenters. This tension
coloured their responses to events and accounts for the seeming inconsistency
of some of their actions. The Evangelical Company chaplains appointed
through the patronage of Grant and Parry were particularly keen to prove
their loyalty to the Church of England. In 1805 the Revd Dr Richard Kerr,
Presidency chaplain at Madras, published a report on the state of Christianity
in the south, which advocated greater superintendence by the Church of
England.58 Revd Claudius Buchanan, Vice-Provost of Wellesley’s college at
Fort William, the same year wrote a Memoir of the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical
Establishment for India both as the Means of Perpetuating the Christian Religion among
our own Countrymen and as a Foundation for the Ultimate Civilization of the Natives,
which had similar aims.59 Dissenters were right to be suspicious of the motives
behind these publications.
Although the French Revolution and its aftermath harmed the missionary
cause in the short term, paradoxically in the long term it had the effect of
greatly aiding the cause because it turned many men’s minds to religion and
its place in society. William Wilberforce published a pamphlet, A Practical View
of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middling
Classes in this Country Contrasted with Real Christianity in 1797, warning Britain
of the doom to follow if it did not mend its ways and do more to inculcate
Christianity in its subjects.60 The success of Wilberforce’s pamphlet suggests
that it had found an answering chord in many people at this time.
Just as Wilberforce had argued that if men performed their Christian
duty, there would be peace at home, Charles Grant, in the covering letter
to his Observations sent to the Directors of the East India Company in 1797,
maintained that the propagation of Christianity in India would bring peace.
Grant, like Wilberforce, stressed that in return Christianity would provide a
‘healing principle’ between governors and governed. Mindful of the fears that
‘Methodism’ incited political radicalism, Grant took care to make the point
that ‘the establishment of Christianity in a country does not necessarily bring
after it a free political constitution’. Instead he stressed that the promotion of
Christianity in India would provide an ‘identity of sentiments and principles’
between rulers and ruled that would be a common bond.61 This had echoes
of the SPCK petition of 1771, which had used this argument to persuade
the Company to give financial support.62 Missionary rhetoric from this time
made the point again and again.
Two letters from Grant to Andrew Fuller, secretary of the Baptist
Missionary Society, at the end of 1797, discussing Observations, explain both
the difficulties Grant felt in his relationship with Dissenters and how he felt
their common end could best be achieved. He warned Fuller that ‘the cast
of the work’ was necessarily political, while stressing that its ‘aim and end
is religious’. Fuller did not see eye to eye with Grant on the language to be
adopted in such a work and felt that certain principles should be much more
strongly stated. He was particularly unhappy with the proposal for an epis-
copal establishment and wanted no restrictions on missionary activity. Grant
pointed out in reply that the principle and the mode of acting upon it were
two distinct things and reminded Fuller to bear in mind the circumstances
under which he was obliged to act and the fact that he was a Director of the
Company. He told Fuller that, as the Court of Directors held the key to the
door of India and had a number of political and other prejudices against
missionary activity, they either had to be persuaded or forced to use their
key. Grant was against the use of any force except that of the Legislature.
However, he argued that, as the Legislature probably had the same preju-
dices as the Court of Directors, the time was not yet ripe for this. Nor was
Grant in favour of arousing a ‘popular commotion’ in such unsettled times,
as threatened by Haldane. He believed this would be counterproductive and
might well be used by the enemies of religion to harm the cause. Grant’s tactic
was to persuade the Court to acknowledge the general principle of sending the
Gospel to Britain’s heathen subjects. Once this was established, he believed
the missionary lobby could build on firm ground.
Grant told Fuller that he believed that entry to India on the narrowest
limitations would be better than no admission at all for missionaries. He
went on to confess that, although he wanted to see ‘godly dissenters’ in India,
he was concerned that ‘unscrupulous men’ would take the opportunity to
go out under pretence of preaching the Gospel and cause civil confusion
and disorder which would ‘hazard our political existence’. Grant was always
totally against the free ingress of Europeans to India. He concluded by telling
Fuller that if he argued that Dissenters generally should be allowed to send
missionaries to India, he would gain nothing but both ecclesiastical and polit-
ical opposition. Thus we have, as early as 1797, the expectations of both
Church Evangelicals and Dissenters clearly set out.63 By this time William
Carey and John Thomas, the first Baptist missionaries, had been in India
for three years. They had gone out without licences in a Danish ship. What
reception had they received from the Company authorities?
Notes
1 Robert Haldane to Henry Dundas, 28 September 1796, EUL, Laing MSS, II 500.
Haldane was referring to the SPCK.
2 William Hague’s biography, William Wilberforce, The Life of The Great Anti-Slave Trade
Campaigner (London, 2007), explains in great detail how important Wilberforce’s
conversion was in directing all areas of his life.
3 Morris, Life of Charles Grant (London, 1904), pp. 177–8.
4 R.I. and S. Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce, 5 vols (London, 1838), 4, pp.
115–16.
5 J. C. Marshman, The Life and Times of Carey, Marshman and Ward, 2 vols (London, 1859),
1, p. 35.
6 Grant to Moore, 7 March 1791, enclosing ‘A Proposal for Establishing A Protestant
Mission in Bengal and Bahar [sic]’, Lambeth Palace Library, Moore Papers, pp.
195–8.
7 Marshman, Life, p. 36.
8 Porteus’s concern for the welfare of the ‘negroes’ continued to take precedence. His
notes on Grant’s ‘Proposal’ can be found in his ‘Occasional Memorandums and
Reflections . . . Begun in the Year 1787’ held in Lambeth Palace Library, MS 2100,
pp. 29–36. Most of the entries refer to abolition and Christianising the ‘negroes’.
9 Morris, Grant, pp. 153–4. See also extract of Commercial Letter to Court of Directors,
13 February 1790 in which Cornwallis publicly praises Grant, p. 154, and Cornwallis
to Dundas, 24 October 1791, NLS MSS, 3385, p. 458.
10 Extract of letter from Dundas to Cornwallis, 17 September 1792, in Morris, Grant,
pp. 169–71.
11 This paper was published privately in 1797 and can be found in Parliamentary Papers
(East Indies), 1812–13, 10, Paper 282, pp. 1–112.
12 Letter from Grant to his wife, 4 January 1794, in Morris, Grant, p. 189. Shore was
Lord Cornwallis’s successor as Governor-General and subsequently became Lord
Teignmouth.
13 14 May 1793, Journals of the House of Commons, 48, 778.

14 13 May 1793, The Senator or Clarendon’s Parliamentary Chronicle (First Series), 7, 810.
Philip Francis was one of the councillors to the Governor-General who accused
Hastings of corruption.
15 The clauses proposed by Wilberforce can be found in the appendix to Wilberforce,
Life, 2, pp. 392–3.
16 Marshman, Life, 1, p. 37.
17 24 May 1793, The Diary or Woodfall’s Register. The cost of the existing ecclesiastical
establishment was approximately £13,000.
18 24 May 1793, The Senator, 7, 858.
19 24 May 1793, The Senator, 7, 858–9.
20 According to C. H. Philips, The East India Company 1784–1834 (Manchester, 1940),
p. 64. Pitt could count on approximately nineteen MPs of the Indian interest, while
Fox could count on twenty-six.
21 24 May 1793, The Parliamentary Register, 35, 584.
22 4 June 1793, The Diary or Woodfall’s Register, reporting the 3 June debate.
23 3 June 1793, The Senator, 7, 890.
24 5 June 1793, The Senator, 7, 896–7.
25 See, for example, Hastings’s thoughts written in a draft paper contained in BL, Add.
MSS, 29233, pp. 14–15.
26 A. T. Embree, Charles Grant and British Rule in India (London, 1962), p. 154.
27 24 May 1793, The Senator, VII, 858–9.
28 Entries 23 April 1792 and 3 April 1794 in Bishop Porteus’s ‘Occasional Memoran-
dums and Reflections on Several Subjects begun in the year 1787’, Lambeth Palace
Library, Porteus Papers, MS 2100, pp. 55–6 and p. 73.
29 See Philips, East India Company, Ch. 2, for a discussion of the ‘Indian interest’. The
term generally referred to retiring ‘nabobs’ and their relatives, who used their wealth
to enter Parliament and were also known as the ‘Bengal Squad’. The other interest
was the City and Shipping interest.
30 Embree, Grant, pp. 141–57.
31 A. A. Powell, ‘Contact and Controversy between Islam and Christianity in Northern
India, 1833–1857’, unpublished PhD (London, 1983), p. 59. See also Cornwallis to
Dundas, 4 April 1790, NLS MSS, 3385, p. 349.
32 Extract of Public letter to Bombay, June 1793, BL, IOR, H. Misc. 59, pp. 73–6.
33 The Missionary Society was non-denominational but most members were independ-
ents. It changed its name in 1818 to the London Missionary Society in order to
distinguish itself from other societies.
34 Ambrose Serle, Transport Office to Thomas Haweis, 23 December 1796, Mitchell
Library, Haweis MSS, A3024, p. 235. Serle was an Evangelical and was very helpful
to missionary societies. I am indebted to John Mason for this reference.
35 ‘Memorandums and Reflections’, February 1790, Lambeth Palace Library, Porteus
Papers, MS 2100, pp. 11–12.
36 See p. 22, above.
37 J. D. Walsh, ‘The Yorkshire Evangelicals in the Eighteenth Century with Special
Reference to Methodism’, unpublished PhD (Cambridge, 1956), p. 327.
38 Extract of the Proceedings and Debate in the General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland, 27 May 1796, EUL, Laing MSS, II 500.
39 T. Sikes, A Second Letter to Lord Teignmouth (London, 1810), p. 45.
40 Edinburgh Review (April 1808), 12, 171 and 179.
41 T. Jones to W. Wilberforce, 14 September 1796, EUL, Laing MSS, II 500.

42 Haldane to Dundas, 28 September 1796, EUL, Laing MSS, II 500.
43 Haldane to Dundas, 30 September 1796, NLS MSS, 2257, pp. 52ff.
44 H. W. Meikle, Scotland and the French Revolution (Glasgow, 1912), p. 206 and W. M. Kirk-
land, ‘The Impact of the French Revolution on Scottish Religious Life and Thought
with Special Reference to Thomas Chalmers, Robert Haldane and Neil Douglas’,
unpublished PhD (Edinburgh, 1981), pp. 90–8.
45 Notes on Bogue’s sermon contained in a letter from Rev. William Porteous to Dundas,
20 February 1797, EUL, Laing MSS, II 500.
46 Wilberforce, Life, 2, pp. 176–7.
47 Haldane, Bogue and Ewing to Court of Directors, 20 December 1796, BL, IOR,
E/1/95.
48 J. J. Matheson, A Memoir of Greville Ewing, Minister of the Gospel (London and Glasgow,
1843), pp. 97–110. According to Matheson, the petitions were signed by ‘hundreds
of ministers’.
49 Letters from Porteous to Dundas, 24 January and 20 February 1797, EUL, Laing
MSS, II 500.
50 Duke of Atholl to the Duke of Portland, 20 May 1799, EUL, Laing MSS, II 500.
51 The first Scottish branch of the Friends of the People was formed in Edinburgh in
1792.
52 16 February 1797, EUL, Laing MSS, II 500.
53 Haldane, Innes, Bogue and Ewing to Court of Directors, 14 June 1797, BL, IOR,
E/1/96.
54 ‘Observations’, contained in Parliamentary Papers (East Indies), 1812–13, 10, 136.
55 Quoted in A. S. Wood, ‘The Life and Work of Thomas Haweis, 1734–1820’, unpub-
lished PhD (Edinburgh, 1961), p. 257.
56 G. F. A. Best, ‘The Evangelicals and the Established Church in the Early Nineteenth
Century’, Journal of Theological Studies, 10 (April 1959), 63–8.
57 A. S. Wood, ‘The Life of Haweis’, p. xlvii.
58 Kerr’s report, extract from Fort St. George Consultations, 7 November 1806, BL,
IOR, H. Misc. 59, pp. 93–130.
59 London, 1805.
60 London, 1797, p. 388.
61 Covering letter by Grant dated 16 August 1797, found in Parliamentary Papers (East
Indies), 1812–13, 10, p. 32. See also, ‘Observations’, pp. 105, 106, 134.
63 Grant to Fuller, 8 November 1797 and 4 December 1797, ALRPC, BMS MSS,
Home Correspondence, bound volume 3. Fuller has annotated his copy of the 4
December letter with his comments.
Four
THE PILLAR OF FIRE MOVES FORWARD: THE

ADVENT OF BRITISH MISSIONARIES 1793–1806
And must I part with all I have,

Jesus, my Lord, for Thee?
This is my joy, since Thou hast done
Much more than this for me.1 (Benjamin Beddome)
Charles Grant was not about to give up his missionary plans despite
the defeat of the ‘pious clause’ in 1793. In 1794 he was unanimously elected
to the Direction of the Company through the influence of Henry Dundas
and others.2 He and his fellow Evangelical director, Edward Parry, were a
formidable duo determined to use their patronage and influence to further
Christianity in India. However, it was not Grant and Parry, but the Baptists
who were to have the first success. While they were embroiled in the negotia-
tions over the renewal of the Company’s charter, John Thomas, whom Grant
had sacked for his failure to run the mission at Gumalti as agreed, succeeded
in exciting the interest of William Carey to go to India rather than Tahiti.
Carey had been instrumental in the formation of the Baptist Missionary
Society in 1792. In June 1793 Thomas and Carey set sail from England as the
Society’s first missionaries. However, their timing could not have been worse:
they sailed just after the defeat of the ‘pious clause’ and the renewal of the
Court of Directors’ standing order requiring the expulsion of all unlicensed
persons arriving in India.3
William Carey, shoemaker, teacher and much-loved pastor, had liter-
ally given up all he had for the Lord. When he answered the call, his wife
Dorothy was within two months of confinement with their fourth child. Not
unnaturally, she rebelled and refused to go. Carey set off for Southampton
without her. He and Thomas were due to sail in an East Indiaman but,
probably because of Thomas’s creditors (he was perpetually in debt) and
also because of the resistance aroused in the East India Company against
the ‘pious clause’, someone in the Company told the Captain that he would
The Advent of British Missionaries 1793–1806 53
lose his command if he took passengers without the Company’s licence.4 The
subsequent delay in finding a ship enabled Thomas to persuade Dorothy to
accompany her husband with their infant son and three other children. They
sailed in the Kron Princess Maria, a Danish ship. Their journey nearly came
to an abrupt end off the coast of South Africa when the ship almost sank.
The voyage took five months and seemed interminable to Carey. The last
month was spent trying to make headway two hundred miles off their goal,
Bengal. Carey regarded these difficulties as a parable of the task before him.
He describes how:
the violence of the currents sets us back from the very door.… We have had
our port in view all along, and every attention has been paid to solar and lunar
observations, no opportunity being neglected.… A ship sails within six points
of the wind, if the wind blows from the N., a ship will sail E.N.E., on one tack
and W.N.W. on the other; if the wind shifts a point, advantage is immediately
taken. Now this is tedious work, and if the current be against us, we scarcely
make any way; nay, sometimes, in spite of all we do, we go backwards. Yet it
is absolutely necessary to keep working up, if we mean to arrive at port. So we
Christians have to work against wind and currents; and we must, if we are to
make our harbour.5
On first arriving in the Hugli they left the ship and found a place to settle
in Bandel, an old Portuguese settlement. At once they began to itinerate and
preach. Thus began Carey’s forty-year career in India. Despite arriving in
Bengal without licences, much to Carey’s surprise, they found that they were
allowed to proceed as they wished. Carey hoped to make a living in Calcutta
and was loaned a dilapidated house free of rent in a marshy malarial district
to the north of the city. Then the money ran out, Thomas once again proving
utterly incapable with finance. Dorothy was ill with dysentery and their oldest
son was near death. At this point Dorothy’s mind began to give way. When
Carey was offered a few acres of partially redeemed jungle in the tiger and
cobra-infested Sundarbans rent-free for three years, he jumped at the oppor-
tunity. Lack of funds, not Company harassment, led him to this decision, for
he needed a means of supporting his large family while he was mastering
Bengali.6 He and Thomas eventually obtained employment as indigo plan-
tation managers for George Udny, an Evangelical and Grant’s successor as
Commercial Resident at Malda. Managing the indigo estate left considerable
time for other activities and Carey and Thomas made full use of this to preach
to both Europeans and Indians. Local officials were well aware of what they
were doing and, far from being antagonistic, concurred in the deception of
describing the missionaries on official returns as indigo makers. It seems likely
that the Bengal government knew that Carey and Thomas were missionaries
almost immediately, as both had preached in Calcutta prior to going up
country. News would have travelled quickly in such a small community of
Europeans. The Presidency chaplains, Brown and Buchanan, certainly knew

they were missionaries. The chaplains were initially hostile because of their
very low opinion of the unreliable Thomas but eventually gave Carey much
support. The Governor-General, Sir John Shore (1793–1798), a close friend
of Wilberforce and Grant, knew Carey and Thomas were missionaries.7 In
these early days, the challenges facing Carey were lack of money, the failure
of Udny’s indigo plantation in 1799, and the onset of his wife’s madness. A
lesser man would not have persevered and overcome these many setbacks.
Carey and Thomas had high hopes that Shore would do much to facilitate
the progress of evangelism in India, as he was a devout Evangelical, and had
told David Brown, his Presidency chaplain, that he was resolved ‘to make it
be seen that the Christian religion was the religion of the state’.8 To this end
he was also under considerable pressure from Charles Grant and William
Wilberforce. Nevertheless, even Shore found that he was unable to give his
unequivocal support, finding it difficult to reconcile his responsibilities as
Governor-General with what he felt was his moral duty to promote Christi-
anity. Shore had long held the view that officials needed to be careful in their
dealings with Indian ‘religious usages and prejudices’.9 At this stage in his life
he appears to have been more concerned with the lack of public virtue than
with aggressive evangelism, of which he feared the political consequences.
Shore was particularly cautious about dealings with the Company’s sepoys.
He told Henry Dundas that the sepoy’s loyalty was due to his high pay and
‘an indulgence to his habits, whether religious or otherwise’. Shore expressed
the view that, if officers were to ridicule the ceremonials of the sepoys’ reli-
gions or refuse to countenance them, ‘the bond of attachment would soon be
dissolved, and disaffection and aversion be substituted for subordination’.10
This remark was prescient. Shore was also concerned that Indian hostility
to the propagation of Christianity would be aggravated ‘if the attempt were
made with the declared support and authority of Government’. He feared
that ‘by the aid of misrepresentations‘, alarm would be excited amongst the
Indian populace.11 He was simply not prepared to risk the opposition that
might be aroused by any appearance of government-sanctioned missionary
activity. Despite Shore’s concerns for the security of India, he did nothing
to restrict the movements of the Baptist missionaries. However, the Court
of Directors was beginning to make life more difficult for missionaries by
demanding that all Europeans not in the Company’s service take out certifi-
cates of residence and have bondsmen to stand surety. This was to ensure that
the Company did not find itself liable for the upkeep of such persons.12 In
1797 the Bengal government granted Carey, Thomas and Fountain (who had
arrived in 1796) covenants to live and trade in the country. Carey believed
that local officials ‘perfectly understand our Errand’ and mentioned to Fuller
that his congregation included the district judge, the Collector and other
prominent officials.13
A more worrying development, however, was the Court’s refusal of

Haldane’s 1796 mission scheme. John Cowie, the brother of one of the LMS
directors and a merchant in Cawnpore, expressed his surprise once he had
learned of this opposition. He told his brother that ‘you need apprehend
no kind of opposition from the servants of the Company here … no one
will vilify Christianity’.14 This, no doubt, encouraged the LMS to send its
first missionary to India, Nathaniel Forsyth, who arrived in 1798. The year
before the Company had routinely granted the SPCK permission for William
Ringeltaube, a graduate of Halle University in Germany, to commence a
mission in Calcutta and Ignatius Holzberg to proceed to India in Company
ships.15 Like the Baptists, the LMS decided not to put the East India Company
to the test by applying for licences. The Church Missionary Society (CMS),
which was formed in 1799 as a specifically Anglican society took a different
line. It decided that it must abstain from any involvement in India that was not
wholly legal. It feared that otherwise it would not obtain the patronage and
support of the Church and secular Establishment that it so earnestly desired
and needed. The CMS did not therefore attempt to send out missionaries
at this time.16
Cowie’s forecast that the refusal by the Court of Directors to countenance
Haldane’s proposal would not affect the missionaries seems to have been
borne out and the Baptists were not expelled, despite their lack of licences.
Forsyth, like Carey, preached in Calcutta without complaint although he did
not settle there because of the cost of housing. The following extract from a
letter of his to the LMS describes the way in which Company officials treated
him. Forsyth told his society that he had been:
enabled to live in peace and friendship as a member of civil and Religious
Society, especially withall in the exercise of the Magistracy and government of
the country; from some of whom I have received particular marks of friendship
and kindness – And by none … have I in any degree to my knowledge been
opposed nor interrupted.17
These comments are significant because they indicate that Forsyth did not
move to the Dutch colony of Chinsurah because of opposition from the
East India Company. His letters state quite clearly that the problem was
expense and, in any case, Chinsurah was under British control in 1801. The
Governor-General knew of his presence in Bengal. Forsyth was asked to
preach in the hospital at Calcutta and Brown and Buchanan organised a
public subscription for a chapel to be built for him to preach in.18
While the missionaries signed covenants with the Company which
permitted them to live and trade in Bengal, and did not conceal their true
nature from officials and even from the Governor-General, Carey told Fuller
that it would not be prudent to describe themselves specifically as mission-
aries or to approach Wellesley officially as Governor-General-in-Council.
Such action would put the Government ‘to the point on the subject whether
missionaries should be allowed to settle … and there cannot be much doubt
but it would be negatived’. So Fuller, the secretary of the BMS, was told
not to confuse their covenants with ‘legal’ permission to settle in India as
missionaries or otherwise:
You must drop your English ideas and get Indian ones. No such thing as a legal
settlement in the English sense can ever be made here. Because a general Law
has passed prohibiting Europeans settling in this country. This general Law
cannot be reversed, unless by the English Parliament. All Europeans therefore
only reside here by connivance and some are permitted to stay in the country
for a term of years: the Company having covenanted to protect such persons,
while they observe the Laws.19
At first Carey was happy with this situation. However, events soon demon-
strated that this unofficial situation meant that they lived in constant appre-
hension of being expelled.
By 1799, the impact of the fears aroused by the French Revolution and
wars with the French began to be felt in India. The first signs of hostility
towards missionaries on the part of the Bengal government appeared with the
arrival in 1798 of the new Governor-General, Lord Mornington (Marquess
Wellesley from 1799). In 1799 a party of twelve: four Baptist missionaries
(Ward, Marshman, Brunsdon and Grant), with their families, arrived in
Serampore. Arriving without licences, they were refused permission to join
Carey at his indigo plantation in Mudnabati. Carey thought the refusal
might have been because they were put down as ‘Papist’ missionaries and
it was feared that they were French emissaries.20 The Government’s refusal
to give the Baptists permission to go up-country seems to have been due to
an unfortunate coincidence of circumstances. First, twelve was a large party
of unlicensed Europeans. Second, Lord Wellesley was keen to demonstrate
his determination to deal severely with any evidence of insubordination or
Jacobinism within the European community in India, including the mili-
tary and civil service. Wellesley felt the numbers of French established at
Calcutta and in the provinces were becoming an alarming evil. Third, a stiffly
worded instruction from the Court of Directors ‘not to permit any British
subject, upon any pretence whatever to live under the Company’s protection
without being especially appointed or licensed by the Court of Directors or
their respective Governments in India’ had just been received by the Bengal
government.21 Wellesley instructed Sir Alured Clarke, the Commander-in-
Chief, immediately to ‘institute a most active enquiry into the state of the
numbers and conduct’ and to send back to Europe ‘without hesitation, every
man who cannot give you a satisfactory account of his principles and connec-
tions’.22 Finally, the low social status of the missionaries and the fact that
they were Dissenters would have given rise to suspicions of their loyalty and
purpose. Any unlicensed European therefore was likely to be sent back to

England and the situation looked grave for the missionaries.
Under the circumstances, Carey decided to give up his work in Mudna-
bati and join the others in Serampore. Wellesley, however, was particularly
unhappy about the Baptist presence in Danish Serampore. He regarded
Serampore’s ‘vicinity to the seat of Government in Bengal’ as ‘peculiarly
obnoxious’ from the fact that ‘adventurers of every nation, Jacobins of every
description, swarm at Serampoor, and it is the asylum of all our public
defaulters and debtors’.23 Revd Claudius Buchanan, one of the Presidency
chaplains, told Carey that Wellesley did not like the presence of the Baptist
press at Serampore, outside his control, and wondered if it had been set
up by some ‘wild democrat’.24 Wellesley also questioned their practice of
distributing the Bible without commentary and asked Revd David Brown if
it were safe, ‘seeing it taught the doctrine of Xn equality which the ignorance
of the people might construe to political equality’.25 Brown and Buchanan
succeeded in putting Wellesley’s mind at rest. Brown pointed out the useful-
ness of the press for Wellesley’s new college for oriental literature and helped
secure the appointment of Carey as a teacher of Bengali there. The initial
hostility of these influential chaplains had evaporated as Carey’s conduct and
abilities impressed them.
Little did Wellesley realise that his fears had some basis. Initially, William
Carey had heralded the French Revolution as the beginning of a new era of
liberty. John Fountain caused the BMS secretary, Andrew Fuller, his greatest
headaches. Fountain had been embroiled in politics in Oakham and Fuller
had to beseech him, ‘Whatever you think about the downfal [sic] of Despotism
… say little or nothing upon it.’26 Fountain did not follow this advice and
Fuller was sure that his indiscreet language was at the root of the Baptists’
troubles, telling John Sutcliff, another Baptist leader, that ‘I have but little
doubt of all their difficulties owing to [Fountain]’.27 It appears that Carey
himself did not altogether give up his former views because in 1800, Fuller
had to reproach him with talking ‘in the same way’ with Fountain.28 William
Ward, the second member of the ‘Serampore Trio’, had an even more radical
background. He had earlier been a printer and editor of the Hull Advertiser.
On one occasion he had admitted the radical Thelwall into a Baptist meeting
to deliver a set of political lectures.29 Carey himself well realised the dangers
of becoming embroiled in politics and as early as 1796 told Fuller to:
Be very careful that the Missionaries be charged to say nothing about Politicks
on their first arrival, during their stay in Calcutta, and for the first three months
is all Danger; afterwards Political Fire will go out for want of Fuel.30
Fuller was reinforced in his conviction that missionaries must keep out of
politics if their presence was to be acceptable to Company officials.
The Baptist leaders urged their missionaries to curb their tongues and to
stay out of politics. The Gospel could not be spread at all if the missionaries
were thrown out. However, the following letter from Andrew Fuller demon-
strates that non-involvement in politics was also a deeply held conviction.
Fuller told Carey that he was:
not an old man, but I have lived long enough to perceive that 9 out of 10 who
are clamorous for liberty only wish for a share in the power; follow them into
private life and you will find them tyrants.… I have observed also that those
Ministers who have been the most violent partizans for democratic liberty, are
commonly not only cold-hearted in religion, but the most imperious in their
own churches.31
Given all this, it is not surprising that the new missionaries arriving
without licences were told they would be arrested if they set foot on British-
controlled territory. Missionary rhetoric gives the impression that the East
India Company had a positive policy against missionary activity in India.
However, there is no evidence to suggest that the 1799 ‘Advertisement’ against
unlicensed persons was directed primarily at missionaries or even that it had
missionaries in mind. The Court of Directors and the Board of Control were
consistent in their opinion that unlicensed persons should not be permitted to
enter India. There are numerous despatches emphasising the restrictions and
ordering Governors to send home immediately all unlicensed persons arriving
in India. The difficulties proved to be temporary and the Baptists were soon
able to operate in British territory without restriction. By July 1800, Fuller
was telling Saffery, another Baptist leader, that:
We do not apprehend the British Government at Calcutta to be hostile; but

the present time makes them jealous lest under the character of missionaries
men shd go for political ends. I hope if they know them, & see they have no
bad ends in view, they will be friendly after all.32
The sole LMS missionary in India until 1804, Nathaniel Forsyth, similarly
told his directors that he could go anywhere, ‘notwithstanding my political
principles of which [you] seem so much to be afraid!’ He added that ‘though
I never asked leave to come …’ nor flattered ‘any Despot for that purpose …
I have never met with the smallest opposition’.33
By 1800, Buchanan was able to assure Carey that the Baptists would be
unmolested if they extended their missionary work to Calcutta and that
they might preach anywhere in the town except ‘before Government House
which would have been indecent’.34 A missionary station was accordingly
established, chapels opened and they were soon conducting weekly services,
preaching and prayer meetings, including one in Calcutta gaol. George Udny
was now on the Supreme Council and did all he could to smooth their paths.
By 1804 Baptist stations were established at Cutwa and Jessore. The following
year four more Baptist missionaries arrived, who were allowed to proceed as
they wished. After 1799, there are but two recorded instances of restrictions
on the part of Company officials. In 1802, Carey told Fuller that ‘several of
the Natives supposed that we were paid by Government to spread the little
tracts about’ and that someone had sent two of the tracts to Dr Buchanan
and one of the ‘first justices’. Carey told Ryland that they were near to
being crushed as the matter was going to be brought up with the Governor-
General.35 Fortunately for the Baptists, Claudius Buchanan again intervened
and nothing more was heard. The second occasion occurred in 1805 when
the magistrate at Dacca refused to allow Moore and William Carey Jnr to
distribute tracts in his district.36 Colonel John Scott Waring (a proprietor and
ex-Bengal officer), put flesh on this incident in a letter to Warren Hastings
in 1807. According to Waring, the missionaries went to the ghat in Dacca
and gave away 4000 tracts printed in Bengali. The people were exhibiting
signs of annoyance and the Collector, Captain Ludford, forbade them from
distributing more. They disobeyed this order and distributed more tracts on
their way back to Serampore.37
Paradoxically, after the inauspicious start, Lord Wellesley, whose biogra-
pher tells us ‘a less religiously minded person … could hardly be imagined’,
earned himself the reputation of being a real friend to the cause of Chris-
tianity during his time as Governor-General.38 Without Wellesley’s encour-
agement and financial assistance, the Baptists would have found life very
difficult. As with the SPCK missionaries, the Baptists were also very useful
to Government. Wellesley took full advantage of their press and translation
skills. His appointment of Carey as teacher of Bengali at Fort William College
provided the Serampore mission with much-needed funds as well as raising
Carey in the eyes of Calcutta society. It says much of Carey that he so quickly
impressed Lord Wellesley. In 1805 the Asiatic Society at the College of Fort
William allowed the Baptists a stipend to translate and publish ‘the Sangskrit
writings’. The profits from this enabled the Baptists to maintain three mission
stations.39 George Barlow, who later became acting Governor-General, was
a subscriber to these works. The Baptists also set up schools and compiled
many school textbooks.
The key to Wellesley’s attitude seems to have been the fact that he regarded
the Church in particular, and Christianity in general, as a bulwark of the
constitution. Wellesley believed that Christianity must be seen to be supported
in a conquered country and took great care to be seen to attend church
regularly. It seems, therefore, that he supported the Baptists because, in the
absence in India of sufficient clergymen of the Established Church, they
were at least inculcating some moral values to the European population
and demonstrating to Indians that the British held Christianity in regard.
In one of his first despatches to the Court of Directors Wellesley expressed
his concern about the state of the ecclesiastical establishment in India and
his determination to set it on a ‘respectable footing’. His avowed aim was

to ‘cherish in the minds of the servants of the Company a sense of moral
duty’.40 He therefore supported the moral regulations drafted by Grant, which
were aimed at ensuring that Sundays were properly observed and that ‘perni-
cious habits’ such as gaming were stopped. Wellesley’s new college for the
instruction of Company servants was founded on Christian principles and
he appointed the Evangelical chaplains, Brown and Buchanan, as Provost
and Vice-Provost.
Officially, Wellesley followed Lord Cornwallis in declaring that he would
not allow ‘the slightest interference or even encouragement to be given by the
Government to the conversion of the Natives to the Christian religion’.41 In a
letter to the Court of Directors he said that one of his first acts as Governor-
General-in-Council had been to confirm the ancient Hindu and Muslim laws
in all matters connected with religious prejudices. He maintained that:
it would not only be impolitic but highly immoral to suppose that Providence
has admitted of the establishment of the British power over the finest provinces
of India, with any other view than of its being conducive to the happiness of
the people, as well as to our national advantage.42
Arguing from the same basic premise as Evangelicals that Providence had
given India to Britain for a purpose, Wellesley came to the opposite conclu-
sion. While Evangelicals believed that the happiness of India could only be
obtained by its conversion to Christianity, Wellesley and most Company offi-
cials felt that Indians would be happiest if left to worship in their traditional
ways and forecast the loss of India if the Company did not adhere to its policy
of allowing Indians the free exercise of their religions. Nevertheless, Wellesley
thought highly of the missionaries already in India and considered that their
work, ‘unsanctioned by Government’, was consistent with his policy of regard
for the ‘happiness of the people’. He publicly expressed his goodwill towards
the Baptist mission and gave liberal subscriptions to their non-religious publi-
cations. He allowed the Scriptures to be translated into Indian languages,
according to Sir George Barlow saying, ‘A Christian Governor could do no
less, a British Governor could do no more.’43 This is reminiscent of Lord
Cornwallis’s comments to Grant when he told him that, while he would not
actively support his mission scheme, he would not oppose it either.44
Lord Wellesley’s attitude towards Indian religions was essentially prag-
matic, dictated by the needs of the time. However, there were certain Hindu
practices that caused Wellesley and others considerable unease. In 1802
Buchanan asked Carey to investigate the custom of throwing newly born
children into the Ganges at Saugor Island.45 As a result of Carey’s report,
Wellesley prohibited the practice by Regulation VI of 1802. The practice of
sati (the burning of Hindu widows on the funeral pyre of their husbands) was
particularly abhorrent to Christians. Udny asked Carey to let the Council
have full information on it and Buchanan also asked for his advice. Carey
pressed the Government to forbid sati but the Sadr Nizam Adalat (the highest
criminal court) advised Wellesley against abolition on the grounds that sati
was a religious practice.46 This points up an early dilemma for the Company.
One the one hand, it did not want to interfere with religious practices. On the
other, certain practices were considered to be so inhumane that some believed
action should be taken if at all possible. Company officials tied themselves in
knots trying to establish whether or not a practice had religious sanction or
not. Hence, Wellesley made infanticide illegal but not sati. He also declined
to end the practice of leaving the sick and old to die on the riverbanks. It was
virtually impossible for officials to come to a definitive view as to what was or
was not a religious practice, so entwined were ‘Hindu’ culture and religion.
Wellesley was succeeded by Lord Cornwallis, who died in 1805 within
three months of taking over his second period as Governor-General. Sir
George Barlow filled the gap and followed a similar line to Cornwallis and
Wellesley. According to Carey, he was ‘friendly to the translation of the
Scriptures … though his situation prevents him from positively patronizing
it’. Barlow also acknowledged the Baptist presence as ‘Protestant mission-
aries’ in a public speech ‘in terms of hyst [sic] approbation’.47 While Barlow
expressed his goodwill and his conviction that Christianity would ultimately
prevail all over India, he, like Wellesley before him, stated that he ‘could not
as Governor do anything to help promote the work, nor permit any other
company’s servant, in his official capacity to do so’.48 Governors were in no
doubt that a line had to be drawn. Exactly where that line should lie was a
matter of constant negotiation between missionaries and Company officials.
However, while the Baptists, on the whole, were not hindered by Company
officers, they encountered resistance from Hindus and Muslims. Opposition
occurred for a variety of reasons and Indians were well able to manipulate
events to their own advantage. This will be discussed briefly here because it
had an impact both on official attitudes towards the missionaries and on the
role missionaries felt the Government should play in promoting Christianity
in India. According to the Baptist records, Indian opposition to their presence
first seems to have occurred in about 1799 after their move to Serampore.
Carey told the BMS Secretary, Andrew Fuller, that ‘the Brahmins oppose
the Gospel with the utmost virulence’.49 In 1800, after their first baptism,
the whole neighbourhood was in uproar, with over 2000 assembled, ‘pouring
anathemas on the new converts’.50 From this time, the Baptists often described
the mocking and insults they had to endure while they were preaching. Such
opposition from both Hindus and Muslims was partly behind the early deci-
sion of Baptists to employ their new Indian converts as catechists in the hope
that they might prove more acceptable than Europeans.
This hostility induced the missionaries to believe that Government protec-
tion was essential, not only for their own safety but also for the safety of their
converts, who lost everything on conversion: home, livelihood and essential

services.51 The Baptists found that their catechists suffered even greater hard-
ships, being ‘cruelly beaten by the mob and their lives threatened’.52 While
British officials proclaimed the maxim of religious neutrality, both Christian
missionaries and their Indian enemies forced them to come down on one side
or the other by seeking Government interference at the first signs of trouble.
In 1807 Marshman admitted that what kept them from being massacred was
the British government and therefore a missionary who was not loyal to it
was neither prudent nor wise.53 Roman Catholic missionaries also wanted
government protection. In January 1805 the Capuchin prefect to the mission
to Tibet begged the Governor-General to provide protection to his churches
at Lucknow, Patna and Chandernagore, pointing out that the mission had
been protected by his predecessors and would close without the Company’s
intercession.54 The missionaries rarely struck out into territory unoccupied by
Europeans and tended to station themselves near garrison towns. Neverthe-
less, at the same time they wanted to prosecute their work without hindrance
from temporal authority. This created friction when Company officials feared
the results of some of their activities or felt they were going to unstable areas.
Neither the Baptists nor the Evangelical chaplains were happy with the
situation. The lack of conversions, the persecution of converts and the many
instances of opposition from Brahmins and others gradually convinced them
that, without the support of the Company and the home government, the
progress of Christianity in India would continue to be limited. On the other
hand, the lack of baptisms and evidence of Indian opposition provided
ammunition to those who argued that missionary activity was a hopeless
task that should not be encouraged. As he had predicted, Carey had been
buffeted by the currents in India. However, he held steady and, on balance,
the Baptists had gained more from tacit government protection than they
lost from the illegal nature of their entry and any attempts to control them.
They had pressed on and made some progress. The Baptists did not yet feel
it necessary to take any positive steps to improve their situation.
There was one area, however, with which Evangelicals were very unhappy.
When Wellesley took over Orissa in 1803, the Brahmins at the Jagannath
temple at Puri, one of the most important temples on the subcontinent, put
themselves under British protection. Wellesley was clear that the British must
protect the pilgrims and show respect to the temple but was ambivalent about
getting involved in the collection of taxes. However, the corruption, misman-
agement and oppression of pilgrims led the Bengal Council under Sir George
Barlow to pass Section 31 of Bengal Regulation XII of 1805. This provided
for the collection of the tax and for the appointment of a salaried Collector.
The following year the Bengal Council reserved the right to nominate an
assembly of ‘Pundits’ to manage the temple and the right to dismiss them for
professional misconduct. The Commissioner of Cuttack became responsible
for the admission of pilgrims to the temple and the preservation of good
order.55 George Udny, who by this time was on the Supreme Council, imme-
diately protested against the Company’s involvement in the management of
the temple and its profiting in any way on a tax on pilgrim traffic. Claudius
Buchanan also protested, writing a stiff letter to Lord Minto, who was briefly
President of the Board of Control, accusing the Company of being anti-
Christian.56 These were the first salvoes in a war between Evangelicals and
the Company that was to become increasingly hard fought and was not to
end until the 1850s.
Bombay and Madras Presidencies
Bombay and Madras Presidencies were autonomous from Bengal and Gover-
nors made their own decisions about any missionaries present in their terri-
tories. Chapter 1 demonstrated how earlier Governors had given Roman
Catholic and Protestant missionaries considerable help. The SPCK-sponsored
missionaries continued their work in Madras Presidency with the permis-
sion and help of the Court of Directors, who continued to grant them free
passages and a free mail service. There were no Protestant missionaries in
Bombay Presidency until the arrival of Dr Taylor of the LMS in 1804. Jona-
than Duncan, the Governor, ex-Resident of Benares, followed a similar line
to the Governors-General in Bengal. While he permitted the LMS mission-
aries who arrived in his territory to remain there, he did not allow them
complete freedom of action. Dr Taylor had hoped to extend his labours to
Surat in 1805 but was forced to abandon the idea because of Duncan’s fears
of the ‘turbulent spirit’ of the Muslims there.57 Surat had only come under
British rule in 1800 and was still in a very unsettled state. However, Duncan
was prepared to pay missionaries for the performance of divine service for
Europeans.
Madras operated a more relaxed line towards missionaries than either
Bengal or Bombay, despite the fact that much of the Presidency had only
recently been brought under British control and was somewhat unstable. The
long years of Protestant SPCK missionaries working in its territories helped
acceptance of the LMS missionaries when they started arriving from 1804.
Despite arriving unlicensed, the LMS missionaries were treated with kindness
by certain influential Madras officials, including the Governor, Lord William
Bentinck. They also received encouragement and support from Richard
Kerr, the senior chaplain, although his support was somewhat equivocal
as he was a staunch defender of the rights of the Church of England.58
Captain Blackburn of Tanjore, who granted the passports for Madras, offered
to do everything in his power to help and Sir Thomas Strange, judge of the
Madras Supreme Court, told them that ‘so far as this Government or any one
executing authority within its limits is concerned, you may proceed in your
ministry with confidence, certain on all reasonable occasions of its support
and protection’.59 The missionaries also mentioned the help of Mr ‘C’, who
was high in office. This was possibly Chamier, who was a member of the
Madras Council. Cran and Desgranges were permitted to proceed to Ganjam
by the Madras Council and were favourably received by the Commander-in-
Chief of the Northern Circars.60 The Governor-in-Council granted them 12
pagodas a month for the performance of divine service and four acres of land
on which to build a mission.61 The Court sanctioned the payment. Ringel-
taube told the LMS that the Government in India seems to have adopted the
principle that it is ‘but fair to let honest Missionaries to try what they can
do’.62 In June 1806 Cran and Desgranges told their society that:
Every encouragement is offered us by the established government of the

country. Hitherto they have granted us every request, whether solicited by
ourselves or others. Their permission to come to this place; their allowing us
an acknowledgment for preaching in the fort, which sanctions us in our work;
together with the grant which they have lately given us to hold a large spot of
ground every way suited for missionary labours, are objects of the last impor-
tance, and remove every impediment which might be apprehended from this
source.63
Without Bentinck’s goodwill, it is unlikely that these officials would have

been able to be so openly helpful. Although Bentinck was gradually moving
towards Evangelicalism (partly as a result of the ardent convictions of his
wife’s sister, Lady Olivia Sparrow), he was at one with Wellesley that his task
was to make Europeans in India virtuous rather than to try to convert Indians.
For this reason he wanted to see an increase in the clerical establishment and
the chaplains to be remunerated to a level which would attract men of high
calibre.64 Bentinck paid lip service at least to the Company orthodoxy that
Indians should be left in the free exercise of their religions. However, his
true feelings were perhaps revealed in a private letter to Charles Grant after
the Vellore Mutiny. He told Grant that he wanted the Court to sanction an
allowance of 500 pagodas a month to the SPCK mission in Tanjore, which
was having some success in making conversions and was in financial distress.
There were also large numbers of Christians living in the Presidency who
needed to be looked after. There was widespread hostility to the SPCK conver-
sions of low-caste Shanars in the Tinnevelly area. Between 1799 and 1806
thousands of Christians were persecuted and false rumours were spread to
the Collector that the native Christians were conspirators against the British.65
The SPCK felt it necessary to petition the Court of Directors for special
protection for their converts. The Court of Directors did not respond to this
petition until 1805, when it ignored the request for special protection, stating
only that Christians would be protected in the same way as other subjects.66
Bentinck felt that the corollary of the Government allowing Indians the free
exercise of their religions was that it should also protect Indian converts. He
asked, with some justice, ‘upon what principle can we who pay the Brahmins
refuse to support a good clergyman of the Protestant Church?’ However, he
did not believe that the cultivators should be expected to pay for a Christian
establishment, a belief he was to keep when he became Governor-General
over twenty years later.67 It is clear from his actions that Bentinck did all he
could to help the missionaries.
The LMS missionaries in the south certainly felt that they were well treated
by Company officials. In September 1805 Dr Taylor wrote:
What change in regard to India has been produced within a few years. When
Bros Carey and Thomas came into this country they remained in a state of
concealment about two years; whereas we have entered it at a favourable
period when the Directors of the Honourable Company have issued orders
that Missionaries be protected and favoured.68
This is an enlightening extract, for in the first place it shows that the myth
was established by 1805 that the Baptist missionaries had to hide from the
authorities when they first arrived in India. Second, it is a slight distortion of
the directive from the Court. The despatch referred to is the answer to the
SPCK’s request for protection for their converts in Tinnevelly and is quoted
at length because it clearly states the Company’s policy towards all religions
practised in India. The despatch stated that the Directors were:
satisfied that there has been no intention in our government to act otherwise, we
think it requisite only to state that, as we have never countenanced any species
or degree of religious intolerance in the countries subject to your authority, and
Mahomedans, Parsees, Hindoos, in all their varying sects, have been permitted
to follow their separate persuasions, without molestation, so it can be no ques-
tion that all who profess the Christian faith, whether of European, Armenian
or Indian race should enjoy the like privilege & protection. Therefore, officers
of every rank, Europeans & natives, employed in the administration of our
affairs, should confine themselves to these general principles, from which any
deviation past or future must excite our disapprobation … and with regard
also to the Missionaries, so long as they conduct themselves in a prudent &
upright manner, as they appear hitherto to have done, we cannot doubt that
their persons and office will be duly respected.69
The LMS distortion lies in the fact that the despatch just quoted does not
actually state that missionaries will be protected and favoured but rather says
that all religions must be protected. The policy of the East India Company
towards missionaries had not changed from that set out in its earlier despatches.
The missionaries would be ‘respected’ as long as they conducted themselves
‘in a prudent and upright manner’. It also specifically referred to the SPCK
missionaries, who had been countenanced for nearly a century. Neverthe-

less, the Dissenting missionaries regarded the specific mention of missionary
work as a significant step forward from the hostility displayed by the Court
of Directors during the 1793 debate on the ‘pious clauses’. The despatch
implied an acceptance by the Court of Directors of missionaries in India,
although only the SPCK was mentioned by name. It also gives the lie to the
myth that missionaries were not ‘tolerated’ by the Company after 1793. The
clever wording of the despatch, however, ensured that the Company took on
no new commitments and gave no promises.
The problem for the Dissenting missionary societies seems to have lain
more with the Court of Directors in England than the Company officials in
India in these early years. On the spot, Carey felt the difference in attitude
between the officials of the Company in England and in India. In 1795 he
told John Ryland, a director of the BMS, that he had ‘no spirit for politics
here for whatever the East India Company may be in England; their servants
and officers here are very different’.70 Local officials were prepared to make
their own judgements and the distance from England meant that any action
of theirs would be a fait accompli that the Court and Board were unlikely to
overturn. The missionary society policy of stressing their non-involvement in
politics, their generally good conduct, coupled with their utility in managing
asylums, setting up schools and performing essential religious services for
Europeans, paid dividends. Company officials ‘connived’ at the unauthorised
presence of the missionaries in India and the Court of Directors at home
did not try to force them to do otherwise, probably because it did not wish
to arouse unnecessary antagonism in Britain. Its confirmation of allowances
granted by Presidency Governors gave implicit sanction to the missionaries.
Nevertheless, the new missionary societies were sure that the Directors
would not grant licences to their missionaries and in this they were probably
right. Grant frequently advised them not to put the principle to the test and,
because of his position in the Company, no one was better placed to know
this. A letter from Thomas Coke, the Methodist leader, in December 1806
confirms the situation. Coke was still trying to start a Methodist mission in
India with the help of Colonel Sandys, an ex-Company officer and, inciden-
tally, a brother-in-law of Claudius Buchanan. Sandys waited on Teignmouth
(who was on the Board of Control), Wilberforce and Grant. Coke wrote to
the Court of Directors and Lord Castlereagh, who was President of the
Board of Control, to solicit support for their plans. After seeing these men,
Coke and Sandys came to the conclusion that ‘the Court of Directors would
not consent to the establishment of a mission to India for the conversion of
the natives, whether instituted by us or by the Established Church itself ’.
However, Coke must have received some private assurances for he went on to
add that the Court of Directors and the Government in India would connive
at their proceedings.71 The missionary leaders accepted this informal situa-
tion in these early years and an appeal to Parliament does not seem to have
been considered either necessary or an option. However, a crisis was around
the corner. In July 1806 nearly 200 Europeans were murdered or wounded
at Vellore.72
Notes
1 First verse of a hymn by Benjamin Beddome, cited in S. Pearce Carey, William Carey,
ed. P. Masters (London, 1993), p. 110.
2 A. T. Embree, Charles Grant and British Rule in India (London, 1962), pp. 131–2.
3 ‘Advertisement Forbidding the Embarkation of Unlicensed Europeans 1799’ in
Personal Records, BL, IOR O/6/4, pp. 301–2.
4 The debates over the ‘Pious Clause’ were taking place at the same time as Thomas
and Carey were trying to obtain passage.
5 S. Pearce Carey, Carey, p. 129.
6 Carey’s Journal, 13 January 1794, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
7 Carey to Fuller, 16 November 1796, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13. In this letter Carey
told Fuller that Shore ‘knows our real Business’. Shore became Lord Teignmouth in
1798 as a reward for his Governor-Generalship.
8 Memorial Sketches of the Rev David Brown, ed. by his wife (London, 1816), p. 303.
9 Letter to his mother, 26 April 1772, cited in Memoir of the Life and Correspondence of
John Lord Teignmouth, by his son, Lord Teignmouth, 2 vols (London, 1843), 1, p. 39.
10 Teignmouth Memoir, 1, pp. 280–1.
11 Letter to Grant, 5 May 1794, Teignmouth Memoir, 1, p. 292.
12 Carey to Fuller, 16 November 1796, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13. Udny and Creighton
stood surety for Carey.
13 Carey to Fuller, 22 June 1797, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
14 J. Cowie to R. Cowie, 4 October 1798, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, Home Office
Incoming Extra, Box 1, Folder 7, Jacket B. J. Cowie was hardly a religious enthusiast.
His brother was constantly trying to show him the error of his ways and his duty to
help propagate Christianity in India.
15 Court to Madras, 30 June 1797, BL, IOR E/4/883.
16 The CMS was formed in 1799 by Evangelicals on the ‘church principle’ but not the
‘high church principle’.
17 Forsyth to Cowie, 7 September 1801, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North India
(Bengal), Box 1, Folder 1, Jacket A.
18 Forsyth to R. Cowie, 11 December 1802, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North India
(Bengal), Box 1, Folder 1, Jacket A. See also letter of 9 February 1801 in the same
jacket. Chinsurah was taken by the British in 1795 and not returned to the Dutch
until 1817.
19 Carey to Fuller, 17 July 1799, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
20 Carey to Ryland, 17 January 1800, Northampton Record Office, CSBCA.
21 ‘Advertisement strictly forbidding the embarking of British subjects to India without
licence’, 1799, Personal Records BL, IOR 0/6/4, pp. 301–2.
22 Letter to Sir Alured Clarke, 4 May 1799, Memoirs and Correspondence of Marquess
Wellesley, ed. R. R. Pearce, 3 vols (London, 1846), 1, pp. 272–3. Wellesley believed
that there were not less than 150 Frenchmen in the area.
23 M. Martin, ed., Despatches, Minutes and Correspondence of the Marquess Wellesley, 5 vols
(London, 1836–7), 2, pp. 203–4.
24 Carey to Fuller, 23 November 1800, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
25 Ward’s Journal, 29 June 1800, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/18.
26 Fuller to Fountain, 25 March 1796, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
27 Fuller to Sutcliff, 8 July 1800 and Fuller to Ward 14 July 1800, Fuller Letters, ALRPC,
BMS MSS.
28 Fuller to Carey, 10 April 1800, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
29 Fuller to Carey, 18 January 1798, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
30 Carey to Fuller 16 November 1796, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
31 Fuller to Carey, 18 April 1799, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
32 Fuller to Saffery, 3 July 1800, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
33 Forsyth to LMS, 9 February 1801, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North India (Bengal)
Box1, Folder 1, Jacket A.
35 Carey to Fuller 21 January 1802, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
36 Carey to Fuller, 10 December 1805, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
37 Scott Waring to Hastings, 4 December 1807, Hastings Papers, BL, Add. MSS, 29183,
pp. 43–4.
38 I. Butler, The Eldest Brother (London, 1973), pp. 222–3.
39 Carey to Ryland, 24 July 1805, Northampton Record Office, CSBCA.
40 A. Berriedale-Keith, ed., Speeches and Documents on Indian Policy 1750–1921, 2 vols
(Oxford, 1922), 1, p. 197.
41 Undated note by George Barlow in the Wellesley Papers, BL Add. MSS, 37281, p.
176.
42 Berriedale-Keith, Speeches and Documents, 1, pp. 181 and 197.
43 Undated note by George Barlow in the Wellesley Papers, BL, Add. MSS, 37281, p.
176. See also Ward’s Journal, 15 March 1806, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/18.
45 Carey to Fuller, 21 January 1802, ALRPC, BMS MS IN/13.
46 E. D. Potts, British Baptist Missionaries in India 1793–1837 (Cambridge, 1967), pp.
144–7.
47 Carey to Fuller, 14 March 1806, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
48 Ward’s Journal, 15 March 1806, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/18.
50 Ward’s Missionary Journal, 23 December 1800, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/18.
51 There is a vast literature on conversion, most of it for Africa. For a contemporary
account of Bengal, see W. Pearce, ‘On the Extent & Character of the Conversions to
Christianity from Among the Natives in the Presidency of Bengal’, a paper prepared
at the request of the Calcutta Missionary Conference and contained in Serampore
College archives. See also S. Bayly, ‘A Christian Caste in Hindu Society’, Modern Asian
Studies, 15 (1981). An example for Africa is R. Horton’s ‘African Conversion’, Africa,
41 (1971).
52 Fuller to Sutcliff, 28 December 1803, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
53 Marshman to Ryland 1807, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/19.
54 24 January 1805, BL, IOR, H. Misc. 59, pp. 55–61.
55 Regulation 4 of 1806.
56 Buchanan to Minto, 7 November 1806, IOR, H. Misc. 690, pp. 211–43.

57 Transactions of the Missionary Society (1805–12) (London, 1813), 3, p. 82.
58 Journal of Cran and Des Granges, 22 June 1807 and 29 December 1807, SOAS,
CWMA, LMS MSS, South India Journals (1805–12), Box 1.
59 Letter from Cran and Desgranges to Ringeltaube, 22 January 1805, SOAS, CWMA,
LMS MSS South India (General), Box 1, Folder, Jacket B.
60 Letter from Governor-in-Council, 16 April 1805, Transactions (1805–12), 2, p. 374.
61 Transactions, 2, p. 443 and Court to Madras, 12 February 1806, para. 94, BL, IOR,
E/4/333, which granted allowances to a Protestant missionary at Vizagapatam for
performing divine service.
62 See Transactions, 2, p. 428.
63 Letter, 26 June 1806, cited in Transactions, 3, p. 89.
64 Public letter from Madras to the Court, 8 March 1805, paras 185–9, BL, IOR,
E/4/332.
65 R. Caldwell, Records of the Early History of the Tinnevelly Mission of the SPCK and SPGFP
(Madras, 1881), p. 70.
66 Public letter to Madras, 23 January 1805, para. 16, BL, IOR E/4/894.
67 Letter from Bentinck to Grant, 20 October 1806, NUL, Portland MSS, BPWJb, p.
263.
68 15 September 1805, Journal of Cran and Desgranges, citing a letter from Taylor,
SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India Journals, Box 1.
69 Public letter to Madras, 23 January 1805, para. 16, BL, IOR E/4/894.
70 27 January 1795, Northampton Record Office, CSBCA.
71 Coke to the Missionary Committee, 10 December 1806, John Rylands Library,
WMMSA, Home Correspondence, Box 1.
72 News of the mutiny did not arrive in England until February 1807.
Five
THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT AND THE

INNOCENCE OF THE DOVE: THE VELLORE
MUTINY AND THE PAMPHLET WAR 1806–1808
No danger can be so extreme … as the prevalence of an apprehen-

sion among our Native Subjects that the Government meditates
the project of their Conversion.1 (George Barlow)
Two hours after midnight on 10 July 1806, sepoys crept up and murdered
the European sentries at Vellore fort, where Tipu Sultan’s family were state
prisoners. The European quarters were surrounded and officers and soldiers
in the barracks, including those in the hospital, were shot. The striped tiger
of Mysore was hoisted. This revolt was put down very swiftly but not before
the toll of dead and wounded on the British side was nearly 200.2 Shortly
afterwards further disturbances occurred in Madras Presidency at Wallah-
jabad, Nundidrug, Bellary, Hyderabad, Palamcottah, Quilon and Bangalore.
The sepoy mutiny sent shock waves through India and even more in Britain
when news of it reached there in February the following year. Opponents of
missionary activity seized on the mutiny as proof that their arguments that
Indian religious prejudices were easily excited were only too true and that the
greatest caution was needed in any interference with them. Grant and Parry
had a battle on their hands to persuade the opposition that extreme action
should not be taken against missionaries.
The causes of the Vellore Mutiny were a matter of fierce contention then
and controversy over them continues to this day. Lord William Bentinck,
Governor of Madras at the time, placed chief blame on the introduction
of new dress regulations for the sepoys. These regulations, amongst other
things, forbade the use of caste marks and earrings with uniform, ordered
the trimming of beards and included the wearing of a new style of headdress
with a leather cockade. With hindsight Bentinck thought that the new dress
regulations infringed Indian religious and social customs and gave substance
to rumours that there were intentions to convert the sepoys to Christianity.
The Vellore Mutiny and the Pamphlet War 1806–1808 71
Statements at the commissions of enquiry held after the mutiny confirmed

that such rumours had been circulating. The Commander-in-Chief, Sir John
Cradock, who had signed the orders for the offending dress regulations, not
surprisingly, came to a completely different conclusion from Bentinck. He
stated that the crucial factor in the mutiny was the involvement of the Mysore
princes imprisoned in the fort at Vellore, who merely used the dress regu-
lations as an excuse to foment unrest. At home the Evangelicals, Charles
Grant and Edward Parry,3 were as keen as John Cradock to focus attention
on Muslim intrigue in order to undermine the argument that the mutiny was
directly caused by the sensitivity of the sepoys to any perceived interference
to their religious customs. They also pointed to general maladministration in
the Madras Presidency as a contributory factor. Their aim was to refute any
suggestion that missionary activity had a role to play in the mutiny.4
An extended examination of the causes need not detain us. Whether the
mutiny arose simply because of antipathy to the dress regulations, through
general discontent in the army, as a result of Muslim intrigue, or, as is most
likely, a combination of these and other factors, there is no doubt that at least
some Indians believed there was a plan to convert them to Christianity.5 By
1806, Britain’s new role as the paramount power in India, which had been
strongly reinforced by the defeat of Tipu Sultan in 1799 and the Marathas
in 1803–5, made the forcible conversion of the population seem a possibility.
The mutiny demonstrated the fragility of British rule and its dependence on
the loyalty of the sepoys. Both Bentinck and Cradock were recalled home
in disgrace because of the debacle. The anti-missionary lobby seized on all
this to argue that it would be dangerous for the British Government to allow
British missionary activity to continue in India, particularly when, in their
eyes, it was conducted by ill-educated and fanatical Dissenters.
A number of factors were cited in order to make the case that Indians
believed the Company was intent on converting them to Christianity. First,
it was pointed out that three British missionary societies were operating in
the Company’s territories: itinerating, preaching and distributing thousands
of tracts. Second, proposals for printing the Scriptures had appeared in the
Madras Gazette shortly before the mutiny.6 Third, it was argued that some of
the sepoys would have known that the establishment of Company chaplains
had increased the year before and that a number of Evangelical chaplains
had been sent to India. This is unlikely because few sepoys would have been
able to distinguish between chaplains of the ‘official’ establishment and ‘unof-
ficial’ missionaries. Some LMS and SPCK missionaries performed the duties
of Company chaplains in addition to their missionary work and Evangelical
Company chaplains did what missionary work they felt able. Many sepoys
would have known that missionaries and their native catechists were itiner-
ating widely in the south. Finally, and probably most important of all, SPCK
missionaries were beginning to have some success in the south with the mass
conversions in the Tinnevelly area mentioned in the previous chapter.7 Palam-

cottah, one of the cantonment towns where unrest occurred, was in the centre
of these conversions and blood was smeared on the door of the missionary
Ringeltaube’s church. Mass conversions and persecutions were bound to
attract attention and would have been known of in Vellore as many of the
sepoys in the battalions stationed there came from Tinnevelly and Travan-
core.8 When these developments were accompanied by measures such as the
injudicious dress regulations and a proposal to remove boys from battalions
on the coast to Cuddalore to teach them English, it was relatively easy for
disaffected Indians to put about the rumour that there was a concerted plan
on the part of the Company to convert the sepoys to Christianity. 9
It is not, therefore, surprising to find that Sir George Barlow, acting
Governor-General, restricted the missionaries after news of the mutiny
reached Bengal. In August 1806 two Baptist missionaries, Taylor and Moore,
were ordered back to Serampore by the magistrate at Dinagepore because they
had no authority to be there. John Chater and William Robinson, two newly
arrived Baptist missionaries, were ordered home. Brown and Buchanan told
the Baptists to ignore the order, as they believed it would not be executed.10
Barlow took other measures against the missionaries. He instructed them not
to interfere with Indian religious prejudices by preaching, instruction, distrib-
uting books and pamphlets and permitting converts to go into the country
to preach. A motion to forbid the circulation of the Scriptures was made in
Council, but was overruled with the help of Udny. Carey felt the injustice of
these measures, which effectively curtailed most their work and meant that the
Protestant missionaries were not being allowed the same privileges as Roman
Catholics.11 Despite the restrictions, as a result of a letter from the British and
Foreign Bible Society (B&FBS), which had been formed in 1804, the Baptists
and ‘some gentlemen of great respectability’ decided to form a committee
to manage a project for translating the Scriptures. Sir George Barlow was
waited upon, who said that while he was ‘friendly to the undertaking …
certain measures of a political nature’ prevented him from permitting the
formation of the committee. However, he gave ‘the fullest liberty to adver-
tise, to collect money and to translate’ and expressed a conviction that the
Gospel would eventually spread all over India, adding, ‘Let the missionaries
go on in their present line of action.’ Meanwhile, David Brown managed to
get some clarification of how far the new restrictions were to operate. He
found that there was no objection to circulation of the Scriptures and the
other restrictions were somewhat softened. Brown felt that this indicated that
Barlow’s initial reaction had been panic, ‘his fears prevailing over his real
sentiments’. Nevertheless, the Baptist missionaries were extremely worried.
Carey, Marshman and Ward begged Fuller to use his influence with Grant,
Wilberforce and others ‘to preserve for us the liberty we want, viz. liberty to
preach the Gospel throughout India, and to settle mission stations in different
parts of the country’. In a comment that clearly shows how they regarded this
as part of the wider Dissenting battle for ‘toleration’ they added: ‘Or you can
take the same steps which you took for our brethren in Jamaica.’ They also
asked Brown to write to Grant.12
Sir George Barlow, however, adopted a different tone in his letters home,
possibly because he had an eye to being confirmed in his position as Governor-
General. In November 1806, in the immediate wake of Vellore, he wrote
a melodramatic letter to Sir Thomas Grenville, President of the Board of
Control, saying that he feared ‘Preaching Methodists and wild Visionaries
disturbing the religious ceremonies of the Natives will alienate the affections
of our Native troops and lead to the loss of India’. He complained of an
instance in which Carey had destroyed some clay figures. Barlow said this so
infuriated the people who were carrying them that Carey was in real danger
of his life.13 By February 1807, his ire against the missionaries had abated. He
was far more concerned to express his concern that he had heard the Ministry
was proposing to set up an ecclesiastical establishment in India, based on the
suggestions in Claudius Buchanan’s Memoir.14 Barlow believed that a formal
establishment would give real substance to rumours that Britain intended to
force Christianity on India. He particularly objected to Buchanan’s assessment
of the complacency with which the Indian people would receive Christianity.
He told Grenville that long experience had shown Buchanan’s conclusions
to be wrong, particularly as far as Muslims were concerned, and reminded
him of the Bengal government’s pledge to abstain from all interference in
the religious concerns of the people. He informed Grenville that the Bengal
government had more than once ‘been compelled by the representations of
many respectable natives … to restrain a discussion of religious topics’ in the
College of Fort William. In 1804 Indian teachers and long-serving Company
servants at the College had objected to Buchanan’s prize essays comparing
Christianity and Indian religions. Barlow stressed that the authority of the
State must not be given to missionary activity. However, he was happy that
the missionaries should carry on without government support. Barlow was in
no doubt that ‘the security of the British empire in India should not be put
at risk for the business of proselytisation’, maintaining that:
No danger can be so extreme, so absolutely beyond the levels of prevention or
Remedy as the prevalence of an apprehension among our native Subjects, that
Government meditates the project of their Conversion.15
Officials were not only concerned with internal threats from the native
population; they were also worried about what the French were up to. William
Elphinstone, Chairman of the Company in 1806, in a minute on mission-
aries, made much of the likelihood of the French taking advantage of the
situation to stir Indians up to overthrow the British. He maintained mission-
aries, particularly those based at Serampore, would aid the French. In emotive
language, Elphinstone compared the Company with James II, ‘a fool who
exchanged three kingdoms for a Mass’, while the Company ‘have exchanged
the Mogul Empire for a Chapter in the New Testament’. He added that
the Company ‘certainly are canting and preaching away their authority in
India’. He then cast aspersions on the character of the missionaries and the
fact that they were patronised by Udny and Grant and had support from
someone ‘who has been at the head of the Government’ (Teignmouth). As
for Indian converts, Elphinstone regarded them as ‘the scum of the earth,
outcasts from every religion’.16 Robert Dundas, who became President of the
Board of Control in April 1807, similarly feared the French. He warned Lord
Minto, the new Governor-General, that the overthrow of British power in
India was a ‘constant object of Buonaparte’s hostile ambition’.17 It is to be
doubted whether anyone seriously believed that Protestant missionaries were
intriguing with the French. Nevertheless, there seem to have been genuine
fears that Frenchmen were scheming to undermine British rule by forming
alliances with Indian rulers against the British. Opponents of missionary
activity, such as Colonel Sweny Toone, a former Bengal officer and a Director
of the Company, took the opportunity to argue that missionaries contributed
to a general atmosphere of disaffection from which the French could profit.
Toone maintained that the only way to prevent Bonaparte and the Marathas
from taking advantage of the situation was to ‘express our opinion, by an open
and honest declaration, that we will not interfere with the Religious opinions
of the Natives’.18 Evangelicals had a major challenge to stop the Company
and Board of Control from taking drastic measures against missionaries.
Fortunately for the missionaries, the Evangelicals, Charles Grant and
Edward Parry, were returned as Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the
Company in 1807 and it was largely due to their efforts that the effects of the
opposition were limited. Grant was the driving force in the partnership and
his knowledge of the Company and its working enabled him to manipulate
the situation. Grant was a superb tactician. There were a number of ways in
which he could ensure things went his way. The Chairs controlled the flow
of information both to the Directors and the Board of Control. Any measure
could be carried by the Chair by waiting until opponents were absent or, alter-
natively, by deferring the consideration of any objectionable question. There
was also an informal agreement that the Chairs would discuss all matters of
importance with the President of the Board of Control before being brought
to the Court of Directors. Most of the Court business was carried on through
voluminous correspondence. The two key committees were the Committee
of Correspondence and the Secret Committee. The Chairs were members of
both committees and determined the business to be discussed at the weekly
meetings. An aggressive and knowledgeable Chairman like Grant could use
the Committee of Correspondence to back up his line of argument. The
Chairs were even more powerful in the Secret Committee, which consisted
solely of the Chairman, Deputy Chairman and a senior Director. Constitu-

tionally, the Secret Committee was merely a forwarding agent for the Board
of Control.19 However, over time it had become a kind of ‘cabinet’, which
discussed the Board’s drafts and frequently dissented before returning them
to the Board. The Committee often originated secret political orders. During
Grant’s tenure of office nearly half the secret despatches originated in the
Secret Committee or were partly prepared there. For a short period in 1806–7
this effectively meant that the Committee, rather than the Board of Control,
controlled the Company’s external policy.20 Despite the cards he held, Grant
knew that he would be hard put to help the missionaries. He told the senior
Company chaplain, David Brown, that there had been:
an eager propensity to send out strong orders at once to restrain the mission-
aries, or, at least, to confine them to Serampore, and encourage our Govern-
ment in the discountenance it has of late shown them.
He went on to state that if he and Parry had not been in such influential
positions ‘the tide was so strong that … orders of a very different kind would,
in all probability, have been transmitted’.21
The letters from Sweny Toone and John Scott Waring, Warren Hastings’s
former agent, corroborate Grant’s assessment of the opposition in the Court
of Directors. They were in close communication with Hastings and seem to
have been leading the opposition to the missionaries.22 It seems a fair assump-
tion that Hastings was acting as a kind of eminence grise behind the scenes.
When news of the Vellore mutiny reached Britain in February 1807, Toone
made an issue of the destabilising effect of the missionaries and pressed his
fellow Directors to take measures to expel or severely restrict them. Toone,
like Barlow, was very concerned about the impact of Buchanan’s proposal
for an ecclesiastical establishment. Parry and Grant went on the attack and,
according to Toone, asked their opponents in the Court if we ‘were disposed
to Trample upon the Cross’. Toone, however, thought that the Chairs would
not hazard the question in open Court ‘as the sence [sic] of the Court is decid-
edly the other way, and were any thing to be proposed upon the subject by
the Zealots, it would end in sending an order out to send Home the mission-
aries’. As Toone had foreseen, Parry used his privilege as Chairman to avoid
a formal debate.23 In the frequent absence of his ally, Francis Baring (head
of the famous banking house and a key supporter of the shipping interest),
Toone did not press the matter.24
Grant and Parry feared the reaction of the Board of Control to the ques-
tion. In May in an attempt to forestall the Board from acting adversely
towards missionaries, the Chairs muddied the waters by widening the debate
over the causes of the mutiny to criticisms of the whole of the Company’s
administration in India. They sent a letter to Robert Dundas, the President,
setting out ‘Observations on the state of affairs in India relative to the defects
in the administration in general.’25 This paper recommended that the whole

of the Company’s administrative system be investigated, made a number of
suggestions and urged that the despatch ordering the investigation should be
sent through the Secret Committee rather than through the Court of Direc-
tors. By this ruse they kept the missionary question out of open discussion
in the Court and gained important time. Grant wanted to use the opportu-
nity to bring the question before the public and to force their opponents to
substantiate their facts. The Court did not actually order the expulsion of
the missionaries but it sent a despatch to Madras on 29 May, stressing the
importance of tolerating Indian religious prejudices and stating:
When we afforded our countenance and sanction to the Missionaries who from
time to time proceeded to India for the purpose of propagating the Christian
religion, it was far from being in our contemplation to add the influence of
our authority to any attempts they might make, for on the contrary we were
perfectly aware that the progress of real conversion would be gradual and slow,
arising more from a conviction of the purity of the principles of our Religion
itself and from the pious examples of its Teachers, than from any undue influ-
ence or from the exertion of authority which are never to be resorted to in
such circumstances.26
The despatch thus acknowledged that the Court had countenanced and
sanctioned missionaries and was not against conversion. However, the Court
and Board of Control held quite a nuanced position on the ways in which
this should be accomplished. The emphasis was on a gradual and sensitive
approach by Christian example and missionaries, unconnected in any way
with the Government. The debate was in fact over means rather than the
principle of propagating Christianity. On such an emotive matter opinions
were going to be diverse.
The Evangelical Defence
Grant and Parry believed that the despatch opened the way for Company
servants to restrict missionaries. They only signed it because they were pressed
to do so by the other Directors. They wrote letters of protest to Lord Minto,
Sir George Barlow and Robert Dundas. Grant and Parry threatened Robert
Dundas that any prohibition of the Gospel might ‘affect public opinion and
the credit of the Company in the country’. They cast aspersions on the Chris-
tianity of those who declared themselves to be against missionary activity in
India and doubts on the reliability of their information. A significant part of
the letter consisted of distortions of the truth. First of all, they denied that
there were any missionaries in Vellore, its vicinity or in the Carnatic except
for ‘a few Germans of the Society of Danish missionaries’. In fact, in 1806
there were fourteen Protestant missionaries working in south India: seven

SPCK, four LMS and three Royal Danish. While it might have been true
that no missionary went to Vellore in 1806, Vellore was an SPCK outstation.
Missionaries had been working in and near the Carnatic for many years. The
Scriptures had been published in Tamil thirty years previously and the station
was regularly visited at least until the SPCK missionary, Gericke’s, death in
1803. Claudius Buchanan had visited Vellore shortly before the mutiny. To
go on to state that Madras officials were not in a position to comment on the
part missionaries might have played in the mutiny because ‘they have seen no
missionaries labour in that Presidency’ was patently false. There were both
LMS and SPCK missionaries in Madras itself, in addition to those elsewhere
in British territory. It is also clear from the missionary correspondence that
Governors and other influential officials knew of their presence in the Presi-
dency. Grant and Parry were well aware of the situation in India. They read
the missionary society reports and were in contact with missionary leaders.
They were in close communication with several of the Evangelical chaplains
who had been sent out to India under their patronage. This letter itself proves
how up-to-date their knowledge was because in it they complain to Dundas
that the magistrate at Dacca had sent some Baptist missionaries away in 1805.
Perhaps Grant’s and Parry’s greatest bending of the truth was their state-
ment that ‘all experience of the history of India for several past centuries
shows no excitement or alarm at conversions’ and that there were no ‘facts to
support the supposed jealousy of the natives’.27 They may well have convinced
themselves that this was true and, until Vellore, there does not seem to have
been any tumult directed against British rule on this score. However, by
Grant’s own admission, when he put forward his 1786 proposal for a mission,
government protection was essential because, without it, he argued, converts
would suffer persecution and even death. Indeed, in 1805, as has already been
stated, the SPCK found it necessary to petition the Company for protection
and the Court of Directors instructed its ‘European and Native Officers’ to
ensure that converts were not persecuted.28 From the Baptist Periodical Accounts
and private letters Grant and Parry would have known of the abuse and
stone-throwing that often accompanied missionary preaching attempts. The
opponents of missionary activity were quick to point out the inconsistencies
in the Evangelical arguments.
From defence of the missionaries, Grant and Parry asserted the positive
benefits of Christianity, returning to the argument that Christianity was the
only way to ‘supply a common bond between rulers and ruled’, adding the
rider that Christianity enjoined obedience to the civil power. To push this
point home they maintained that, had the sepoys been Christian, there would
not have been a mutiny at Vellore, an argument that was to be used fifty years
later in the aftermath of the 1857 ‘mutiny’. This somewhat contradicted
their argument that there would be no danger to British attempts to convert
India because Hindus were the last of the human race to assert themselves.
However, perhaps the most significant aspect of the letter to Dundas was
Grant’s and Parry’s unequivocal warning of public action if the Company
did not allow missionary activity in India. Dundas was told that the Company
‘was already unpopular with a large proportion of the Community on account
of their supposed dislike to the propagation of Christianity in India’. They
pointed out to him there were ‘very many respectable persons and entire
classes of people in this country, who firmly hold the same opinion, and
think it a reproach to the Nation that this opinion had not been more acted
upon’ and questioned ‘whether any cry raised on the ground of a prohibi-
tion to communicate Christianity to the Natives of India would be expedient
for the Government of this country’.29 Parry, in his capacity as Chairman,
also wrote to Lord Minto, warning the new Governor-General that ‘it would
certainly not be in the interests of the Company to provoke afresh a very
considerable body of the people in this country by proscription or persecu-
tion of a few missionaries’ as they would ‘undoubtedly’ oppose a renewal
of the Company’s monopoly at the next renewal of its charter. Parry took a
high tone with Minto, expressing his displeasure that missionaries had been
forbidden to go into the interior and his expectation that the practice would
cease. He concluded the letter by reminding Minto that the exclusion of the
Gospel from India would ‘provoke the Great Being’.30 The recent success of
the abolition of the slave trade campaign in 1807 no doubt gave Grant and
Parry confidence in this approach. The threat of public involvement seems to
have had some effect on Robert Dundas. His letters demonstrate a concern
that the Company should not unnecessarily alienate large numbers of the
‘respectable’ public.
Grant was also working in close collaboration with the Baptist and LMS
leaders. This collaboration is set out in great detail in an extended letter
from Fuller, the BMS secretary, to the missionary, Ward, in July 1807.31 The
missionaries were fortunate that none of the complaints from India were
made officially but rather were private communications. This enabled the
Chairs and Lord Teignmouth to ignore them and to complain to Dundas that
official notice was being taken of private letters. Nevertheless, Grant knew
that the opposition was formidable. He informed Fuller that ‘persons high
in office’, including the king, were insisting that the missionaries be recalled.
The principle danger, however, seemed to be from the Board of Control.32
At this point, the LMS leaders were urging Fuller to ‘move heaven and earth’
to raise the proprietors of the Company against the Directors. Influenced by
Lord Teignmouth, and from his own conviction, Fuller and Burder, the LMS
secretary, argued strongly against such a step, maintaining that ‘we could not
do it; and if we tried and failed we should ruin our cause’. Fuller preferred to
influence politicians and Directors behind the scenes. He therefore called on
Lord Teignmouth a second time and waited on Dundas and Lord Wellesley,
all of whom advised caution. Their attitude was encapsulated in Wellesley’s

statement that he regarded it as his duty to help the missionaries as far as
he could, ‘without implicating Government, or causing it to be considered
as patronising [missions]’.33 These were kind words but gave no promises.
The missionary society leaders and Grant and Parry waited for the threat-
ened discussion on Vellore in the Court of Proprietors on 17 June but came
to the conclusion that they should not bring it forward themselves. However,
they were lobbying hard in the background. Grant told Fuller to send the
1000 printed copies of the statement he had earlier advised him to prepare
to all the Directors, the members of the Board of Control, to the principal
members in the administration, to several members of the Nobility and
‘certain female branches of the Royal family’. They then visited fifteen or
sixteen of the twenty-four Directors. Friendly Directors wrote to Lord Minto
and Sir George Barlow. They visited a good number of the Administration
and tried to influence the bishops via John Owen, secretary to the SPCK, who
had previously been a Company chaplain. The aim of this was to conciliate
and to judge the degree of opposition that might be expected in future. The
next day the motion was made and Parry managed to neutralise the mover
‘so his motion passed over as milk and water, and no reflections thrown out
against the missions’.34
Fuller’s interview with Robert Dundas was satisfactory and demon-
strates the degree to which the Chairs’ tactics had borne fruit. Dundas did
not mention the illegal nature of the Baptist presence in India and agreed
that the conduct of the missionaries had been ‘highly proper’. However, he
stressed that they must be cautious and particularly mentioned a pamphlet
of theirs, The Gospel Messenger, which had been drawn to his attention and of
which he did not approve. In it the writer told the Hindus that their ‘shasters
were found in fable and are fit for women and children rather than men’. As
Dundas pointed out to Fuller, this was ‘provoking’ and ‘if we were told, we
could not bear it’.35 The warning was too late to avert the storm that was to
break out in India later that year over another Baptist pamphlet: the ‘Persian
Pamphlet’ affair. In reply to the criticism, Fuller pointed out that The Gospel
Messenger had been written by a convert and told Dundas that he ‘must not
compare a high-spirited Englishman with a Hindoo. They will bear that and
much more without being in a passion, or without any tumult being excited.’
Fuller then requested an assurance from Dundas that the Baptists should not
be judged by private letters and rumours, but by explicit accusations. This,
Dundas agreed, was only ‘fair’.36
Emboldened by Dundas’s treatment of him, Fuller next asked for an
‘express permission, or what perhaps wd be called a toleration, allowing us
to itinerate and settle missionary stations in the country that we might not
be interrupted by magistrates’. He then went on to impugn the Christianity
of the opponents of missionary activity, a favourite tactic of the missionary
lobby. It was a charge to which Ministers and Company officials felt very
sensitive, both because they did not wish to be regarded as bad Christians or,
worse still, as deists and atheists, and because most of them regarded them-
selves as good Christians. Dundas advised caution but thought that ‘perhaps
in four or five months’ they might get the permission they sought. Neverthe-
less, Fuller was under no illusions about the degree of countenance to be
expected from the Company. His interview with the Directors had shown
that the missionary lobby had about four or five friends amongst them, the
same number of enemies, with the rest neutral. Fuller told Ward that even
the ‘friendly’ Directors ‘dwelt on the necessity of our proceeding slowly and
cautiously in preaching to the natives’. Fuller concluded from this that if offi-
cial permission were ever to be granted by the Company for missionaries to
operate in India, it would be ‘under some restrictions which may prove inju-
rious’. The close of Fuller’s letter also intimates that the Dissenters were not
completely confident of the support they would get from Grant and Parry.
Burls, the treasurer and London agent of the BMS, pointed out to Fuller that
Parry had only mentioned obtaining permission to preach for the mission-
aries already in India. On mentioning this to Grant, he replied, as he had in
1797, that ‘if we can but get the principle admitted, everything else will follow
of course’.37 Church Evangelicals aimed at achieving far less than Dissenters
were happy with and this division will be seen more clearly in the immediate
run up to the 1813 renewal of the Company’s charter.38
Fuller’s use of the word ‘toleration’ to Dundas is significant and appears
again and again in pamphlets, letters and petitions. ‘Enthusiasm’ was a word
of opprobrium at this time but so, too, was ‘intolerance’. Both supporters
and opponents of missionaries claimed that religious toleration in India was
what they sought. Supporters wanted toleration for Christianity in India. By
this they meant no restrictions on the peaceful propagation of the faith and
protection for their converts. They regarded the late measures of the Bengal
government against missionaries as not merely intolerance of Christianity but
persecution. Their opponents, on the other hand, believed that preaching,
itinerating and distributing tracts were intolerant of Indian religions. Argu-
ments were based on perceptions of the relationship of British government
to Indian religions. The missionary lobby vehemently argued that a Christian
government had a positive duty not only to protect Christianity but also to do
all in its power to facilitate the peaceful conversion of the population. Men
like Hastings, Toone and Scott Waring, however, argued that Britain’s Indian
government was not Christian but in effect Hindu and Muslim, administered
by Christians for their benefit. In support of this argument, it was pointed
out that the Company had pledged itself to protect Indian religions and
that it administered the country as far as possible according to Hindu and
Muslim law. The Company’s prime consideration was political not religious:
the tranquillity of India.
However, Evangelicals, particularly Dissenters, were also arguing for reli-

gious toleration in India in another sense. They wanted toleration for their
own brand of Christianity. There had been no instances of restrictions on the
activities of the SPCK-sponsored missionaries, while the Dissenting mission-
aries had experienced several curtailments to their activities, not to mention
the necessity of having to reach India by clandestine means. Dissenters
wanted to be treated on the same terms as the SPCK and, indeed, Roman
Catholic missionaries. They regarded the struggle to open India to mission-
aries as part of their wider campaign for religious toleration in England. The
Church Evangelicals, bridging the gap between Church and Dissent, were
pulled in both directions and their actions as a result were often ambiguous.
Lord Teignmouth felt the tensions particularly acutely.
The Pamphlet War
Meanwhile, Parry’s action in neutralising the discussion on the 17 June drove

the opposition to renewed activity. Thomas Twining, a leading proprietor
of the East India Company, who had lived in India for some time, was not
prepared to let the matter rest. In October 1807 he published an open letter
to Parry as Chairman, pointing out the extreme danger of missionary activity
and predicting the loss of India if Indian religious prejudices were inter-
fered with.39 He highlighted the fact that Teignmouth, Grant and the Evan-
gelical Company chaplains, Brown and Buchanan, were leading members
of the B&FBS. The timid Lord Teignmouth found it necessary to write to
Minto denying that he and Grant had used their positions in the Company to
promote conversion, that he knew of the presence of the Protestant mission-
aries while he was Governor-General, and that he was now in contact with
them or Brown and Buchanan. He also denied that the B&FBS had given any
donation to the missionaries, pointing out that the Baptist translations were
under the auspices of Fort William College and this connected the Bengal
government with missionary activity. He was torn by his competing loyalties
as a member of the Board of Control and his desire to see India converted
to Christianity. He was also trying to gain acceptance for the B&FBS by the
Established Church by distancing it from association with missionary activity.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that Teignmouth was not prepared to jeop-
ardise his own position. He had known of the Baptist presence in India while
he was Governor-General. While he may not have corresponded personally
with Brown, Buchanan or the missionaries, he admitted to Minto that his
society had in July granted £1000 in aid of translations of the Scriptures in
India. However, he obfuscated his involvement and the fact that Fuller of the
BMS had been in attendance.40
Twining hoped to provoke an open discussion in the December meeting
of the General Court of Proprietors. Scott Waring took Twining’s argument

a step further and urged the ‘immediate recall of every English missionary
and a prohibition to all persons dependent on the Company from giving assis-
tance to the translation or circulation of our holy Scriptures’. Furthermore,
he argued that the distribution of free bibles should be forbidden.41 He railed
against sectarians and schismatics. His arguments were given more weight
because news had recently been received of further disturbances in South
India between August and December 1806. These pamphlets started a virulent
‘pamphlet war’ between the supporters and opponents of missionary activity,
much of it conducted anonymously.42 Scott Waring did not restrict himself
to general criticisms of missionary activity. He also made personal attacks
on the Baptist missionaries, calling them ‘dangerous maniacs’, ‘mischievous
madmen’ and describing their preaching as ‘puritanical rant of the most
vulgar kind’.43 Such language was designed to appeal to those who had no
liking for Evangelicals and was part of an attempt to separate members of
the Established Church from Dissenting supporters of missionary activity.
Sidney Smith in the Edinburgh Review wrote a long piece about Vellore, mainly
consisting of extracts from the LMS Transactions and Baptist Periodical Accounts,
which Smith argued demonstrated the volatility of Indians to attempts to
convert them and the unsuitability of the Dissenting missionaries.44
Scott Waring’s intemperate language and opinions harmed his case. The
supporters of missionary activity immediately counter-attacked and even the
cautious Lord Teignmouth felt that he had to come out in public support of
the missionary cause, although he delayed the publication of his pamphlet
until well into 1808.45 The Christian Observer, reviewing Twining’s pamphlet,
explicitly threatened the Company with losing its monopoly.46 Andrew Fuller
posed the important question of how far the British Government, with its
responsibility for the welfare of all its subjects, should tolerate evils such as
infanticide and sati.47 Scott Waring did not succeed in his aim of dividing
the missionary lobby. Both Church Evangelicals and Dissenters realised
they had more to lose than gain by separation. However, Church Evangeli-
cals also knew that they had to demonstrate their loyalty to the Church of
England. Grant’s 1786 proposal, the formation of the Church Missionary
Society, Evangelical involvement in the British and Foreign Bible Society, and
Buchanan’s Memoir of an Ecclesiastical Establishment of 1805 were all attempts to
persuade the Church of England to take the lead in forwarding missionary
activity in India. The tensions inherent in this situation were to worsen over
the next few years.
Twining’s planned motion for a discussion of the missionary question was
due to take place in the General Court on 23 December. Scott Waring believed
that Twining would be ‘very powerfully supported’ as he had found that there
were ‘but three in the Direction who think differently from him’ (Grant, Parry
and Robert Thornton).48 Robert Dundas’s position by this stage is set out in
his secret letter to Sir George Barlow of 11 December 1807. In this letter,
Dundas mentions that there were two extremes of opinion in the Court: those
who contended that no missionaries should be suffered to remain in India and
those who maintained that, on the contrary, more missionaries should be sent
out. Dundas, for his part, was fully persuaded that ‘the extremes of both sides
ought to be avoided’. While agreeing with the missionary party that thus far
neither Catholic nor Protestant missionary activity had been attended with
injurious consequences and that the Scriptures should be circulated peacefully
and unobtrusively, he pointed out that this was because their numbers had
been insufficient to excite alarm and because their general conduct had been
prudent and conciliatory. However, he was in no doubt that:
if, in any instance, the intemperate zeal of individuals should lead them to
outrage the feelings of the people, and endanger the public tranquillity, they
should forthwith be sent out of the Company’s territories, and prohibited from
returning.49
By 14 December 1807, the opponents of missionary activity were begin-

ning to realise the strength of the opposition. Scott Waring wrote to Warren
Hastings to say that Parry and Grant were ‘indefatigable in their endeavour to
persuade the Proprietors, that this question is agitation from factious motives
… to gratify private resentment’. The Chairs were also reported to be using
‘every means in their power to induce Twining to give up his intended motion’
including threatening him that ‘he could not second the views of Buonaparte
so completely’. Scott Waring by this time feared the unity and strength of the
Evangelicals, telling Hastings:
These Religionists are a strong and very powerful Body indeed, & take the
subject as a national Question, they act as one Man, that is, the Evangelical part
of the Church of England, of which the bishop of London is the Head, the
Calvinists, & Arminian Methodists, & Dissenters of every description except
the Presbyterians who I believe as a Body have Good Sense.50
The Evangelicals demonstrated their strength by calling a meeting of the

friends of missions on 21 December 1807, which appointed a committee
to ‘watch over the motions of the enemy’. In addition, Fuller was asked to
publish a pamphlet answering the objections of Twining and Scott Waring.
He was also advised to wait again on Lords Wellesley and Teignmouth to
request their support in the Ministry and Board of Control respectively. They
assured Fuller they would do what they could.51 By this time, Scott Waring
believed the missionary lobby had the support of five or six of the Company’s
directors.52 Twining was also being vilified in the religious press. The pressure
on Twining worked and he went to the Chairs, telling them that ‘if they would
promise that the subject should be seriously taken up by the directors he
would abandon his Motion’. On receiving assurances that the subject would
be further considered, Twining abstained from making a formal motion.53
In the event, Parry did not give the definite assurance to the Court of
Proprietors that Twining had requested. It seems likely that the Parry’s omis-
sion was by design. For all the threatening of bringing the matter before
the public, the last thing Parry and Grant wanted was a public discussion.
Their letters demonstrate how vulnerable they felt. In this, unlike the parallel
campaign for the abolition of the slave trade, the missionary lobby did not
have powerful support in Parliament. Whigs in general were not favourable
to missionary activity as they regarded this as interference with the liberty
of other religions. The attitudes of most Churchmen ranged from lukewarm
to positively hostile. The Archbishop of Canterbury stated what was prob-
ably the opinion of many when he wrote to Buchanan that, while he was
prepared to admit that the object of Buchanan’s scheme was ‘reasonable’
and ‘should not lightly be abandoned’, care should be taken that the plan was
implemented ‘not in the spirit of making proselytes but with the sober wish
to maintain, in its purity and strength, Christianity among Christians’. He
concluded by telling Buchanan that the conversion of India to Christianity
was ‘a result devoutly to be wished, but not impatiently pursued’.54
The opponents of missionary activity did not consider themselves defeated
and in January Sir Francis Baring tried to bring the matter formally before the
Court of Directors. The result was a decisive thirteen to seven defeat for the
opponents of missionary activity. Against the odds, the Chairs had succeeded
in altering the balance of opinion. In his despair, Toone told Hastings:
The Saints are Elevated – I never Loved them, but now I detest them, as far as
bears relation to this particular subject. Sir Hugh [Inglis] has pledged himself
to bring it forward again. But we shall not have any success – Sir Hugh, Sir
Wm Metcalfe & myself fought side by side, to very little purpose.55
Fuller felt the danger was over. While he admitted that some of the Evan-
gelical pamphlets had made an unfavourable impression, and that Twining
had much weight with the directors, he did not fear the opposition because to
balance this the missionaries had ‘many hearty friends in every department’
and he understood that ‘of late that Government lean more on the favourable
than on the unfavourable side’. On the whole, he felt that their adversaries
were in despair and would not bring the question before Parliament. While
Fuller doubted that they would get an ‘express toleration’ for the Baptist
missionaries, he believed they would be able to go on as before.56
The vote in the Court of Directors of January 1808 was an important
victory for the Evangelicals. It demonstrates that the Court of Directors and
Board of Control had largely accepted their arguments that the missionaries
were of good character and that their work did not excite alarm. They had
even gone so far as to admit that they had ‘countenanced’ and ‘sanctioned’ the
missionaries.57 The Evangelical tactics of working quietly behind the scenes

to influence ‘those who counted’ appeared to have worked. The opponents
of missionary activity had failed to obtain any firm support. They did not
have the political weight of men like Grant, Teignmouth and Wilberforce
and the exaggerations and emotive language of the opposition had done
little to enhance their cause. Another factor in the success must undoubtedly
have been the Company’s concern at the possibility of losing its monopoly
at the impending renewal of the charter. The Directors knew they needed all
the support they could get and did not want to alienate unnecessarily a large
body of ‘respectable’ people who had threatened to put pressure on Parlia-
ment to remove the monopoly if any untoward steps were taken against the
missionaries. The strength of the religious public had been demonstrated
in the abolition campaigns and the campaigns for the repeal of the Test
and Corporation Acts. While the role of Grant and Parry in this success
should not be underplayed, Fuller’s contribution was also great. He was the
link between Church Evangelicals and Dissenters and displayed considerable
energy, ability and tact in following advice and his own inclinations. Most
important of all, he took care not to divide the friends of Christianity, or
to make enemies of any of them, even though he was aware that support,
especially from Anglicans, was often equivocal. Fuller therefore made no
public comment about Buchanan’s proposals for an ecclesiastical establish-
ment, despite his apprehension of its implications for Dissenters in India.
He also did not allow such sentiments as those expressed in one of Claudius
Buchanan’s prize sermons, preached by Dr Barrow at Oxford, to sour his rela-
tionship with Church Evangelicals. This was restraint indeed, for the sermon
had recommended that ministers of the Church of England should make ‘one
uniform and general attempt to the exclusion of all others, where we have
the power to exclude [Dissenters], under the authority and regulations of an
act of the legislature’.58
Although the leaders of the missionary cause had feared the result of
any public discussion of the question, they could not avoid it because of the
actions of Twining and Scott Waring. In the event, bringing the matter before
the public was of more benefit to the missionary lobby than to the Company
opponents of missionary activity. The public discussion of the question helped
to lay the ground for the Evangelical parliamentary campaign of 1812–13. By
this time, there were few who were prepared to argue against the principle of
propagating Christianity in India. However, this is not to say that there was
agreement on how this could best be done. While most felt that the circulation
of the Scriptures was acceptable, it was difficult for Company servants and
politicians, faced with responsibility for the stability of Britain’s India posses-
sions and the deep attachment of Indians to their religions, unequivocally
to sanction other forms of missionary activity. Cornwallis, Shore, Wellesley,
Bentinck and Barlow had all maintained that Company servants could not
support missionary activity in their official capacities, although they were

prepared to protect missionaries from persecution and to give them non-
missionary employment such as that of Company chaplain, head of charitable
institutions or translators. They also recognised the value of the missionary
educational work. All of these, of course, gave covert opportunities to spread
the Gospel, a point that did not go unnoticed by Indians.
The events of 1806–7 demonstrated clearly to the Evangelicals that they
had gone as far as they could with the Company. Although they had achieved
a significant success in preventing harsher measures against the missionaries,
they were no further forward on the matter of licences and faced the possi-
bility of more restrictions at a future date. The furore after Vellore, however,
had demonstrated that a number of people felt that Indians would regard
any help given by the Company to missionaries as undue interference. It
began to appear that Company support of missionary activity would only
come about by legislative fiat. Parliament, however, was unlikely to make
any change in the Company’s charter until it was persuaded not only that
the measure posed no danger to Britain’s possession of India but also that it
was in Britain’s best interests. Despite twenty years of Evangelical lobbying
behind the scenes, the Company stuck to its policy of non-interference with
Indian religions and did not wish to make any move that might undermine
the security of India. By 1808, Dissenters and Church Evangelicals were no
longer happy with the Company’s informal arrangements with them. Their
concerns were heightened by the progress of events in India in the wake of
the Vellore Mutiny and the subsequent ‘Pamphlet War’.
Notes
1 Barlow to Grenville, 12 February 1807, SRO MSS, GD 51/3/132, p. 493.

2 Evidence of Major Trotter, Lt Coombe and Mrs Pritchard, Political and Secret Diary
192, October 1806, Maharashtra State Archives, pp. 28–32. See also chapter by
R. E. Frykenberg, ‘New Light on the Vellore Mutiny’, in East India Company Studies,
ed. K. Ballhatchet and J. Harrison (Hong Kong, 1986), pp. 205–54. The sepoy death
toll was about 350.
3 Edward Parry was a member of the Clapham Sect and shared the chairmanship of
the Company with Grant for the critical years 1807–8. He had been a merchant in
India.
4 See the voluminous correspondence held in BL, IOR, especially H. Misc. 690 and
816, E/1/119, E/4/69–71, E/4/334, E/4/900, F/2/2, L/PS/5/31, L/PS/5/280
and Board’s Collections, F/4/222. See also Maharashtra State Archives, Bombay
Political and Secret Diary 192 of October 1806.
5 For modern interpretations of the causes of the mutiny, see P. Chinnian, The Vellore
Mutiny 1806 (Erode, 1982), who regards the mutiny as a freedom struggle against
Company rule; S. K. Mitra, ‘The Vellore Mutiny of 1806 and the Question of Chris-
tian Missions to India’, Indian Church History Review, VIII (1974), and E. R. Talbot-
Rice, ‘Sudden Anger or Premeditated Plot: Vellore and the Aftermath’, The National
Army Magazine (1985). See also A. D. Cameron, ‘The Vellore Mutiny’, unpublished
PhD (Edinburgh, 1984).
6 Carey to Fuller, 26 August 1806, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
7 See above, p. 64.
8 Evidence of Trotter, Coombe and Mrs Pritchard, Political and Secret Diary 192 of
October 1806, Maharashtra State Archives, pp. 28–32. Frykenberg, in his chapter
‘New Light on the Vellore Mutiny’, is sure that sepoys and local Muslim elites had
noticed these conversions.
9 Scott Waring to Hastings, n.d. (May 1808?), BL Add. MSS, 29183, p. 267.
10 Ward’s diaries, 15 August and 6 November 1806, ALRPC, BMS MSS, Box IN/18.
11 Carey to Fuller, 26 August 1806, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
12 Carey, Marshman and Ward to BMS, 2 September 1806, ALRPC, BMS MSS,
IN/21. This letter includes a note of Brown’s discussions with the magistrate and
his letter to Charles Grant. The persecution of Baptists in Jamaica will be discussed
briefly in Chapter Seven. See below, p. 114.
13 Barlow to Grenville, 17 November 1806, Scottish Record Office MSS, GD 51/3/126,
p. 474. Grenville was president 15 July–20 September 1806.
14 C. Buchanan, Memoir on the Expediency of Establishing an Ecclesiastical Establishment in
British India (London, 1805).
15 Barlow to Grenville, 12 February 1807, Scottish Record Office MSS, GD 51/3/132,
490ff.
16 Elphinstone, ‘Minute on Missionaries’, n.d. (1806?), BL, IOR, MS Eur. F 89, Box 2c
5.
17 Dundas to Minto, 1 June 1807, NLS MSS, 1063, 3ff.
18 Toone to Hastings, 28 January 1808, BL Add. MSS, 29183, p. 153.
19 See D. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon (London and New York, 1994), Chapter 2, for
a detailed discussion of the ‘structures and ideologies of Company rule’. See also C.
H. Philips, The East India Company 1784–1834 (Manchester, 1940) and A. T. Embree,
Charles Grant Grant and British Rule in India (London, 1962).
20 See discussion in Embree, Grant, p. 208.
21 Grant to Brown, 20 June 1807, H. Morris, The Life of Charles Grant (London, 1904),
pp. 300–1.
22 See, for instance, letter from Toone to Hastings, 20 January 1808, BL Add. MSS,
29183, p. 138, in which he mentions that Hastings has put at his disposal all his
papers on the subject of the ‘conversion of the Natives’.
23 Toone to Hastings, 4 and 29 May 1807, BL Add. MSS, 29182, pp. 171 and 210.
24 The Company did not own its own ships but hired from an influential group of
London shipowners, who in effect formed a monopoly and had representatives on
both the General Court of Proprietors and the Court of Directors who formed the
‘Indian shipping interest’. These men were also allied with the great banking houses
and the combined interest had enormous influence in the Company’s administration.
See Philips, The East India Company 1784–1834 (Manchester, 1940), Chs 4 and 5 and
Embree, Grant, pp. 132–6.
25 President’s Secret Correspondence, Parry and Grant to R. Dundas, 18 May 1807,
BL, IOR, L/P&S/3/3,1ff. Robert Saunders Dundas was Henry Dundas’s son, who
became Lord Melville in 1811.
26 Extract Political letter to Madras, 29 May 1807, para. 18, BL, IOR, E/4/900.
27 Parry and Grant to Dundas, 8 June 1807, Bodleian Library MSS, Eng.hist.c.210, 1ff.
They counter the arguments against them in a series of points.
28 Abstract of the Annual Reports and Correspondence of the SPCK (London, 1814), p. 539 and
above, p. 65.
29 Parry and Grant to Dundas, 8 June 1807, Bodleian Library MSS, Eng.hist.c.210, pp.
1ff.
30 Parry to Minto, 15 June 1807, NLS MSS, 11338, pp. 11–14.
31 Fuller to Ward, 9 July 1807, continued 19 July, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
32 Fuller to Sutcliff, 11 June 1807 and 20 June 1807, Fulller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
33 Fuller to Ward, 9 July 1807, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
34 Fuller to Ward, 9 July 1807, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS. Grant had written to
those who would ‘with most effect’ speak to Lord Melville (Henry Dundas), who ‘actu-
ally rules India’. They were also trying to get the support of the Duke of Gloucester
and some of the princesses via Hannah More. See also Fuller to Sutcliff, 20 June
1807, Fuller Letters, BMS MSS.
35 This will be discussed in the next chapter.
36 Fuller to Ward, 19 July 1807, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
37 Fuller to Ward, 19 July 1807, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS. This continues
the record of Fuller’s interview with Dundas. See above, p. 48, for Grant’s 1797
comments.
38 This will be discussed in Chapter Seven.
39 T. Twining, A Letter to the Chairman of the East India Company on the danger of interfering
in the Religious Observances of the Natives of India, and on the views of the British and Foreign
Bible Society as directed to India (London, 1807). A collection of twenty pamphlets written
at this time can be found in the B&FBS archives in Rhodes House, Oxford.
40 Teignmouth to Minto, 12 November 1807, NLS MSS, 11338, pp. 34ff and Fuller to
Ward, 9 July 1807, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS. See also his letter to Owen,
23 November 1807, cited in his Memoir, 2, p. 134, in which Minto stated that he had
written privately to the Chairman that he ‘thought it of importance, for the credit
and interest of the Bible Society that it should not be identified with missionaries
or missions’. The Society was founded in 1804 as a non-denominational society to
circulate the Scriptures without note or comment.
41 J. Scott Waring, Observations on the present state of the East India Company, 3rd edn (London,
1807), p. x. This pamphlet went into a fourth edition in 1808.
42 For a detailed discussion of this ‘war’, see Jorg Fisch, ‘A Pamphlet War on Christian
Missions in India 1807–1809’, Journal of Asian History, 1 (1985), 22–94. This excellent
article clearly sets out the key issues.
43 Cited in Fisch, ‘Pamphlet War’, fn. 29, p. 31.
44 April 1808, 12, pp. 151–81.
45 Lord Teignmouth, Considerations on the Practicability, Policy and Obligations of Communicating
to the Natives of India the Knowledge of Christianity with Observations on the ‘Prefatory Remarks’
to a Pamphlet by Major Scott Waring (London, 1808).
46 ‘A Letter of Thomas Twining, Esq. to the Chairman of the East India Company’,
published in Christian Observer (December 1807).
47 A. Fuller, An Apology for the late Christian Missions to India (London, 1808), p. 13.
48 Scott Waring to Hastings, 12 December 1807, BL Add MSS 29183, p. 58. The
previous month Waring had thought that nineteen of the Directors supported them.
49 Dundas to Barlow, 11 December 1807, NLS MSS 1063, pp. 199ff.
50 Scott Waring to Hastings, 14 December 1807, BL Add. MSS, 29183, p. 64.
Notes To Chapter 5 89
51 Fuller to Ward, 11 January 1808, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.

52 Scott Waring to Hastings, 21 December 1807, BL Add. MSS, 29183, p. 80.
53 Scott Waring to Hastings, 26 December 1807, BL Add. MSS, 29183, p. 93. See report
of the meeting in The Asiatic Annual Register, 9, pp. 29–31.
54 Letter from Cantuar dated 3 October 1807, cited in H. Pearson, Memoirs of the Life
and Writings of the Rev. Claudius Buchanan DD, 2 vols (Oxford, 1817), 1, p. 197.
55 Toone to Hastings, 30 January 1808, BL Add. MSS, 29183, p. 158.
56 Fuller to Marshman, 12 February, continued 5 March, 1808, Fuller Letters, ALRPC,
BMS MSS.
57 Extract Political Letter to Madras, 29 May 1807, BL, IOR, E/4/900.
58 Fuller to Ward, 11 January 1808, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS. These sermons
were inaugurated by Buchanan in order to raise awareness of the need to spread
Christianity in India.
Six
TROUBLED YEARS 1807–1812
Now we are likely to get stations fixed with the public permission
of Government & we (like toads) shall be tolerated, and not hunted
down like wild beasts.1 (William Ward)
The Persian Pamphlet Controversy
The fears expressed by Grant and Parry that missionaries in India might
be restricted further materialised within months of the arrival of Lord Minto,
the new Governor-General (appointed July 1806). Minto told George Tierney,
who had recently given up the presidency of the Board of Control, that he
believed that a primary cause of the Vellore mutiny had been the spreading
of rumours that the British were trying to convert India.2 By September 1807
Minto had come to the conclusion that there was no danger. Nevertheless,
he felt that ‘the only successful engine of sedition in any part of India must
be that of persuading the people that our Government entertains hostile and
systematic designs against their religion’ and that therefore there was some
danger by ‘the indiscretion of the well-meaning . . . but very mischievous zeal
of the European missionaries’.3 Given this opinion, it was not surprising to
find Minto precipitated into action when he received a complaint that the
Baptist press had printed a pamphlet abusive of the prophet Muhammad.
On reading a translation of the pamphlet, Minto and his Council could
only agree that it contained ‘the most direct and unqualified abuse’ of the
principles and tenets of Islam and its founder. The Supreme Government felt
that if it did not take immediate action to repress the pamphlet, it ‘would
be a departure from that principle of toleration which the Legislature had
prescribed, which this Government had uniformly professed and observed,
and to which its faith was solemnly pledged’. Furthermore, it was the duty
of Government to provide for ‘public safety and maintenance of the public
faith’.4 Carey was ordered to explain the Baptist actions. His reaction to
the complaint demonstrates that the distance was wide between what the
Troubled Years 1807–1812 91
missionaries and the Government considered acceptable. Edmonstone, the

Chief Secretary, had to point out to Carey the objectionable passages in the
pamphlet in which Muhammad was called an idolator and Muslims were
threatened with ever-lasting hell-fire if they did not recant their religion.
Carey was conciliatory and immediately agreed to suppress the offending
pamphlet and to submit all Baptist publications for government approval.
The affair did not, however, end there. Despite the fact that the Baptist press
was in the Danish colony of Serampore, Minto also put considerable pressure
on Krefting, the Danish Governor, to ban the pamphlets.
A report on the Baptist activities had also been received from Blaquiere, one
of the Calcutta magistrates. Blaquiere had found eleven Baptist pamphlets,
which consisted of ‘strictures on the Hindu deities tending to place them in
a hateful or disgusting light’ and ‘exhortations to embrace Christianity’. He
also found two pamphlets, addressed exclusively to Muslims, one of which
was particularly abusive. In addition, a preacher was found casting asper-
sions on the lives of ‘Brahmins’ and saying that Hindu religious festivals were
productive of sin.5 To add fuel to the fire, Sir George Barlow had told Minto
that he had received information that one of the Baptist missionaries, prob-
ably Ward, was ‘in the habit of preaching publicly in the streets of Calcutta
in terms abusive of the Hindoo religion’ and that on ‘several occasions the
populace had manifested signs of irritation, and on one occasion especially
had proceeded to acts of violence’.6 Lord Minto decided that more stringent
measures were necessary to curb Baptist zeal and demanded the removal of
their press to Calcutta. Shortly afterwards all public preaching was prohibited.
Minto’s subsequent despatch to the Court, justifying his orders over the
press, pointed out that Britain was no longer a subordinate power and that
it was, therefore, easy for Indians to think Britain was trying to make them
all Christians by connecting in their minds the acts of English missionaries
with acts of the British government. He believed that because the Bengal
government employed the Baptists to make and publish translations for its
own needs, this reinforced the belief that the Serampore press was under
its authority and protection. The despatch went on to argue that works in
the vernacular attracted considerable notice and that Persian, the language
of the objectionable pamphlet, was intelligible to very many people. The
great danger from the ‘bigotry’ of Muslims was stressed. Finally, the despatch
reminded the Court of the recent Vellore mutiny, which had demonstrated
that the sepoys could easily be irritated by attacks on their religious customs.
In addition to the action taken against the Baptists, Claudius Buchanan
had been told to submit his sermons for inspection before they were published.
Buchanan responded with an ill-judged letter and memorial to Minto, saying
he could not submit his sermons to the officers of Government, whom he
accused of lacking in Christian zeal. Buchanan further told Minto that it was
not good policy to strengthen the Hindu religion but it was good policy to
strengthen Christianity. Indeed, he argued, it was the duty of the Government

not to oppose the diffusion of Christianity.7 Minto took grave exception to
Buchanan’s:
disrespectful and unauthorized presumption that the Governor General,

regardless of the first principle of his public duty, has blindly submitted to the
guidance of the subordinate officers of Government and adopted measures of
the highest importance, without a previous consideration of their origin and
timing.8
The secret despatch concluded by stressing that it had never been the inten-
tion of Government to ‘control or impede the pious labours of Missionaries
when conducted in a manner which prudence dictates’ but when ‘missionary
zeal exceeded those limits … the interposition of the ruling power becomes
necessary’.
The Baptist missionaries believed that Minto was the ‘cat’s paw’ of
Edmonstone and others who had persuaded him to take a strong line against
them.9 Minto admitted to his son that the paperwork was so voluminous that
he had to place great reliance on the Secretaries. Minto’s initial reaction to
the missionaries’ lack of prudence was no doubt affected by the views of his
Council. He relied on the experience of George Barlow, who had ordered
the initial restrictions of missionary activity after Vellore and whose private
misgivings were discussed in the previous chapter.10 However, it should also
be remembered that Barlow had been helpful to the missionaries in the past
and could have acted much more stringently against them in the wake of
the Vellore mutiny. There is no evidence to suggest that Edmonstone and
Lumsden were anti-missionary as such. Indeed, Edmonstone helped the
Baptists on a number of occasions and contributed to the funds of the British
and Foreign Bible Society.11 The chief concern of these officials was the
political stability of India. Memories of the Vellore mutiny were still fresh
and disturbances in the south had continued until the end of 1806. As a Whig
aristocrat, Minto would naturally have inclined to his Council’s view about
the effects of ‘over-enthusiasm’ in his domains. In any case, it is clear from
his correspondence that he had acted from his own conviction that missionary
zeal was dangerous in the Indian situation.12
In November Minto received Parry’s aggressive letter of June 1807
mentioned in the previous chapter.13 Minto was hurt by this letter and stressed
to Parry that he was ‘no enemy to the progress of Christianity in India’, nor
were other members of his Government. However, he could not condone
some of the Baptist activities and would ensure that these were regulated.
He urged Parry to peruse their publications himself,
especially the miserable stuff addressed to the gentoos, in which without one
word to convince, or to satisfy the mind of the heathen reader, without proof
or argument of any kind the pages are filled with Hell fire, and Hell fire & still
hotter fire, denounced against a whole race of men for believing in the religion
which they were taught by their fathers and mothers, and the truth of which is
simply impossible that it should have entered into their imaginations to doubt.
Is this the doctrine of our faith? … I am of the sect which believes that a just
god will condemn no being without individual guilt.
He went on to ask Parry if this was ‘a judicious course to pursue for the
purpose of conversion’, pointing out that in his opinion some of the Baptist
tracts seemed ‘to aim principally at a general massacre of the Bramins by
the populace of this country’. Minto, perceiving the radical implications of
Christian demands, was particularly concerned at the demand for a total
abolition of caste. He referred to the Vellore mutiny in which the simple
proposal ‘to efface a mark of cast from the forehead of soldiers on parade, had
had its share in a massacre of Christians’ and feared that ‘your government’
would next ‘be required to countenance public exhortations addressed to a
gentoo nation, to efface, at once, not [merely] a little spot in yellow paste from
the forehead, but the whole institution of cast itself, that is to say, the whole
scheme of their civil polity as well as their fondest and most rooted religious
tenets’. Minto agreed with Parry that ‘we shouldn’t stop the propagation of
Christianity for considerations of security’, but he was ‘not equally ready to
sacrifice the great interests which are confided to me, to a blind principle
of complaisance towards every indiscretion and blunder which the zeal or
negligence (for the latter is fairly pleaded) of Mr Carey’. Minto then went on
to give his own opinion of how the missionaries should operate:
In my opinion the Missionaries would advance better by mixing with the
people, by habituating them individually to the more amiable points of their
doctrine, and attracting them rather by its benificent [sic] influences than by the
mysteries and dogmas of faith. Let their minds be prepared by the former for
the reception of the latter. I have some reason to think that the press and the
pulpit have not work’d well … generally, those who have not been made angry
have been made merry by both these engines of conversion. The Mahometan
frowns, the Gentoo is apt to laugh … the assertion that his religion is false is
an absurd proposition to him.
The progress of Christianity in India, Minto believed, would necessarily be

slow, ‘not carried by storm’ but by ‘long, cautious, and pacific negotiation’.
As for the missionaries, he told Parry, ‘a little regulation was probably all
that was needed’.
Minto was aggrieved that the Baptists, Buchanan and Parry had misin-
terpreted his motives. He observed that it was the way of those who are
personally engaged in the work of conversion, ‘to confound any little check
or correction of their own errors, with opposition or hostility to their purpose,
& to call out atheism, deism, & above all persecution whenever a slip in
their own conduct is required to be rectified’. This seems to have been a fair
comment. Most of the time the Baptist and LMS letters spoke glowingly of
the help given to them by Government. However, at the slightest restriction,
they immediately accused officials of persecution, godlessness and trampling
on the cross. Minto concluded his letter by hoping that Parry would not assent
to Buchanan’s ‘hierarchy’ (an Anglican ecclesiastical establishment), although
he conceded that pious, able chaplains were necessary.14
Without the aid of the Serampore Governor, Krefting, the Baptist press
would probably have been forced to move to Calcutta or been dismantled.
Krefting supported the missionaries, pointing out that their press was useful
and that they were under the protection of the Danish king. This, together
with Carey’s profuse apologies for what had happened and his offer to submit
all future publications for censorship, eventually led Minto to relent and the
press remained in Serampore. Letters from Parry and Buchanan no doubt
helped too by making Minto think twice before placing further restrictions
on missionary activity. The Baptists carried on much as before and Carey’s
linguistic efforts at Fort William College were recognised with his promo-
tion to professor at a salary of 1000 rupees a month. Missionaries knew
that they had to be conciliatory, not only because they feared being sent
from the country but also because they believed their personal safety in India
depended on the protection of Government. In their memorial to Minto
the missionaries therefore stressed that they were ‘perfectly unconscious of
violating any Government orders’. They then went on to explain the lack of
danger in their work. The same men, who in their private correspondence
feared ‘massacre’, told Minto that ‘the natives like discussions and have sought
instruction’ and that ‘there had not been the least appearance of dissatisfac-
tion from listeners’.15 By their own admission, they told Minto ‘the truth but
not the whole truth’.16
Within a year, Minto appears to have concluded that the Baptists were
respectable and that their activities, when regulated, did not pose a danger
to stability in India. The debt he owed to Parry, who had helped secure
his appointment as Governor-General, possibly made him more sympathetic
to the missionaries than he might otherwise have been.17 In any event, he
became quite friendly with them and was particularly impressed with Marsh-
man’s Chinese translations. Minto did not take any action against the Baptists
when the British assumed control over Serampore in February 1808. By
April 1808, Carey was writing to Fuller that he did not believe that Minto
was ‘personally averse’ to them and that the opposition they had met with
‘has arisen more from a political panick than from a wish to burden us in
our undertaking’.18 In practical terms, as with Barlow’s restrictions after the
Vellore mutiny, Minto’s restraints appear to have affected the missionaries
very little. The Baptists got round the prohibition on tracts by using excerpts
from the Scriptures as pamphlets rather than their own compositions. They
were confident that they would soon be able to preach in Calcutta again.
They ignored the general regulation prohibiting missionaries from settling
up-country. Long before the Board’s reply to his despatch was received in
India, Lord Minto had freed the missionaries from most of the restraints he
had imposed on them. While he refused permission for two missionaries to
go to Saharanpur on the borders of Sikh territory, Minto took pains to tell
Marshman that it was not because they were missionaries but because of the
unsettled state of the country. In 1810 Minto also informally allowed them
to expand the number of their missionary stations.19
Once again, the furore over missionary activity was greater in Britain
than in India. The Persian pamphlet was not the first publication to have
caused concern at home. However, far more objections had been aroused
against Claudius Buchanan’s Memoir on the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical Estab-
lishment in India (London, 1805), with its intimations that the Hindus should be
converted forcibly. Ironically, just as Minto was dealing with the problem of
the Persian pamphlet, Robert Dundas, with Buchanan’s Memoir in mind, was
writing a secret letter to Sir George Barlow stating that he would not hesitate
to expel ‘the authors or editors of any publications, that could justly and
unequivocally be considered as offensive to the natives, & tending to excite
their religious fears and jealousies to an extent that would naturally indispose
them towards our Government’.20 Such sentiments, expressed by both the
Governor-General in India and the President of the Board of Control in
England, did not augur well for the missionaries. Because of the time lapse
in communications between England and India, Minto had eased restrictions
on the missionaries long before the Directors had received Minto’s November
despatch about the Baptist publications. This despatch had a ‘sting in the tail’,
about which the Baptists were unaware, because in it Minto suggested that
measures should be adopted which would discourage ‘any accession to the
number of Missionaries actually employed under the protection of the British
government in India for the work of conversion’ and requested instructions
for the future policy to be adopted towards the missionaries.21
Grant found his self-imposed role as defender of the missionaries in India
particularly difficult this time. Not only was the ‘pamphlet war’ against the
B&FBS and missionary activity in India in full swing in Britain, but also Grant
could not in honesty justify the Baptist publications. After having seen English
translations of most of the tracts, he told Fuller:
If those translations are just, the good men have been wanting in prudence
and circumspection. They have given too much occasion to those who seek
occasion, and have been the means of great trouble and mortification to those
circumstanced as I am, who have a difficult battle to fight when standing on
the best ground, but are sadly weakened and hampered when the ground will
not support them.22
Once again, the powerful position of the Chairs is illustrated by the way in
which Grant and Parry were able to minimise the damage. They were even
more successful in keeping the matter away from public discussion than they
had been the year before. The subject was never discussed outside a secret
Court of Directors. Indeed, such was their determination to keep the whole
matter secret that Dundas later informed Minto that ‘the Chairs would not
agree to send an answer to the Bengal secret despatch of 2 November 1807
until an official requisition to do so was made under the 15th section of the
Act 1793’. The discussion in the Court by all accounts was ‘very unpleasant’.23
The Bengal despatch containing Buchanan’s letter and memorial had also
reached the Court and made a ‘considerable impression’ on many of the
Directors. Grant and Parry found it extremely difficult to ‘get the Court and
the Board of Control to agree to any answer framed on what we think proper
principles’.24 By this they meant that the despatch should admit Britain’s
duty to propagate Christianity. Warren Hastings continued to work behind
the scenes to convince the Court of the dangers of missionary activity. He
was totally against Buchanan’s proposals and maintained that the ‘process of
missionary warfare, however modified, can never derive its sanction from the
Gospel of peace’.25
All too well aware of the opposition building up against them, in July, the
Chairs sent Dundas a draft despatch for his approval, once again threatening
him that the religious public would oppose any renewal of the Company’s
charter if the interests of Christianity were not looked after.26 Grant also
asked William Wilberforce to use his influence with Spencer Perceval, Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, and therefore a member of the Board of Control.
He wanted to ensure that Perceval should ‘rightly understand all the bearings
of [the question]’. Grant and Parry found that Dundas ‘greatly disagree[d]’
with their proposed despatch and wished to consult the Cabinet.27 Dundas
then put forward his own draft despatch. This maintained that while the
Company was not ‘averse to the introduction of Christianity’, ‘nothing could
be more unwise and impolitic … than any imprudent or injudicious attempt
to introduce [Christianity] by means which should irritate and alarm [Indian]
religious prejudices’. Dundas’s draft went on to ‘affirm as a principle the
desirableness of imparting the knowledge of Christianity to the Natives of
British India’. However, the ‘means to be used for that end shall be only
such as shall be free from any political danger or alarm’. The draft added
that ‘our paramount power imposes as well as strengthens our obligations
to protect the native inhabitants in the free and undisturbed profession of
their religious opinions, and to take care that they are neither harassed nor
irritated by any premature and zealous attempts to convert them to Christi-
anity’.28 The application of these principles was left to the discretion of the
government on the spot.
Grant’s only success was to secure an amendment included after Perceval’s
personal intervention. This amendment altered a passage reading ‘We are far
from being averse to the introduction of Christianity …’ to ‘We are anxious
that it should be distinctly understood that we are far from being averse, or
indifferent to the benefits which would result from the general diffusion of
its doctrines.’29 Later Dundas informed Minto that the Chairs were left ‘in a
very small minority, not more than one or two besides themselves’.30
Although Grant and Parry felt the final despatch was very far from their
proposals, Grant nevertheless acknowledged to Udny that it was ‘better than
the majority of the Court would have dictated, and it is so from the interfer-
ence of the Board of Control’. Dundas’s draft therefore seems to have been
more temperate than the Directors would have produced. Grant told Udny
that another reason for their acquiescence in the final despatch was fears that:
otherwise the dispute might have remained open, and worse ensued; for the
truth is, the publications of the missionaries – some of them at least are quite
indefensible and discreditable, and, if the subject had come into open discus-
sion in this country, would have brought reproach on the whole of their under-
taking and its abetters.31
Grant and Parry decided it would be prudent to sign the final despatch and
contented themselves with expressing their misgivings in a secret minute.
Similarly, three Directors who felt that the despatch did not go far enough in
restraining the Baptists, minuted their protests.
The general view has been that the Court’s reply to Minto’s despatch was
another victory for the missionary cause. Indeed, the Baptists themselves
thought this and Fuller told Ward that, ‘through the influence of our friends’,
this amounted to ‘such a cold approbation as nearly amounted to a censure
of [Minto’s] conduct’.32 Keeping the question out of the public arena when
misgivings about missionary activity were being expressed so vehemently was
no mean feat. However, a closer examination of the wording of the despatch,
together with two private letters written by Dundas to Minto,33 suggests that
the misgivings of Grant and Parry were nearer the mark. As Grant and Parry
pointed out in a secret Minute, the despatch, even with Perceval’s amend-
ment, was far from the ‘distinct and full recognition’ of the principle that the
nation and the East India Company should promote the ‘prudent and safe
exertions of Individuals of proper character for the diffusion of the knowl-
edge of Christianity in India’. Nor did the despatch, in their view, guard
against the possibility of the Bengal government being able to crush the
labours of missionaries. They feared that if a few ‘natives’ ‘should … pretend
alarm for their Religion, those passages might afford a sufficient pretext to
the Government to suppress all Missionary exertions’.34
It is also difficult to see the despatch as a ‘cold approbation’ of Minto’s
actions. The only real censure was of Minto carrying out his measures in
public instead of dealing privately with the missionaries. Accordingly, Minto
was enjoined to abstain from ‘all ostentatious interference’ with them. The
Court added a warning that he should not prevent the missionaries from
preaching to Indian Christians. Otherwise the despatch ‘entirely’ approved
of his efforts to interrupt the circulation of the pamphlets. In answer to
Minto’s suggestion that there should be no further ‘accession to the numbers
of missionaries employed under the protection of government’, the Court
simply pointed out that none of the missionaries in Bengal were there with
the Company’s licence, the implication being that Minto could expel them.
Furthermore, while the Court was ‘well aware’ that the work of both Catholic
and Protestant missionaries had not ‘heretofore been attended with injurious
consequences’. In its view, this was because their numbers were not ‘sufficient
to excite alarm’ and because their conduct had been generally ‘prudent and
conciliatory’. The Company’s obligation to ensure that Indians had the free
exercise of their religions was reiterated.35
The strength of Minto’s hand was confirmed by two private letters from
Robert Dundas, about which Grant and Parry were ignorant. In April 1808
Dundas wrote a long letter to Minto discussing the Company’s affairs and the
implications of the impending renewal of the charter. He listed the Board’s
eight priorities, the second of which was a strong determination to ‘adopt
the most effectual measures of enforcing the laws against unlicensed persons
landing or settling in India, and particularly against their traversing the
Country’. As far as the missionaries were concerned, Dundas informed Minto
that the British occupation of Serampore ‘will have left you at full liberty to
enforce any regulations you may think expedient’. Dundas thought that the
course Minto had taken was ‘most proper and judicious’. Furthermore, he
‘had no doubt in thinking that, next to restraining the missionaries from any
acts which may be dangerous to the public tranquillity, it is most desirable
that the Government should not appear to be a party in any of their proceed-
ings, even of the most inoffensive description’.36 As it happened, Minto had
not deemed it necessary to take any further action against the Baptists when
Serampore was taken over from the Danes in February 1808. In December
1808, Dundas reiterated his ‘entire concurrence in the principles upon which
the Bengal government appear to have acted’ towards the Baptists.37
Pilgrim Tax
News of the Bengal Council’s decision to take part in the maintenance of

the Jagannath temple and collect the pilgrim tax reached England during the
furore over Vellore and the ‘Persian’ pamphlet. Grant and Parry could not
let the matter pass. Parry pointed out to Dundas that it was unthinkable that
the Company should refuse to assist Christian missions on the grounds that
this meant interference in religious matters while at the same time it actively
interposed its authority in one of the chief shrines of Hinduism.38 They were
convinced ‘on principle’ that it was ‘improper for a Christian Government
to take upon itself any regulation of Heathen worship – any nomination of
priests of direction or their services’.39 Dundas responded that government
control of religious endowments and temple personnel was necessary for the
public welfare and that it had contracted obligations to maintain existing
public institutions, religious and secular.40 Grant vehemently disagreed and
told Dundas that while the Company was bound to consider the welfare of
its subjects, for the definition of welfare it must look to the moral sanctions
of the rulers, not of the ruled.41 There the matter stood for the time being,
with both sides in complete disagreement about exactly what the Company’s
relationship with Hinduism should be. This issue would dog the last fifty
years of Company rule.
The Company and Missionaries 1807–1812
The missionaries believed that the Court’s despatch and its censure of Minto’s
public proceedings with them would herald a new era in relations between
the missionaries and both the Bengal government and the Company’s home
administration. Confidence returned to such an extent that the LMS asked
the Evangelical admiral, Lord Gambier, to try to secure a passage for two
missionaries by frigate. The Admiralty, however, was not willing to make
such a decision without first consulting the Board of Control. The Board in
turn ‘judged it expedient in consequence of the prejudices which have arisen
against any attempt being made for the conversion of the Hindoos to the
Christian faith’, to refer the matter to the Court of Directors. Despite the
fact that Parry and Grant were the Chairs at this time, the Court of Direc-
tors objected to the proposal and the Admiralty therefore could not help. An
Evangelical Admiralty official, John Dyer, in a letter to the LMS, regretted
that, ‘however well the Government may be disposed to aid the efforts of
the Society, yet I much fear that political considerations when governed by
worldly policy will always interpose insuperable objections to any formal sanc-
tion to their exertions’. Nevertheless, all was not lost, for Dyer went on to say
that ‘if the Society can introduce their missionaries into foreign settlements
without any appeal to the executive Government, I think they are not likely
to experience any interruption to their exertions, but would be permitted
to carry forward their objective without molestation’.42 Dyer seems to have
received some sort of informal assurance that this would be the case. This
was the same answer given to Thomas Coke in 1806 when he received private
assurances that the Court of Directors and the Government of India would
‘connive’ once they got to India.43 It seems that some sort of unofficial policy
was in operation by which the Company tried to distance itself from being
accused of supporting missionary activity in its official capacity, while at the

same time permitting missionaries to operate fairly freely in its territories. This
time, however, the Bengal government did not seem prepared to ‘connive’
and the two LMS missionaries John Gordon and William Lee, who landed
at Calcutta in 1809, were not granted permission to proceed. They had no
alternative but to proceed to Madras without government permission.44
Sir George Barlow was sent to Madras to replace Bentinck as Governor.
Initially, he took a hard line against the missionaries, according to Carey,
issuing a proclamation prohibiting the conversion of the ‘Natives’.45 However,
he soon softened his stance. There appears to have been an easier attitude
in Madras towards missionaries than in Bengal at the seat of the Supreme
Government. No further proceedings were taken against Lee and Gordon and
they were permitted to reside at Vizagapatam, the largest district in Madras
Presidency, as was Hands at Bellary ‘in the capacity of Protestant mission-
aries’.46 Vizagapatam had been in British hands (formally since 1765) for
some time and was regarded as relatively stable. Sir George Barlow expressed
his ‘willingness to favor missionaries who act with prudence and avoid giving
offence to the natives by harshness of speech’. He even suggested Vizaga-
patam as a suitable place for a mission.47 Marmaduke Thompson, the Presi-
dency chaplain, was a particular friend to the LMS missionaries. According to
them, Thompson spoke ‘repeatedly’ to the Governor and Governor-General
‘on the importance of Missions’. Thompson was also prepared to take respon-
sibility for the missionaries’ ‘prudential conduct’.48 The London Missionary
Society received other signs of goodwill from the Madras government under
Sir George Barlow at this time. Permission was granted for the construction
of a ‘missionary chapel’ at Blacktown (the Indian part of Madras).49 The
extreme caution engendered by the Vellore mutiny seemed to have gone.
Nevertheless, the missionaries were not permitted to proceed precisely as
they wished. Hands had in fact wanted to go to Seringapatam rather than
Bellary. George Barlow told Thompson that this could not possibly be granted
and that ‘while affairs continued in the present state, no missionaries could
be permitted on any account to enter the Mysore country’.50 Similarly, Dr
Taylor, the LMS missionary in Bombay Presidency, felt that public sentiment
against the missionaries was such that he could not go into Gujerat or into the
Maratha country. He believed that he would be ordered out of the country
directly he moved out of Bombay itself.51 Despite these embargoes, the LMS
felt well-treated by government officials and, in September 1810, the LMS
missionary, Loveless, wrote to his directors that:
We have not been in the least hindered in our work from any external causes.…
Indeed there appears no hindrance whatever in the way of prudent discreet
Missionary exertions, except the want of labourers to carry them on.
In 1810, two Baptist missionaries were refused permission to go to a fron-

tier station near the Punjab because ‘the unsettled state of the country made
it unsafe to permit any Europeans to go there’. While the LMS missionaries
understood the Company’s apprehensions over missionaries working in fron-
tier areas, the Baptists did not. William Ward’s response to Lord Minto’s
concession that they might go to Agra was: ‘Now we are likely to get stations
fixed with the public permission of government & we (like toads) shall be
tolerated, & not hunted down like wild beasts.’52
It should be stressed that the regulation excluding the missionaries from
the frontiers applied equally to all Europeans not in the Company’s service
and, as far as the Baptists were concerned, the Company had some grounds
for apprehension. The LMS missionaries believed that the Baptists experi-
enced trouble because they had been over-zealous, as did the senior Company
chaplain, David Brown.53 John Chamberlain was a Baptist missionary whose
name appears again and again. In 1808 he had an altercation with the
Anglican chaplain and the commanding officer at Berhampore over the ques-
tion of baptism, triggered by his success amongst the European soldiers. In
1810 relations deteriorated to the extent that the commanding officer sent a
complaint to Calcutta about Chamberlain. Contrary to a private assurance
given to Lord Minto by Marshman, Chamberlain caused trouble again and
it was alleged that he indulged in ‘declamatory harangues and challenges, …
publicly reviling the Koraun and shasters’ and distributing tracts ‘obnoxious
to the religion of the country’. The Bengal government, on being informed,
considered this behaviour a danger to tranquillity. Edmonstone pointed out
to Marshman that in the opinion of the Government tracts were ‘useless for
their object and dangerous for tranquillity’. While not ordering Chamberlain
and Peacock back to Calcutta, Edmonstone refused a Baptist request to send
missionaries to other parts of India. He warned Marshman that he must
take steps to prevent the circulation of ‘obnoxious’ tracts and told him that
the Government was considering the question.54 Chamberlain then bickered
with the military commander at Agra and was arrested and sent back to
Calcutta. Peacock, on the other hand, was allowed to remain.55 Because of
this, Fuller considered Edmonstone, Secretary to the Bengal Council, to be
a bitter enemy. However, the Bengal government seems to have displayed
great tolerance towards Chamberlain’s behaviour when it is remembered
that he could have been expelled from the country altogether. Edmonstone’s
communications to Marshman were not entirely negative. For instance, he
told him that, while the Government was greatly afraid of the circulation of
tracts, circulation of the Scriptures was not objected to. Minto told Carey that
the Government had no wish to hinder the progress of Christianity but was
concerned about the establishment of missionary stations in places such as
Benares, where religious tensions between Muslims and Hindus ran high. 56
Relations between the missionaries and Company officials in India
seemed to get substantially worse in 1811. One of the first signs of this was
a nervous attitude towards the circulation of the Scriptures. In 1811 Brown
and Thomason asked the Baptists not to attend a committee meeting of the
Auxiliary Bible Society in Calcutta ‘lest being missionaries we should alarm
the public’.57 The same year, Barlow refused to allow an Auxiliary Bible
Society to be formed in Madras.58 In 1812, he ‘declined all interference in
the promulgation of a Malayalam New Testament in the Presidency’, for
‘the apprehension that it would be liable to the same dangerous misconcep-
tions to which the suspicions of similar interference had in recent instances
given rise’.59 Pritchett, an LMS Missionary arriving from China in 1811, was
subjected to a very strict examination on arrival at Calcutta by the police, who
told him that they were concerned because of some ‘informality or artifice
on the part of a missionary who sailed from Calcutta to Vizagapatam’. This
had led to a complaint from the Madras government to Bengal for giving the
missionary the opportunity to escape.60 Pritchett had been ordered to leave
India because he did not possess a licence but managed to get to Vizagapatam
in a small native boat.61 Even George Udny, who had been such a good
friend to missionary activity, when approached by Marmaduke Thompson
on behalf of Pritchett for advice, would not commit himself, replying that
‘although people sail without papers, . . they’re not supposed to and it can
cause inconvenience and trouble to the captains’.62 Once at Vizagapatam
no further proceedings seem to have been taken against him. The following
year nine missionaries arrived in India without licences in the space of one
month. Edmonstone told Marshman that the Bengal government did not
have authority to grant licences but would permit Johns and Lawson, two
Baptist missionaries, to stay ‘until the pleasure of the Court of Directors’
was known.63 Robert May, the LMS missionary who arrived with Johns and
Lawson in 1812, was ordered home. The Bengal government relented after
the British Resident, the Company chaplain and the inhabitants of Chinsurah
had made representations to allow him to stay.64 May thought he was eventu-
ally permitted to remain because he was replacing Nathaniel Forsyth, who
wanted to go home and was not, therefore, adding to the overall numbers
of missionaries. Thompson, the next LMS missionary to arrive in Madras,
was not so fortunate. He arrived at the end of March 1812 and received a
police letter informing him that the Madras government had been forbidden
‘by the orders of the Supreme Government’ to allow him to reside anywhere
in the Presidency and therefore he was to return to the Isle of France or to
Europe by the first ship.65 Thompson applied to Sir Samuel Auchmuty, an
Evangelical on the Madras Council, for help. Auchmuty replied that ‘I am
sorry to say that an intimation has been received from the Supreme Govt
that you are arrived in India without permission & will not be allowed to
remain in it.… I have only to regret that with such high authority, it is out
of my power to contend.’66 Thompson died before anything further could be
done. The situation deteriorated still further when five American missionaries
arriving without licences were ordered to leave. Finally, Johns and Lawson,
the Baptist missionaries allowed to stay pending the Court’s approval, were
peremptorily ordered to leave the country.
By this time officials could not ignore the fact that the missionaries had
arrived without licences in American ships, as Britain was at war with
America. In contrast, Jacobi, an SPCK missionary, was granted permission
to proceed to India in 1813 at the request of his society. The large group of
Americans with their families were undiplomatic, ‘trifling with Government
by making repeated applications to go to different places, but remaining still
in Calcutta’.67 As for the other missionaries, Marshman prevaricated with
Ricketts, the magistrate, when he started asking questions about whether or
not they were licensed.68 Ricketts referred the matter to the Supreme Council,
which ordered Lawson, Johns and Robinson to leave by 1 April. The mission-
aries believed that Minto left most decisions to the discretion of his Council
and that the hostility of Ricketts, Secretary to the Council, and Syms, Chief
of Police, therefore had no check.69 An official appeal to Minto to rescind the
expulsion orders was refused.
Carey spoke to Colebrooke on the Bengal Council, who told him that
since 1807 the orders of the Court to send home all Europeans who arrive
without licences ‘have been so peremptory and express, that Govt cannot
now overlook any circumstances which bring such persons to notice’. Carey
came to the conclusion that there was no specific dislike of missionaries but,
nevertheless, was of the opinion that the missionaries were the cause of the
general law because of its timing at the height of the ‘pamphlet war’.70 There
is little doubt that the Court of Directors was putting considerable pres-
sure on its Presidency governments to be cautious in their attitudes to reli-
gious matters despite the best efforts of Grant and Parry. Caution extended
beyond concerns about missionaries. The Company was also worried about
the activities of some of the Evangelical chaplains. In 1809 a despatch to
Madras stated that, while it was impressed with the Revd Dr Kerr’s report on
the state of Christianity in the south, it did not ‘concur with every opinion
and suggestion’ expressed. The Court was of the opinion that it would be
‘highly injudicious and improper’ for any of Kerr’s suggested regulations to
apply to the native inhabitants and reminded the Madras government of
the importance of persuading the ‘natives’ ‘that the British government has
no intention of molesting them in the exercise of their religious worship or
opinions’.71 Claudius Buchanan’s writings and activities gave rise to even
more concern. Another important factor was the impending renewal of the
Company’s charter. The Company was fearful of losing its monopoly and with
it the right to determine who should enter India. Company officials, including
Charles Grant, had long maintained that allowing free access to Europeans,
missionary or otherwise, would open the floodgates to adventurers of all kinds
who would lower Britons in the eyes of Indians and might even subvert them
with democratic principles. Dundas’s private letter to Minto, made it quite
clear that the laws against unlicensed persons were to be enforced.72 Minto
would have received this letter towards the end of 1808. The point was not
put to the test as far as missionaries were concerned until the new arrivals in
1812. Minto had expressed apprehension over any increase to the numbers
of missionaries in his November 1807 despatch to the Court of Directors.
It has to be said that the missionaries themselves did not help their cause.
The Americans’ behaviour has already been mentioned. The Baptists also
mishandled the situation. Joshua Marshman, who acted for them, was not
straightforward in his answers to Ricketts. Fuller, the Baptist secretary, was in
‘no doubt that the orders for the return of the brethren were the consequence
of that correspondence’, which, ‘must have given great offence to govern-
ment’.73 The permission given to the LMS missionary, May, to remain in
India indicates that there might well be something in this. In 1794 Andrew
Fuller had warned Carey and Thomas to ‘be wise as serpents and harmless
as Doves’.74 The LMS followed a similar line and instructed its missionaries
to counter the Company’s fears by:
not provok[ing] opposition by imprudent zeal, or even too tenacious a vindi-
cation of your just rights, as men and Christians. You will disarm malice by
meekness, and, by soft answers, turn away wrath; and, by well doing, in a steady
course by benevolence and uprightness, put to silence the ignorance of foolish
men, unbelievers and enemies.75
On the whole the missionaries were very successful in persuading Company

officials in India that they were respectable and that there was nothing to
fear from them.
Church/Dissent Rivalry
Company bureaucrats and old India hands, however, did not pose the only
problems for Dissenting missionaries in India in the years 1807–1812.
Company chaplains also made trouble for them from time to time. Work
amongst European soldiers was fertile ground for tension between Anglican
Company chaplains and Dissenting missionaries. Such tension directly
contributed to the expulsion of John Chamberlain from Berhampore, where
he had baptised fifty-three European soldiers and got into heated arguments
with the chaplain and commanding officer about baptism. Parsons, the
Company chaplain, took a dim view of Chamberlain’s encroachment into his
territory. Chamberlain’s hot temper did him no good and Fuller was too late
with his warning to Chamberlain that his actions would ‘prepare the way for
jealousy and contention between himself and Rev Mr Parsons’.76 In Calcutta
itself the Baptists were several times forbidden from preaching in the fort. In
addition, Ward, the second chaplain, ‘expelled every evangelical book’ from
the orphan school. He issued a public notice asking the public not to support
the free school the Baptists were proposing to set up (the Benevolent Institu-
tion) because it was to be conducted by Dissenters and this was ‘improper
interference with the education of the parochial poor’.77 The LMS mission-
aries in the south occasionally experienced similar problems. For instance, in
1810 Hands thought Company officials were hostile to him because he was
a Methodist. The Collector made it difficult for him to procure a place for a
school and public worship.78
While the Evangelical chaplains such as Brown, Buchanan, Kerr, Martyn,
Vaughan and Thompson did much to smooth the path to respectability and
acceptance for the Dissenting missionaries, there is no doubt that they felt
superior to their less well-educated brothers-in-Christ. Significantly, the Evan-
gelical chaplains were rarely censured for their missionary activities, despite
the fact that they sometimes caused unrest amongst the populace. They also
felt the necessity to further the interests of the Established Church and earn
the approbation of the Company and their own ecclesiastical authorities.
This manifested itself in attempts to control the Dissenting missionaries and
their translations. The university-educated chaplains did not think much of
the Baptist translations. Henry Martyn, for instance, thought that Marsh-
man’s translations ‘ought to be done with more care’.79 The Persian pamphlet
affair itself did not help relations with David Brown, the senior chaplain, who
told two of the LMS missionaries that the Baptists were ‘somewhat at fault’
and contrasted the ‘Christian temper and deportment and freedom from
narrow prejudices’ of the LMS missionaries, which have ‘won you many
friends’ with the ‘imprudence of my neighbours’.80
In 1808 Buchanan made far more explicit moves towards controlling the
Baptist translations. On failing to get Baptist agreement to his scheme for a
college called ‘British Propaganda’, Buchanan suggested the formation of a
‘Christian Institution in the East’ to aid the British and Foreign Bible Society.
The joint participation of Brown and Buchanan with the Baptists as a Corre-
sponding Committee of the B&FBS gave the Company chaplains an opening
to control the Baptist translations. Buchanan tried to ease the Baptists off the
Corresponding Committee and the Evangelical chaplains assumed the sole
right of disposal of the funds already collected for the Baptist translations.
Buchanan also took it upon himself to cease the payment of the 300 rupees
allowance granted to the Baptists by the B&FBS. In addition, he engaged
Martyn to do Persian translations and, according to the Baptists, enticed
away their Persian translator, Sabat, with an offer of a salary of 200 rupees
a month, compared to the 50 rupees paid by the Baptists.81 By denigrating
the Baptist translations and maintaining that they would be much better done
by men of the calibre of Martyn, and by assuming control of funds, Brown
and Buchanan hoped that the Company chaplains rather than Dissenting
missionaries would get the credit for future translations. This was a move
that did not find favour with Lord Minto and his Council as it brought the
Company chaplains as government employees into even closer contact with
missionaries.
The Evangelical Company chaplains also put forward proposals for an
increased Anglican establishment in India. This was motivated by a genuine
belief that the ecclesiastical establishment was woefully inadequate and a
belief that a greater presence of the Established Church would benefit both
Europeans and Indians. It was also motivated by a desire to gain acceptance
with the higher ranks of the Church which, they hoped, would in turn lead
the Episcopate to support Evangelical missionary schemes. The Dissenting
missionaries were extremely mistrustful of these schemes, which they feared
would jeopardise their own position in India. One reaction to Kerr’s 1805
proposal for an increased Anglican establishment was that it ‘would make rich
splendid livings and sinecures’. The writer regarded the Church of England
as a ‘bigoted and intolerant church’ who hated ‘interlopers and would rather
see their flock untended’ than cared for by Dissenters.82 Dissenting fears were
not without foundation. In 1804 the Bishop of Meath had written to Lord
William Bentinck, Governor of Madras, that he was astonished that nothing
was being done for Christianity in India and that the attempt was being left
to ‘fanatics, who disgrace it’.83 The following year Kerr and Buchanan both
proposed an increased Anglican ecclesiastical establishment as the best means
for converting India to Christianity.
Dissenters seemed no further forward in 1812 in obtaining ‘religious toler-
ation’ in India than they had been in 1793. Church Evangelicals did not
believe that they would obtain permission for their missionaries to enter India
either. The occasion of the 1813 renewal of the Company’s charter provided
the opportunity for Dissenters and Church Evangelicals to join together to
arouse the religious public in their favour. Evangelicals had failed to achieve
a change in the charter in 1793. Would they be successful in 1813?
Notes
1 Ward to Fuller, 21 October 1810, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/17.

2 Minto to Tierney, 30 June 1807, NLS MSS, 11282, pp. 155ff.
3 Minto to Parry, September 1807, NLS MSS, 11283, p. 167.
4 Bengal Secret Letter to Court of Directors, 2 November 1807, paras 1–51, BL, IOR
L/PS/5/31.
5 A translation of the pamphlet, a record of Edmonstone’s interview with Carey, a
copy of Blaquiere’s memo of 6 September 1807 and Minto’s correspondence with
Krefting can be found in BL, IOR, H. Misc. 690.
6 Bengal Secret Letter to the Court of Directors, 2 November 1807, para. 31, BL, IOR,
L/PS/5/31.
7 Covering letter, 9 November 1807 and memorial, 7 November 1807, BL, IOR H.
Misc. 690, pp. 207–43.
8 Bengal Secret Letter to the Court of Directors, 7 December 1807, BL, IOR, L/
PS/5/31.
9 Carey to Fuller, 14 October 1807, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
10 15 September 1807, NLS MSS, 11740, p. 3.
11 Carey to Ryland, 27 April 1808, Northampton Record Office, CSBCA.
12 See, for instance, his letter to Lord Grenville, 15 September 1807, NLS MSS, 11283,
pp. 28–9.
14 Minto to Parry, 2 December 1807, NLS MSS, 11339, pp. 53ff.
15 Memorial, 5 October 1807, NLS MSS, 11366, 81ff, as well as BL, IOR, H. Misc.
690, pp. 137–9.
16 Marshman to Ryland, 7 November 1807, ALRPC, BMS MSS IN/19.
17 Parry to Minto, 9 June 1808, NLS MSS 11338, p. 70.
18 Carey to Fuller, 20 April 1808, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
19 Marshman to Ryland, 7 November 1810, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/19A.
20 R. Dundas letter book, 11 December 1807, NLS MSS, 1063, pp. 199ff.
21 2 November 1807, para. 50, BL, IOR L/PS/5/31.
22 Fuller to Ward, 27 August 1808, Fuler Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
23 Dundas to Minto, 27 December 1808, NLS MSS, 11302, pp. 99–100, and
Parry to Minto, 9 June 1808, NLS MSS 11338, pp. 70–4.
24 Grant to Wilberforce, 16 July 1808, The Correspondence of William Wilberforce, ed. R. I.
and S. Wilberforce, 2 vols (London, 1840), 2, p. 132.
25 ‘A Plan of Constitutional Regulations for the Administration of the British Dominion
in India’, n.d., BL Add. MSS, Hastings Papers, 39892, pp. 34ff.
26 9 July 1808, Bodleian MSS, Eng.hist.c.210, p. 11.
27 Grant to Wilberforce, 16 July 1808, in Wilberforce, Correspondence, 2, pp. 132–3.
28 R. Dundas to the Chairs, 10 August 1808, NLS MSS, 11302, p. 100. See also notes
on Secret Court of Directors, 21 July 1808, Bodleian MSS, Eng.hist.c.210, pp. 11–12
and letter from Grant to Wilberforce, 30 August 1808, Wilberforce, Correspondence, 2,
p. 139.
29 Draft despatch and proposed amendments, BL, IOR, H. Misc. 816, pp. 347–73.
30 Dundas to Minto, 27 December 1807, NLS MSS, 11302, pp. 99–100.
31 Grant to Udny in Morris, Life of Charles Grant (London, 1904), pp. 303–4.
32 Fuller to Ward, 6 February 1809, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
33 R. Dundas Letterbook, 30 April and 27 December 1808, NLS MSS, 1063, pp. 28–9
and 56.
34 Grant and Parry Minute, Secret Court of Directors, 16 August 1808, BL, IOR, L/
PS/1/10.
35 Draft Despatch and amendments, 30 April 1808, BL, IOR, H, Misc. 816, pp. 347–73.
36 Dundas to Minto, 30 April 1808, NLS MSS, 1063, pp. 28–9.
37 Dundas to Minto, 27 December 1808, NLS MSS, 1063, pp. 92–100.
38 Parry to Dundas, 31 August 1808, BL, IOR H. Misc. 816.
39 Grant to Wilberforce, 30 August 1808, Wilberforce, Correspondence, 2, p. 139.
40 Dundas to Parry and Grant, 6 September 1808, BL, IOR, H. Misc. 59.
41 Parry’s and Grant’s Notes on Dundas’s letter of 6 September 1808, BL, IOR, H.
Misc. 59 and Embree, p. 250.
42 J. Dyer to LMS, 10 January 1809, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, Home Office Incoming,
Box 2, Folder 4, Jacket B.
44 J. Thompson’s Journal, 3 June 1811, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India Jour-
nals, Box 1.
45 Carey to Ryland, 2 January 1807, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
46 Madras Public Letter 15 March 1811, para. 290, BL, IOR, E/4/340. Hands’s Journal
of 23 April 1810 cites the letter from the Chief Secretary, SOAS, CWMA, LMS
MSS, South India Journal.
47 Gordon and Lee to LMS, 23 October 1811, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India
(General) Box 1, Folder 3, Jacket C and Cran to the LMS, 10 February 1808, LMS
MSS, South India (General), Box 1, Folder 1, Jacket C.
48 Letter from Hands, April 1810, Desgranges’s Journal, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS
South India Journals, Box 1.
49 Madras Public Letter, 15 March 1811, para. 293, BL, IOR E/4/340 and Board’s
Collections, BL, IOR, F/4/357.
50 Letter from Hands, April 1810, cited in Desgranges’s Journal, SOAS, CWMA, LMS
MSS South India Journals, Box 1.
51 Taylor to LMS, 14 April 1810, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India (General),
52 Ward to Fuller, 21 October 1810, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/17.
53 Desgranges’s Diary, 25 September 1808, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India
Journals.
54 Edmonstone to Marshman, 13 September 1811, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/19A.
55 Carey to Sutcliff, 16–23 August 1810, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
56 Marshman, nn, n.d., 24 September 1811, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/19A.
57 Ward’s Journal, January 1811, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/18.
58 Ward’s Journal, 10 June 1811, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/17.
59 Madras Public letter, 10 January 1812, paras 249–50, BL, IOR E/4/341.
60 Pritchett’s Journal, 28 February 1811, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India Jour-
nals, Box 1. Gordon went by stealth.
61 Pritchett’s Journal, 2 August 1811, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India Journals,
Box 1.
62 Pritchett’s Journal, 21 September, 1811, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India
Journals, Box 1.
63 Edmonstone to Marshman, 23 June 1812, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/21.
64 May to LMS, 21 November 1812, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North India (Bengal)
Box 1, Folder 1, Jacket C.
65 Thompson to LMS, 12 May and 13 June 1812, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South
India (General), Box 1, Folder 3, Jacket D.
66 J. Thompson’s Journal, 9 May 1812, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India Jour-
nals, Box 1.
67 Joint Journal of Gordon and Pritchett, January 1813, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS,
South India Journals, Box 1.
68 For Marshman’s letters to Edmonstone and Ricketts, see ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/21.
69 Pritchett’s Journal, 26 September 1811, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India
Journals, Box 1.
70 Carey to Ryland, 14 April 1813, ALRPC, BMS MSS.

71 Public letter to Madras, 11 January 1809, paras 83–4, BL, IOR E/4/902.
72 30 April 1808, NLS MSS, 1063, 20ff and p. 00, above.
73 Fuller to Carey, Marshman and Ward, 14 February 1814, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
74 Fuller to Thomas and Carey, 25 March–25 May 1794, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
75 Transactions, 2, p. 215.
76 Fuller to Chamberlain, 18 May 1809, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
77 Marshman to Ryland, 24 February 1811, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/19.
78 Hands’s Journal, 24 May 1810, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India Journals,
Box 1.
79 S. Wilberforce, ed., Journals and Letters of Henry Martyn BD, 2 vols (London, 1837), 2,
p. 79.
80 Desgranges’s Diary, 25 September 1808, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS South India
Journals, Box 1.
81 Carey to Fuller, 20 April 1808, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
82 Unsigned, undated letter in ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/13.
83 28 May 1804, NUL, Portland MSS, BP/PwJb/114.
Seven
BATTLE LINES DRAWN: MISSIONS, DISSENT

AND THE ESTABLISHMENT
The present inclination of my mind, [is] to throw open the whole,

and even abolish the East India Company altogether, rather than not
insure a passage for the entrance of light.1 (William Wilberforce)
By 1812, it was clear to the Company that it was under siege once again:
there were numerous interests determined to end its monopoly of trade in
the East. The Company was equally determined to keep interlopers out of
its domains and protected its interests with increasing forcefulness, refusing
licences and insisting that those who managed to enter India illegally be sent
home. We saw in the previous chapter how this had affected missionaries.
With the Company’s charter due for renewal, both missionaries in India and
their friends at home believed the time for legislative action had come.
Initially Wilberforce believed that there should be a partnership between
those wanting to end the Company’s monopoly and the missionary lobby.
In February 1812 he wrote in his diary that those interested in the cause of
religion would probably be compelled ‘to join the great body of commercial
and political economy men, who will I doubt not contend for destroying the
monopoly of the Company, and leaving the road to the East Indies free and
open’.2 However, Grant, as a Director and former Chairman of the Company,
had a very narrow view of the relationship between trade and Christianity.
He was unequivocally against the ending of the Company’s monopoly, fearing
that the opening of India to unlicensed adventurers would be disastrous for
commercial, political and religious reasons. Grant argued that trade had not
improved India and that to open the trade to all comers would ensure that
‘far the greater number would be adventurers of desperate or needy circum-
stances’, whose self-interest would lead to oppression of Indians.3 In his view
there had been examples enough of injustices and cruelties perpetrated on
native peoples, the most dramatic of which was, of course, the slave trade.
In the end, Wilberforce decided not to push the connection. He did not want
Battle Lines Drawn: Missions, Dissent and the Establishment 111
to antagonise the Company in general and Charles Grant in particular. The

Company would probably retain its political power in India and had at least
gone some way in helping missionary activity and acknowledging the sobriety
and character of the missionaries already there. On the other hand, Evan-
gelicals could not afford completely to antagonise traders because many of
them supported religious and humanitarian causes. The outports (provincial
ports) were nervous of allying themselves to the missionary lobby. Fuller told
a friend that they were not only ‘careless about religion but careful to avoid
it, lest it be a clog which might impede their other designs’, despite assurances
from both Spencer Perceval and Lord Buckinghamshire, President of the
Board of Control, that both the import and export trades would be opened
to the principal British ports.4
By early 1812, when the Select Committee to investigate the affairs of the
East India Company was set up, the battle lines had already been drawn in
the pamphlets and articles that had poured out in the wake of the Vellore
mutiny. On the one side, there were a number of ‘old India hands’ and those
who perceived great danger to the Company and India from any increase in
missionary activity, particularly that operated by Dissenters. On the other,
were the Evangelicals of the Church of England and New Dissent, joined by
the Church of Scotland, the Protestant Society for the Protection of Religious
Liberty and the Protestant Dissenting Deputies, all of whom were deter-
mined not to be excluded from India. William Wilberforce and the Clapham
Sect masterminded the tactics of the Evangelical campaign but the role of
Dissenters, particularly the Baptists, should not be overlooked.5 So many
people and organisations were involved that it provides an impressive indi-
cation of the strength of feeling that could be aroused over religious issues
in Britain in the early years of the nineteenth century. The Baptists and the
Missionary Society, whose missionaries were labouring in India, naturally
formed the mainstay of the public campaign. Members of the CMS and
Wesleyan Methodists were also active in lobbying Parliament and mobilising
public support. What is less well known is the significant involvement of Scot-
land, both of its established church and of Scottish Dissenters. The Protestant
Dissenting Deputies, founded in 1732, and the Protestant Society for the
Protection of Religious Liberty (PSPRL), founded 1811, which had been so
energetic in the 1811 campaign against Lord Sidmouth’s proposals to tighten
up abuses of the Toleration Acts, were also very involved. The SPCK was
ambiguous in its support.
Each group had its particular aims. The CMS and SPCK wanted to see
the Church of England actively involved in missionary work and felt that a
full ecclesiastical establishment should be set up in India. The Church of
Scotland, as the other established church of the United Kingdom, felt that
it too should have an ecclesiastical establishment in India, particularly as so
many Company servants were Scots. It was not yet convinced that mission-
aries should go to India. Since the 1790s Scottish Dissenters, however, had
been interested in India as a mission field. The failure of the Haldane mission
proposal in 1796/7 still rankled. The Dissenting Deputies wanted to see the
legal entry of all Protestant sects and denominations to India but felt there
should still be some control over their activities. Finally, the LMS, Baptists,
Wesleyans, Scottish Dissenters and the Protestant Society for the Protection
of Religious Liberty wanted an end to all restrictions on missionary activity
and complete freedom of worship for their church members in India. The
struggle was not only whether or not the East India Company had the right
to determine when and how Christianity should be propagated in India,
a struggle which united all ‘serious’ Christians, but it also concerned what
Christianity should be propagated: that of the Established Church or that
of all Protestant denominations. This, of course, was a matter of religious
toleration. The playing out of this question in the imperial arena also raised
the fundamental question of how far ‘heathen’ religions should be counte-
nanced and protected in British territories. The debate on all these aspects
hinged on perceptions of the condition of Indians under their own religions
and of the unrest that might be unleashed if unrestricted missionary activity
were allowed. The latter question paralleled the concern felt in England that
home ‘missionary’ work practised by Methodists and Dissenters across parish
boundaries might cause political unrest. Thus, the campaign to force the
Company to do more for Christianity in India did not happen in isolation and
cannot be understood simply in terms of a struggle between the opponents
and supporters of missionary activity per se. There were also connections with
other contemporary religious and humanitarian movements and the subject
of the propagation of Christianity in India was being agitated in the midst
of what was primarily an economic struggle over the continuation of the East
India Company’s trading monopoly.
Missions, Dissent and Government
The admission of missionaries into India was but one of a number of political
issues in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which were at least
partly concerned with the relationship of religious dissent with the ‘Constitu-
tion in Church and State’. Dissenters were subject to penal laws in Britain.
In 1689 they were conceded freedom of worship subject to subscribing to an
oath of allegiance, rejecting the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantia-
tion and registering their meeting houses. Preachers had to be licensed and
religious meetings in private houses were not permitted. Although gener-
ously interpreted for much of the eighteenth century, many of the penal
statutes remained. Indemnity Acts pardoning violation of the penal laws were
not much comfort. Dissenters and Methodists were increasingly unhappy
with the disabilities under which they lived. As far as the Government was
concerned, as discussed in Chapter Two, a worrying aspect of the American
and French revolutions had been the involvement of many Dissenters on the
side of civil liberty and the ‘rights of man’. Dissenters were active in sending
peace petitions against the war with France and in the 1812–1813 campaign
against the Orders-in-Council. Much antipathy had been generated by the
Protestant Dissenting Deputies’ campaign to secure the repeal of the Test and
Corporation Acts in 1787. In 1811 Lord Sidmouth decided something had to
be done to prevent men, whom he considered to be low-class and illiterate,
from becoming preachers. He put forward a bill to tighten the licensing laws
and to provide for more Anglican churches.6 Dissenters and Methodists were
not prepared to accept any further curtailment of their religious liberty and
mobilised their troops.
The Protestant Society for the Protection of Religious Liberty was set up
in 1811 to achieve the ‘repeal of every penal law preventing the complete
enjoyment of religious liberty’. It was not coincidental that the Society was
formed in ‘missionary week’, nor that the directors of the LMS formed a
large percentage of its founders. The colonial implications of the struggle
for toleration were acknowledged and it was decided that copies of the peti-
tion against Sidmouth’s proposed bill should be circulated ‘throughout the
empire’. Although open to all Protestants, membership was overwhelmingly
Independent and Calvinist Methodist, probably because the Wesleyans had
their own Committee of Privileges and the Baptists were in the process of
forming their own Baptist Union. By May 1812, 600 congregations were
affiliated to the PSPRL: 139 of them were London congregations. This meant
a large network through which petitions could be elicited very quickly.
Lord Sidmouth’s proposals would have devastated Methodist itinerant
preachers. The Wesleyan Committee of Privileges was, therefore, energetic
in lobbying Government ministers and others in Parliament, and orches-
trating petitions through its network. Two thousand signatures were obtained
in London in three days and within a week messengers had informed every
circuit in the kingdom. Within forty-eight hours 336 petitions were presented
from congregations within 120 miles of London. The combination of the
Wesleyans, the PSPRL and the Protestant Dissenting Deputies was powerful
and achieved 700 petitions to Parliament in under a week, with the signatures
of over 100,000 adult males.7 Correspondence from Dissenters to Earl Grey
shows that only the time factor prevented any more petitions from flooding in
to Parliament.8 The agitation had the desired effect and Sidmouth’s bill was
lost in the Lords, with the Archbishop of Canterbury amongst those against
it. The following year Lord Liverpool’s Government passed a new Toleration
Act (52.Geo.III c.155).
Apart from the difficulties experienced in England and India, Dissenters
were experiencing problems elsewhere in Britain’s possessions. This gave
their involvement in the 1813 campaign to force the East India Company
to do more for missions an urgency it might not otherwise have had. The
East India Company is generally portrayed as being particularly inimical to
Christianity. However, similarity in the attitudes of other imperial gover-
nors can be discerned. In South Africa some Afrikaners strongly objected
to the ‘Hottentots’ being taught Christianity and the LMS had on several
occasions appealed to the British Governor for help and protection. As in
India, governors were cautious. In 1810, for instance, Lord Caledon refused
permission to the LMS missionary, Vanderkemp, ‘to attempt a mission to
the Tanbookers on account of the present state of the colony’ but ‘did not
object to his proceeding westward within the boundaries of the colony’.9 Vos
and Palm of the LMS were ordered to leave Ceylon in 1807 after offending
officials by their zeal.10 In Sierra Leone, a Baptist missionary, Griggs, stirred
up people to oppose the Governor and antagonised the Anglican chaplain.11
The greatest difficulties for Dissenting missionaries were experienced in
the West Indies. In 1802, the Jamaica Assembly passed an ‘Act to prevent
Preaching by Persons Not Duly Qualified by Law’. In words similar to those
used by Sidney Smith in 1808 about Dissenters in India, the Assembly main-
tained that there existed on the island an evil:
which is daily increasing, and threatens much danger to the peace and safety
thereof, by reason of the preaching of ill-disposed, illiterate, or ignorant enthu-
siasts, to meetings of negroes and persons of colour, chiefly slaves, unlaw-
fully assembled, whereby not only the minds of the hearers are perverted with
fanatical notions, but opportunity is afforded them of concerting schemes of
much private and public mischief.12
As a result of the Act, Dissenting places of worship were closed and several
Dissenting preachers were thrown into prison. Methodists and Dissenters
immediately reacted to this trespass of their legal ‘toleration’ and asked
Wilberforce for help in lobbying the Government. In 1804 they discovered
that the offending law was to be replaced by one making the local magistrates
‘judges of a call to preach the Gospel’. Joseph Butterworth MP, the Methodist
solicitor, told Gutteridge of the Committee of Three Denominations that
this ‘would be most destructive to religion there’ because it meant that ‘no
person is to preach unless the civil power think it proper and necessary and
if at any time it is thought proper to silence those who have been qualified, this may
be done!’ Butterworth felt the Dissenters should encourage ‘pious people to
unite in a grand effort to promote the cause of Christianity in a general way’.
However, he also greatly feared that ‘party men’ would use a public struggle
to further their own ‘carnal’ ends and so ‘deeply wound’ religion.13 Fuller felt
that calling out the public would do more harm than good, telling Sutcliff
that ‘the minds of men are sooner influenced by private application’. Both
the Baptists and Dissenting Deputies sent memorials to the Privy Council and
were prepared to address the King on the subject if necessary.14 Events in

Jamaica had made clear to Dissenters that they would have to fight to secure
religious toleration in Britain’s overseas domains.
Further trouble occurred in Demerara, where Wray, the LMS missionary,
was informed that the Demerara ‘Court of Policy’ was determined to expel
him from the country.15 In 1811 the situation deteriorated still further when the
Governor issued a proclamation forbidding the negroes from assembling for
worship between the hours of sunrise and sunset, which effectively prevented
them from receiving religious instruction.16 Dissenting leaders lobbied
members of Government in private letters and interviews and besieged the
Colonial Office, pointing out the respectability of their preachers and how
their work ‘contributed in no small degree to the peace and safety of the
British Empire’.17 All this was going on while Dissenters were experiencing
difficulties with their missionaries in India. Dissenting leaders were successful
in persuading Lord Liverpool, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies,
to order the repeal of one of the ‘obnoxious’ laws. As early as 1799 he had
written to the LMS ‘intimating he should be happy to render the society any
service in his power’. True to his word he helped the LMS in 1804 and again
in 1811 over its problems in Demerara and Africa.18 Liverpool’s attitude was
to be crucial in 1813 when Dissenters tried to force the Company to do more
for their missionaries in India at the renewal of the charter.
While there are important differences in the examples given above, one
factor is constant. The primary concern of the British government and local
officials was political stability. The Government listened to white settlers in
the West Indies and South Africa, who feared that Christianity might bring
with it demands for political liberty. Tracts came under particular suspicion.
In India the fears were not so much that Indians might demand their freedom,
but that unrest might be unleashed from the attachment of Indians to their
own religions. The fact that many regarded Dissenting missionaries as ill-
educated and fanatical, whose political loyalty to the Establishment could be
challenged and who seemed to be impinging on the rightful place of Anglican
chaplains created difficulties for the LMS and BMS. The opportunity at the
renewal of the East India Company’s charter to demand the right to send
missionaries and ministers to India was one Dissenters were determined not
to miss. The success or failure of the Dissenting demands in India would
also have important implications for the work of Dissenting missionaries
elsewhere.
It was essential for Dissenters and other Evangelicals to win the key minis-
ters over if they were to have any success at all in overcoming Company objec-
tions to missionary activity. However, Lord Buckinghamshire, President of
the Board of Control, was not prepared to change the existing regulations.19
Lord Castlereagh was to prove important in enabling the missionary lobby
to gain much of what they desired. He had been President of the Board of
Control under Addington in 1802 and had supported Lord Wellesley against
the Court of Directors and the Cabinet. He was Foreign Secretary, 1812–
1822, and led the House of Commons after Spencer Perceval’s assassination
in 1812. He seemed to have taken on board the 1803 warning of his Private
Secretary, Alexander Knox, that Evangelicals had become very powerful.
Knox’s advice to Lord Castlereagh encapsulates the growing sense amongst
Ministers that it would be unwise to alienate this large religious body unnec-
essarily. He wrote:
For a hundred years, at least, there has not been so much attention given to
religious matters as is at this time by numbers in the middle ranks of society
in England. Of these many are Dissenters, but many are also in the Establish-
ment. Both descriptions are like denominated methodistical.… Of this extended
class the political importance is much greater than any one slightly informed
respecting them can conceive an idea of. In the first place, they have a common
sentiment, which if, engaged on the side of Government, would be an impreg-
nable mass of strength; but if unhappily revolted, alienated, or even chilled,
the negative injury would be immense, to say nothing of positive bad effects.20
Lord Liverpool, who was Prime Minister when the new charter was
debated in Parliament, had similar opinions. He privately told Lord Sidmouth
that he would not object to his proposals to tighten up the Test and Corpora-
tion Acts if they could be ‘carried with the consent or acquiescence of the
Dissenters’. However, the flood of petitions into Parliament indicated that
this was impossible and he doubted whether it would be judicious ‘consid-
ering the flames which appear to be rising on this occasion’.21 He believed
the country had ‘felt the advantages of the Dissenters’ conduct for the past
fifteen years’ and also did not want Protestant Dissent to ally with Roman
Catholics in order to achieve religious liberty. Parliament’s response to the
1811 Dissenting petitions demonstrates that important figures in the Estab-
lishment were not prepared to alienate this large body of ‘respectable’ citi-
zens. Dissenters themselves were convinced that their petitions had had an
electric effect on Parliament. Andrew Fuller wrote that ‘our Churchmen are
ready to die of fear’. He attributed this to the ‘astonishing influx of petitions’
which made it seem ‘as if half the nation had arisen’ and even carried the
Archbishop of Canterbury along with ‘the tide of public opinion’.22 The
petitions frightened the Archbishop, who maintained in the House of Lords
that he was ‘sure coercion was not only impolitic but impracticable’ in this
case and pointed out that ‘the very basis of toleration depended on abstaining
from the attempt’. Lord Liverpool similarly questioned whether the object
sought by the bill was worth ‘the inconvenience arising from the agitation and
alarm that had prevailed since the measure had been before the House’.23 By
1813 Lord Liverpool’s administration was feeling its way towards some kind
of broad accommodation with Dissent. The aim was to bring ‘respectable
Dissent’ into a cooperative relationship by giving it a stake in society without

conceding anything vital to the Church of England. What this stake should be
was a matter for negotiation with the leaders of Dissent and their patrons like
Wilberforce. Petitions played an important part in this system of ‘negotiation’.
They were to some degree at least a warning light for public order, which
was a real concern for governments in the 1810s. The French wars were still
going on and the Luddite riots were a recent memory. Government was under
siege from demands for parliamentary reform, religious toleration for Catho-
lics and Dissenters, peace and various economic issues. The Dissenters were
numerous, and were economically and, increasingly, politically powerful.
Lord Liverpool had come to the same conclusion as Lord Castlereagh that
inclusion, not exclusion, was the way forward in Government’s relationship
with Dissenters. Inclusion would keep the Dissenters quiescent and, in his
view, make it easier to control their activities.
The success of the Dissenters in 1811 in stopping Lord Sidmouth’s bill and
a Toleration Act the following year was a high point for non-Anglican morale
and demonstrated the aggressive spirit of Dissent when it felt its vital interests
were at stake. The confidence gained by this victory led Dissenting leaders
to carry on the battle to repeal various aspects of the Test and Corporation
Acts and to campaign to ensure that they had equal rights with the Church
of England in India. On 24 April 1812 the Protestant Dissenting Deputies
decided to lobby Parliament to obtain ‘legal security’ for Dissenting mission-
aries to go to India.24 The hope was that, once the point was gained, the
principle would be extended to all British dependencies, not just India. The
1813 renewal of the Company’s charter was an important test for Dissenters
and one which aroused as much emotion and determination to protect their
‘rights’ as had the 1811 campaign against Lord Sidmouth’s attempt to tighten
up the application of the Test and Corporation Acts.
The Established Church
For some time the Established Church had been nervous about the rise of
Dissent in the UK and abroad. The SPG had been set up as much to counter
the influence of Protestant Dissent as it had been to propagate the Gospel
amongst the Indians of America. The first Anglican colonial Episcopate was
established in Nova Scotia in 1787. Pressure behind its establishment was at
least in part due to the desire to ensure that the Church of England would
make greater headway than Dissenters. As far as India was concerned, hith-
erto the Anglican hierarchy had been distinctly lukewarm. While the Church
hierarchy was happy for the SPCK to support a few German missionaries
and for a small increase in Company chaplains, it seemed nervous of sending
out British missionaries to convert India. The small increases in the numbers
of Company chaplains that had been granted over the past twenty years had
been at the instigation of Grant and Parry, the Evangelical Chairs. Judging
by the debates at the 1793 renewal of the Company’s charter, Anglican prel-
ates seem to have been more in tune with Company opponents of missionary
activity than with Anglican Evangelicals.
Grant, Wilberforce and Parry knew that they needed the support of the
Church establishment. However, their links with Evangelical Dissenters made
them suspect in the eyes of the bishops. Wilberforce and Grant were deter-
mined to do something about increasing antipathy to missionary activity and
took up an LMS idea that a society should be formed to provide bibles for
the poor at home. In 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society (B&FBS) was
formed with the aim of disseminating the bible without note or comment
both at home and abroad. Bishop Beilby Porteus of London stressed that
distributing the Bible was not missionary activity and that it could be seen
as ‘the safest, & easiest, & least expensive way of propagating Christianity in
foreign and heathen countries’.25 Its president was Lord Teignmouth and its
vice-president was Charles Grant. The links with India were thus very clear.
The founders of the Society deliberately aimed at attracting the aristocracy
and Episcopate to its ranks. The tactics worked and large numbers of people
came to believe in the utility of the B&FBS. Some, like Nicholas Vansittart,
Chancellor of the Exchequer 1812–1823, believed that in the long term,
cooperation between Church and Dissent would be ‘one of the most effica-
cious means of lessening both the political and religious evils of dissent’. Vansittart
did not want it to be said that ‘the DISSENTERS ALONE have carried the
word of God to every nation under heaven’. According to Revd John Owen,
the B&FBS Secretary, Vansittart also felt that if Churchmen withdrew from
the society and left it to the Dissenters:
it would be fraught with inevitable mischief … because there can then be
no check to any sectarian spirit which might introduce itself, and it must be
unavoidably irritated by so harsh and I think so unjust an indication of jeal-
ousy.26
Others were induced to support the Bible Society for the same reason that
they supported the Society for the Reformation of Manners, Sunday schools,
and Hannah More’s cheap tracts. Even the most sceptical felt that religion
had an important role to play in improving the morals and behaviour of the
poor. The Society was so successful that it obtained royal patronage and by
1810 eleven bishops and two Irish archbishops were subscribers. What is
even more interesting is that members of the Society included Warren Hast-
ings, Lord Liverpool, Lord Castlereagh and Lord Moira, who was to become
Governor-General of India in 1813.
This influential support was not, however, the whole picture. Other
bishops and High Churchmen were virulently opposed to it. It was even
argued that B&FBS auxiliaries had been responsible for the petitions against
Lord Sidmouth’s 1811 bill against Dissenters. Between 1805 and 1822 more
than 170 pamphlets were written against the B&FBS, most of them by High
Church clergy, who argued that the society had set itself up in opposition
to the SPCK. They objected to its interdenominational constitution and its
effect on Church order. They expressed great fears that Dissenters would gain
control of it.27 Liverpool regarded as politically blind those who favoured
exclusion. For this reason, he regretted the line, which many of the ‘digni-
fied clergy’ and others took over the Bible Society. In 1820, as President of
his local Bible Society he told an unnamed correspondent that he felt caught
between two fires. On the one hand, he had always defended the Methodists;
on the other, he was a loyal Churchman and had a ‘horror of the doctrines
of Calvinism’ and believed their opinions erroneous. Nevertheless,
Considering the numerous religious sects into which this empire is divided, it
was an object in my opinion to unite them into one focus … for the circulation
of the Scriptures … it would have been much wiser for the Bishops to have
placed themselves at the head of these institutions, than to have to run the risk
of their falling into the hands of Dissenters.28
It is a testament to their leadership that Dissenters held back and effec-

tive control was left in the hands of Churchmen. Dissenters could see that in
order to gain widespread support and to get the patronage of the men who
made the decisions in the country, the Society should appear to originate
from the Establishment. Both Church and Dissent had much to gain from
the alliance and for this reason, it not only held but grew. The Society was
important for the Indian question because it supported the Baptist transla-
tions at Serampore and the work in India was reported to its members. It
provided a largely acceptable way for Dissenters and Churchmen to coop-
erate in the task of propagating Christianity. In 1813, in line with its policy of
remaining as uncontentious as possible, forced on it by the opposition of some
High Churchmen, the B&FBS did not officially take part in the campaign
to open India to missionaries. However, many of its leaders and members
were also active members of the various missionary societies and the Bible
Society auxiliaries were one of the networks through which it was possible to
reach the ‘religious public’. Perhaps its greatest value for the missionary lobby
was that it provided a transitional stage for those reluctant to support overt
missionary activity. Both Lords Wellesley and Minto had been persuaded
that the dissemination of the Scriptures in India was the least a Christian
governor could do. After 1813, B&FBS auxiliaries were set up in India and
were supported by many Company officials. Bible Society tactics had been
largely successful.
At the same time as championing the Bible Society, Wilberforce and his
Evangelical friends strove to convince the Church hierarchy of their Anglican
credentials by putting forward plans for a proper ecclesiastical establishment

for India. Dissenters were justifiably concerned about this. We saw in the
previous chapter how Brown and Buchanan had attempted to control the
Serampore translations and how they had succeeded in having the B&FBS
allowance removed from the Baptists. To persuade the current Government,
the Established Church and the East India Company to do more for Chris-
tianity in India was a monumental task, which would need all the skills the
missionary lobby could muster.
The Evangelical Ground Prepared
Many pamphlets had been written against missionary activity in India during
the emotive years following the 1806 Vellore mutiny. However, the missionary
societies had their own well-oiled publicity machines, which were able to help
turn the tide against them in 1813. The new missionary societies followed the
example of the nationwide anti-slave trade network and set up corresponding
societies. Later, fully-fledged missionary associations were established. These
were deliberately set up as an efficient means for disseminating information
and soliciting funds from large numbers of people. By 1813 the associations
could be described as a sort of national religious network. In addition, the
missionary lobby was able to draw on existing Dissenting organisations, espe-
cially the Committee of the Three Denominations, the Wesleyan Committee
of Privileges, and the recently formed Protestant Society for the Protection of
Religious Liberty (1811). These groups were able to mobilise massive support
quickly and were used to lobbying Parliament.
By 1813, through the efforts of the missionary societies, the religious
public had come to a considerable awareness of the plight of the ‘heathen’
throughout the world. A number of influential religious periodicals were
started in the late eighteenth century which contained articles on India: the
Moravian Periodical Accounts, the Arminian Magazine in 1771, the Evangelical
Magazine in 1793, the Missionary Magazine in 1796 and the Christian Observer in
1802. The circulation of these periodicals was impressive and cost half the
price of secular periodicals.29 The most influential religious publication as far
as India was concerned was the Baptist Periodical Accounts, which contained
long extracts from the letters and journals of the Baptist missionaries in India.
The Baptist missionary committee ensured that these were not only distrib-
uted to each Baptist church but also to anyone of influence they thought
might be able to help. Many copies were distributed free. However, the Peri-
odical Accounts harmed as well as helped the cause because the Baptist leaders,
in their innocence, published details of opposition to conversion encountered
by the missionaries. Revd Sidney Smith made use of this information to
belittle the Baptist efforts and to demonstrate that they were destabilising.
While this harmed the cause in the short term, in the long term the images
of the degraded Hindu and such horrifying customs as sati, were those that
remained in the public mind. Another influential publication was Claudius
Buchanan’s Christian Researches in Asia. Published in Cambridge in 1811, it
achieved nine editions in two years and described his travels and findings on
the state of Christianity in the East. Buchanan’s account of Jagannath, which
described pilgrims being crushed to death by the idol cart, captured the public
imagination and aroused indignation against the Company’s involvement in
collecting pilgrim taxes and policing such festivals.
Linked to the various articles published in the religious periodicals were
missionary sermons, which reached a wider audience than publications alone
would achieve. The annual missionary week in London was made into a
festive occasion and was so popular that entry had to be restricted by ticket.
In 1810, Buchanan claimed that there were 2000 people at the CMS annual
meeting.30 In addition to sermons in missionary week, the missionary societies
sent out their best and most energetic speakers on fund-raising tours of the
country. Collections were often very large and the poor seem to have given
freely. Missionary boxes were placed in Sunday schools and churches and
penny-a-week and juvenile associations were formed to tap an even wider
public. It was soon decided to consolidate this local interest by forming
auxiliary missionary societies, including ladies’ and juvenile associations.31
The auxiliary societies and associations were invaluable not only as channels
through which to awaken more and more people but also as a considerable
source of funds.
By 1812 the key political and clerical figures had been lobbied and the
Church of England, through the SPCK, had accepted the necessity of doing
more for Christianity in India and had not come out in decided opposition
to Dissenting demands. General interest had been aroused in the question
by the incessant propaganda of the missionary societies and a number of
energetic individuals. This propaganda was stepped up. Claudius Buchanan
was asked by the CMS to revamp his 1805 Memoir of an Ecclesiastical Estab-
lishment as a proposal for a full colonial ecclesiastical establishment, which it
was hoped would make the proposals for India seem even more acceptable
to the Established Church.32 The Baptist, Robert Hall, was similarly asked to
prepare a pamphlet forcibly presenting the case for unrestricted missionary
access to India.33 Josiah Pratt, the CMS Secretary, prepared his plans for a
magazine to be devoted entirely to missionary matters, The Missionary Register.
This magazine would keep its readers closely in touch with the parliamentary
campaign. Thus, by the end of the year, Evangelicals had made formidable
preparations for the subsequent parliamentary battle.
Battle Commences
On 15 February 1812 William Wilberforce, echoing his words to Wellesley of

1806, wrote to Joseph Butterworth, the prominent Methodist MP, that he had:
long been looking forward to the period of the renewal of the East India
Company’s charter, as to a great era when I hoped that it would please God to
enable the friends of Christianity to be the instruments of wiping away what I
have long thought, next to the Slave Trade, the foulest blot on the moral char-
acter of our country – the suffering of our fellow subjects … in the East Indies,
to remain, without any effort on our part to enlighten and reform them, under
the grossest, the darkest and most depraving system of idolatrous superstition
that almost ever existed upon earth.34
Thus, he signified his determination to lead the pro-missionary cause in

Parliament. The energy he devoted to this cause was extraordinary, particu-
larly considering the number of other issues with which he found the time to
deal. He gave political breakfasts and dinners and lobbied influential clerics,
Ministers, lords and MPs. Letters from him flew around the country, urging
people to action. He also wrote for publication and suggested the draft clauses
for the new charter.35
Wilberforce’s letter to Butterworth is important because it sets the tone of
the campaign, describes the difficulties Wilberforce envisaged and outlines
the strategy he felt would have to be adopted. He was not sanguine about
victory in the House of Commons, and told Butterworth that ‘if the unbi-
ased judgement of the House of Commons were to decide the question,
fatal indeed would be the issue’. Wilberforce, therefore, expressed his belief
that ‘the whole force of the religious world’ would have to be mobilised.
Wilberforce wrote to Joseph Hardcastle, another important Methodist who
was also treasurer to the LMS, in the same vein the same day. Hardcastle
was not convinced and asked Wilberforce if it would not be ‘undesirable to
agitate the religious part of the community … if the end could be obtained
by a more calm and private process’. He told him that if the Dissenters and
Methodists could be assured that the Government would provide for the free
admission of all missionaries to India, they would ‘abstain from all further
proceedings on the subject’.36
Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect were aware that the tactic of mobi-
lising large numbers of the public had its dangers. The Church and secular
Establishment might well be alienated and the work they had put in over
the years to establish the respectability of the Church Missionary Society in
particular and the missionary movement in general might be undone. The
banker and MP, Henry Thornton, told Hannah More that ‘various doubts
and difficulties’ perplexed them and they debated ‘whether to excite meet-
ings and petitions amongst the religious world’.37 Thornton, Wilberforce’s
cousin, was an important figure in the campaign, treasurer to the CMS and
the B&FBS. He was a close friend of Charles Grant and took a great interest
in Indian affairs. Indeed, Revd Claudius Buchanan had entered Cambridge
University as a result of his bounty.
As in 1793, Wilberforce realised that he needed the support of as many
influential members of the bishops and clergy as possible. Without this, it
would be virtually impossible to get the secular establishment to support, or
at the very least, not to be antipathetic to the missionary cause. At this point,
the Anglican hierarchy appeared either unwilling or uninterested in seeing
the Church of England active in missionary activity. The bishops had held
aloof from the Church Missionary Society, which had been set up expressly
‘on the Church principle’ in the hope that this antipathy to missions would
be overcome.38 As was discussed earlier, many Churchmen and politicians
were hostile to missionary activity at home and abroad, which they regarded
as dangerous and distasteful religious enthusiasm.39
The tensions inherent in the relationships between Church Evangelicals
and Dissenters were to come to the fore over the ensuing months as they
worked together to try to force the Company to do more for Christianity
in India. Church Evangelical links with Dissent were a grave obstacle to be
overcome if they were to persuade the Established Church to commit itself
to the cause. Wilberforce, therefore, asked Dissenters and Methodists to hold
back from any public action until he had managed to persuade ‘a considerable
party of the Church of England to interest themselves on the occasion’. This
was first and foremost a question of tactics but it also represented his convic-
tion that the Church of England should assume the leading role. Wilberforce
further requested that the Methodists and Dissenters postpone their demand
for a repeal of the Conventicle Act40 because:
Such a discussion would infallibly produce a violent contest between all the
high Churchmen, and the Methodists and all classes of Dissenters; and when
once the two parties should be arrayed against each other, I fear they would
continue to oppose each other on the East Indian Instruction subject, as well
as on the other.41
It is to the credit of Dissenters and Methodists that they were prepared to

hold back because they were not without considerable misgivings. They knew
that Wilberforce supported Buchanan’s proposals for an ecclesiastical estab-
lishment in India and wanted provision for this in the new charter. They also
knew that Wilberforce was keen to see the SPCK more active in India and the
CMS start work there. In addition, the attempts of the Evangelical Company
chaplains to control the Baptists, outlined in the previous chapter, had hardly
given the Dissenters grounds for confidence. The Dissenting leaders of the
missionary lobby recognised that the Church of England had a privileged
position as the established church but were determined to have ‘toleration’ for
themselves in addition to any concessions that might be granted to the Church

of England. Fuller of the Baptists, however, also realised that they were in
danger of losing all through Church/Dissent rivalry. He told Ward that he
had warned Wilberforce that Church Evangelicals, in suspecting Dissenters
of undermining the Church, and Dissenters, in suspecting Evangelicals of
‘working to contract the toleration’, were in danger of being like the mouse
and frog in the fable, so busy brandishing their spears at one another that
the opposition would be the winners.42 Wilberforce himself was aware that
these tensions were affecting support for the campaign. He wrote in his diary
that he was ‘sadly disappointed in finding even religious people so cold about
the East Indian Instruction’ and partly attributed this to ‘the sectaries having
had a notion that the Church of England [was] to be established’ there.43
Wilberforce had to reassure the Baptist, John Ryland, that there was ‘room
enough in the East for all Denominations of xtians and that it would be my
earnest endeavour to have free scope for the executing of all’.44
The Baptists, LMS and Methodist leaders acquiesced in Wilberforce’s
strategy. Other campaigns had taught them that much could be gained
through backdoor lobbying and that unless sufficient numbers of the Estab-
lishment were prepared to be sympathetic, their cause would be lost. Although
Methodists and Dissenters had the organisational framework through which
to mobilise large numbers of people rapidly as they had done for abolition
of the slave trade and repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, the weight of
‘public opinion’ on its own had never yet forced Parliament to pass legislation.
They knew that they needed Wilberforce’s political weight in Parliament in
order to persuade it that there was no political danger in the measure and
that, on balance, it was in its interests to make some concessions. There was
a difficult task ahead.
Wilberforce, the missionary societies and other interested groups therefore
concentrated first on the traditional method of lobbying influential members
of the Establishment. In an attempt to mobilise the Church, Wilberforce
asked Revd Thomas Gisborne to write a short pamphlet that would stir the
clergy.45 Wilberforce himself wrote an article for the Christian Observer46 ‘urging
clergymen to come forward and press the communication of Christian light to
the natives of India’.47 He talked to bishops and influential laymen. He badg-
ered the SPCK and in May, along with Thomas Babington MP and Zachary
Macaulay, Governor of Sierra Leone 1793–1799, and Thomas Thompson,
the Methodist MP, was summoned to attend a special meeting chaired by
the Archbishop of Canterbury on the subject.48 Wilberforce ensured that the
SPCK was aware of Buchanan’s 1805 Memoir of the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical
Establishment for British India.
A letter from Archdeacon Pott, secretary of the SPCK East India Com-
mittee, tells us more of the activity behind the scenes at the SPCK. Pott
thought that the Society should petition Parliament but Porteus, the Bishop
of London, had vetoed this, pointing out that the SPCK was not a corpo-
rate body but a group of private individuals. The Bishop suggested instead
a memorial to the East India Company and Edward Parry was invited to
attend the East India Committee of the SPCK to give advice. According to
Pott, Parry gave the Committee ‘no encouragement in applying to Parlia-
ment’ and seemed to regard the whole of India as the private estate of the
Company’. Parry’s loyalty to the Company had taken precedence over his
concern for Christianity in India. Pott was shattered by Parry’s attitude and
told Wilberforce that, as a result, ‘all designs which I had conceived were
quite broken’. Eventually Parry induced the committee to follow ‘his advice
of contenting ourselves with a memorial returning thanks for favour and
requesting support for the missions in connection with the Society with the
permission to enlarge them if we should find the means’.49 Parry’s attitude at
the SPCK meeting seems a complete volte face from the impassioned support
he had given the missionary cause after the Vellore mutiny and the ensuing
pamphlet war. However, Parry and Grant were staunch supporters of the
Company’s monopoly and believed that opening the doors of India to all
and sundry would not only be injurious to the Company’s trade but also
harmful to the Indian people. They did not want to jeopardise the Company’s
interests.
Through the intervention of Pott and pressure from Wilberforce nine reso-
lutions, setting out the case for a full-scale ecclesiastical establishment, were
approved by the SPCK at the end of June 1812 for dissemination to the
Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the President of the Board
of Control, and the Directors of the East India Company. Five hundred
copies of the resolutions were also printed for the use of MPs.50 According to
Pott, the resolutions were Wilberforce’s ‘child’ and both Pott and Wilberforce
regarded the SPCK involvement as an important milestone. They felt that the
involvement of this influential body in the Church of England firmly placed
the Church of England on the side of the principle that Christianity should be
brought to the peoples of India.51 On the other hand, the SPCK resolutions
confirmed the apprehensions of Dissenters because they made it quite clear
that this was only a plea for an Anglican episcopal establishment in India. The
SPCK also seemed to eschew active proselytism, speaking instead of inducing
the ‘natives’ to become Christians ‘by the silent but persuasive pattern of reli-
gious fellowship, and the sober invitations of a settled ministry’.52 The SPCK
position was ambiguous but at least it had not come out in direct opposition
to Dissenting claims.
Wilberforce did not confine his efforts to trying to rouse the Church of
England. He also had a part in the involvement of the Church of Scotland
in the campaign. As early as February 1812, he had spoken to Cunninghame
of Lainshaw, who had served in India, to persuade the General Assembly
of the Church of Scotland to take up the cause of Christianising India.53
In 1796 the General Assembly had declined to set up a missionary society

fearing that it would be a hotbed of political radicalism. Its opinion had not
changed in 1813.54 However, they were many Scots in India and the Church
of Scotland did not want to be left out of the running. It was determined
to have its own ecclesiastical establishment. In addition to persuading the
established churches to take an interest in Christianity in India, Wilberforce,
together with other involved groups, lobbied key Government Ministers. The
Protestant Society for the Protection of Religious Liberty and the LMS sent
petitions to Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister. The LMS decided to peti-
tion Parliament and the Prince Regent and to memorialise the Board of
Control. The CMS held a public meeting and sent a deputation to Perceval,
led by Lord Gambier. After Spencer Perceval’s death, deputations waited on
Lord Liverpool. Although all these actions appeared to have been carried
out individually, they were in fact coordinated. On 15 April, Wilberforce
had met in conference with interested parties at Joseph Butterworth’s and, in
line with Wilberforce’s tactic of separating the activities of Churchmen from
those of Methodists and Dissenters, it was decided that the different sects
should separately approach Perceval and ‘the chief members in the House
of Commons’ and separately ‘inform the minds of their people every where
throughout the country’.55 There was close liaison between the Saints, the
Methodists and Dissenters.
Perceval seems to have been somewhat ambivalent in his attitude. Wilber-
force thought that he was favourable to the missionary cause. However,
Andrew Fuller found him distinctly lukewarm, Perceval telling him that he
did not want to bring the question of religious rights into discussion and
furthermore, ‘as the charter wd allow various privileges to traders, he thought
it must extend protection to them all, amongst whom religious people wd be
included’.56 Lord Liverpool, who succeeded Perceval after his assassination on
11 May 1812, was a staunch supporter of the Established Church and was
in favour of an ecclesiastical establishment for India. He also seemed to have
some sympathy with missionary activity as he was a member of the Society for
the Conversion of the Negroes and had helped Dissenters with their problems
in the West Indies. According to Claudius Buchanan, the CMS deputation,
who met him in July 1812, shortly after he had come to power, was delighted
with its reception. The deputation felt that Liverpool had offered ‘almost
more than they had wished’ by intimating his intention to grant licences
for missionaries from the Board of Control, to consecrate bishops for India
and to establish a seminary at each Presidency for instructing ‘natives’ for
the ministry.57 The East India Company was publically quiet on the matter.
It knew that it was fighting for its continued existence, let alone preserving
its monopoly of trade. It was in dire financial straits and had to petition the
ministry for a loan of £2.5 million. The Court of Directors was split into two
antagonistic groups. The majority group was under the leadership of Hugh
Inglis and Robert Thornton as Chairs and wanted to be conciliatory towards

Lord Buckinghamshire and the ministry. The other group, under Charles
Grant, was determined to yield nothing to either the government or private
traders. Buckinghamshire, the President of the Board of Control, was very
hostile to the Company, having been recalled as Governor of Madras in 1798
by the Court of Directors, who then cavilled at granting him a pension.58
The Whigs were uncompromisingly hostile to the Company. Despite Lord
Buckinghamshire’s statement that he would do nothing to change the rules
to make life easier for missionaries, it seemed that Evangelicals had grounds
for hope in an Evangelical victory when the charter came up for renewal the
following year.
Notes
1 R. I. and S. Wilberforce, Life of William Wilberforce, 5 vols (London, 1838), 4, p. 14.

2 Wilberforce, Life, 4, p. 14.
3 Parliamentary Debates (PD), 28 April 1813, 25, 1092–3 and A. T. Embree, Charles Grant
and British Rule in India (London, 1962), pp. 264–5.
4 Fuller to Hinton, 16 July 1812, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
5 A discussion of the conduct of this campaign can be found in the following: F.
K. Brown, Fathers of the Victorians (Cambridge, 1961); E. M. Howse, Saints in Politics
(Toronto, Ont., 1952); I. Bradley, ‘The Politics of Godliness: Evangelicals in Parlia-
ment 1784–1832’, unpublished D.Phil. (Oxford, 1974) and A. K. Davidson, Evangeli-
cals and Attitudes to India (Aberdeen, 1990). Only Davidson’s work recognises the role
of the Dissenters in the ‘success’ of 1813 and none discuss the significance of this as
part of the battle to secure religious toleration for Dissenters.
6 PD, 9 May 1811, 19, cols 128–33.
7 H. B. Whittaker, ‘Revival of Dissent, 1800–1835’, unpublished M.Litt. (Cambridge,
1959), pp. 120 and 134.
8 Brunton to Grey, 28 May 1811, Durham University Library, Grey MSS.
9 LMS Minute Book 5/6, 23 July 1810, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS.
10 Reports of the Missionary Society from its Formation in the Year 1795 to 1814 Inclusive (London,
1814), p. 292.
11 Fuller to Carey, 11 October 1796, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
12 ‘Papers about Persecution arising from the Act of Assembly 1802’, contained in BMS
MSS, H4. See p. 82 above for Sidney Smith’s remarks.
13 Butterworth to Gutteridge, 3 May 1804, ALRPC, BMS MSS, H4.
14 Fuller to Sutcliff, 10 May 1804, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
15 LMS Minute Book 3/4, 25 July 1808, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS.
16 LMS Minute book 5/6, 12 August 1811, LMS MSS.
17 Butterworth to Gutteridge, 26 May 1804, ALRPC, BMS MSS, H/4.
18 Board Minutes, 15 May 1799 and 16 September 1811, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS,
Box 1/2 and 3/4.
19 Fuller to Ward, 5 March 1813, ALRPC, BMS MSS, Home Correspondence H1.
20 Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh, ed. by his brother, 4 vols (London,
1840), 4, p. 290.
21 Liverpool to Sidmouth, 20 May 1811, Devon County Record Office, Sidmouth

Papers, C 1811/OE, 152M.
22 Fuller to Ward, 7 October. 1811, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
23 PD, 21 May 1811, 20, 242 and 233.
24 Bernard Manning, The Protestant Dissenting Deputies (Cambridge, 1952), p. 431.
25 ‘Occasional Memorandums and Reflections on Several Subjects Principally Reli-
gious, Morale, Ecclesiastical, and Literary, begun in the Year 1777’, 20 July 1805,
Lambeth Palace Library, MSS 2101, p. 113. It was commonly referred to as the ‘Bible
Society’.
26 J. Owen, The History of the British and Foreign Bible Society (1816–20), 3 vols, 2, 147–8.
The B&FBS Papers, now the Bible Society Archives (BSA) are held in Cambridge
University Library.
27 A collection of these pamphlets is held in the CUL, BSA.
28 Liverpool to unnamed, 26 September 1820, BL Add. MSS, 38287, pp. 272–8.
29 For circulation figures, see R. D. Altick, The English Common Reader (London, 1957), p.
392.
30 E. Stock, The History of the CMS, 4 vols (London, 1899–1916), 1, p. 112.
31 For a very detailed discussion of the methods used to arouse the public, see A. K.
Davidson, ‘The Development and Influence of the British Missionary Movement’s
Attitude towards India 1786–1830’, unpublished PhD (Aberdeen, 1973).
32 C. Buchanan, Colonial Ecclesiastical Establishment (London, 1813).
33 R. Hall, Address to the Public on an Important Subject Connected with the Renewal of the Charter
of the East India Company (London, 1813). Hall was a Baptist theologian and activist.
He was a keen abolitionist and defender of religious liberty.
34 Wilberforce, Life, 4, 10–11.
35 Wilberforce, Life, 4, 10–23 and 94–126.
36 Wilberforce to Butterworth, 15 February 1812, Life, 4, 10–11.
37 Copy letter dated 25 April 1812, Thornton Papers, CUL Add. MSS, 7674/1/L5, p.
86.
38 J. H. Pratt, Eclectic Notes 1798–1814 (London, 1856), p. 97.
40 The Conventicle Act of 1664 forbade non-Anglican religious gathering of more than
five persons.
42 Fuller to Ward, 7 October 1811, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
44 Wilberforce to Ryland, 3 June 1812, Bristol Baptist College MSS.
46 A monthly periodical launched in 1802 to represent Evangelical opinion.
48 SPCK Minutes, 1811–13. General meeting, 5 May 1812, Rhodes House (RH), SPCK
MSS.
49 Pott to Wilberforce, n.d., Bodleian Library, Wilberforce MSS, d.14, pp. 124–7.
50 A copy of the resolutions voted on 23 June 1812 is held in the Devon County Record
Office, Sidmouth papers, MSC1812 OA.
51 Pott to Wilberforce, Wilberforce, Life, 4, p. 22.
52 Resolution V, Devon County Record Office, Sidmouth Papers, MSC1812OA.
55 Wilberforce, Life, 4, p. 15 and Fuller to Marshman, 15 May 1812, Fuller Letters,

ALRPC, BMS MSS.
56 Fuller to Marshman, 15 May 1812, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
57 H. Pearson, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev Claudius Buchanan DD, 2 vols
(Oxford, 1817), 1, p. 282.
58 C. H. Philips, The East India Company 1780–1834 (Manchester, 1940), p. 183.
Eight
THE 1813 RENEWAL OF THE COMPANY’S

CHARTER: THE RELIGIOUS PUBLIC TAKES
ON THE COMPANY
Next to the Slave Trade, I have long thought our making no effort to
introduce the Blessings of religious and moral improvement among
our subjects in the East, the greatest of our National crimes.
(William Wilberforce)1
The Parliamentary Battle
By January 1813 Evangelicals were ‘all on the alert to besiege Govern-

ment and perhaps Parliament for a clause in favour of missions or for liberty
to send missionaries, and security when arrived’.2 The Company had not
been idle either and was determined to hold on to its right to determine who
should enter its territories. The Baptist leaders waited on Lord Liverpool
early in February. In distinct contrast to his reception of the CMS deputa-
tion in July 1812, Liverpool’s words gave little comfort. Church Evangeli-
cals had been conciliatory and had stressed their loyalty to the Established
Church. Dissenters demanded more and threatened Liverpool with a public
petitioning campaign. It also seems likely that by this time the East India
Company had lobbied him to ensure that he did not weaken on the matter
of licences. Liverpool was well informed about events in India. He was also
related to Prendergast and Ricketts, two of the missionaries’ staunchest oppo-
nents. Liverpool pointed out some of the Baptist indiscretions. He made
it clear that he believed, along with most Company officials, that ‘British
continuance in India depended upon Indian opinion’ and that Britain kept
its dominion there ‘just so long as the natives think themselves unable to drive
us out’. While Liverpool assured the Baptists that he would do everything in
the Government’s power that could be done, he stressed that ‘we cannot allow
you to send missionaries without leave, and when there, they must in common
with merchants and all other Europeans, be under the controul of Govern-
ment’.3 The Baptist interview with Lord Buckinghamshire, President of the
The 1813 Renewal of the Company’s Charter 131
Board of Control, at the beginning of March was even more dispiriting and
Fuller told Ward that he ‘had little hopes of success’. Buckinghamshire, like
Liverpool, mentioned the conduct of the Baptists. He stressed the religious
prejudices of the ‘natives’ and cited Vellore as an example of their volatility.
He also took exception to the threat of public petitioning and scornfully
retorted that ‘half of them would not understand what they signed’. Nor did
Fuller expect any help from the Whigs. As he told William Ward, ‘although
our liberty folks are mad to get the Catholics into power’, they are ‘very cool
as to obtaining toleration for you’.4
A few days later, Lord Gambier, as president of the CMS, presented Lord
Liverpool with a draft clause for inclusion in the charter. This did not answer
Dissenting hopes because it stipulated that the Board of Control should be
‘authorized and required to grant, from time to time, licences to fit and proper
persons to proceed to and reside in India for the purpose of communicating
to the inhabitants of that country the blessings of religious instruction and
moral improvement’. Lord Liverpool told Gambier that while he was favour-
ably disposed to an ecclesiastical establishment for India, he continued to
have reservations about giving general freedom of access to missionaries. He
feared that if unrestricted access were to be given to all sectarian missionaries
as well as to those belonging to the Church there ‘might be some danger of
a clashing of parties in India’. However, Liverpool also declared that it ‘was
a point on which he had by no means made up his mind’.5
Thus, while the CMS felt that it had everything to hope for from the
Government, Dissenters and Methodists were disappointed and apprehen-
sive. By the beginning of March, Fuller had come to the conclusion that
while missionaries might be permitted to go out to India in British ships
there was little likelihood of a ‘legal toleration’ when they got there. His
suspicions of Church Evangelical intentions had not abated and he warned
Ward to be on the watch if the ecclesiastical establishment were to be granted,
because the CMS was ‘exceedingly hungry after your labours, or rather the
honour of them’.6 The time for holding back was over. The Protestant Society
for the Protection of Religious Liberty (PSPRL) held a public meeting on
2 March and sent firmly worded resolutions to Lord Liverpool, the Board
of Control and the Directors of the East India Company, reminding them
that the Society represented ‘many hundred thousand Dissenters throughout
England and Wales’. They avowed their determination to fight for the protec-
tion of religious freedom and for ‘the enjoyment of that liberty in every part
of the British empire throughout the world’. The Society ‘deplored’ and
‘condemned’ every obstacle to the promulgation of Christianity in India. It
did not advocate any ecclesiastical establishment but believed that ‘Christians
of every sect should be permitted, unlicensed, to explain, and peaceably to
promulgate … the holy religion which they profess, and should enjoy the
equal protection of the state’.7
Having made their demands to the Government, all parties then had to
wait for the introduction of the resolutions of the investigating committee
to the House of Commons. When Lord Castlereagh introduced these on 22
March, the worst fears of the Dissenters and Church Evangelicals were real-
ised. There was a clause setting up an Anglican episcopal establishment but
no ‘pious clause’. Wilberforce immediately objected, supported by his friend
the abolitionist William Smith and his brother-in-law, James Stephen. Henry
Thornton told a friend that Liverpool had failed to brief Castlereagh, and
that none of the religious groups had thought to wait on him (Castlereagh).8
Thornton believed that Liverpool was secretly in favour of permitting
missionaries to go to India. Indications, however, are that the omission was
a deliberate decision of Government. Lord Liverpool had been consistent in
expressing his aversion to giving freedom of access to missionaries, partic-
ularly Dissenters, and his interest appeared to be in furthering the status
of the Church of England in India rather than missionary activity. Lords
Buckinghamshire and Castlereagh were known to be against any lessening
of restrictions for missionaries. According to Fuller, Castlereagh’s omissions
‘operated like an electric shock through the land and united all friends of xnty
in a determination to petition without a moments delay’.9 It would be more
accurate to say that the shock went through the religious leaders, who now
realised without doubt that the religious public would have to be aroused if
Parliament was to be induced to do something further for them.
Lord Liverpool’s discussion with the PSPRL on 30 March indicated that
little progress was being made. Liverpool stressed that open trade did not
mean open licence and that licences would continue to be required for all.
He confirmed that licences would be granted to Dissenters generally, not just
to members of the Established Church. However, he went on to affirm that
while it was the duty of Government to extend the benefits of Christianity
to the inhabitants of India, the authority of Government must be upheld in
the eyes of Indians and that no intention of ‘violating their prejudices’ must
be shown. In reply to the PSPRL’s request for a specific recognition of the
right of missionaries to labour in India, Lord Liverpool stated that this could
not be granted.10 It seems that there had been a compromise between Liver-
pool and Castlereagh to the effect that there would be no explicit mention
of missionaries in any new law but the Board of Control would be granted
the power to license persons for India and this could include missionaries.11
Shocked and disappointed, the following day the PSPRL wrote to Lord
Liverpool setting out its objections. It was worried that the plans for an epis-
copal establishment would exclude them and did not regard the proposal that
the Board of Control should have discretionary power over the matter of
licences for missionaries as an advance. On the contrary, the Society main-
tained that it was the ‘inalienable right’ of every Christian Missionary to
promulgate the gospel of the Lord … without obtaining licences from any
human authority, and without depending for the continuance of his labors
on human caprice’.12 The missionary lobby had succeeded in obtaining ‘fair
words’ from the Government but no promise of specific legislative recognition
of their demands. Wilberforce also feared that although ‘the government is
well-disposed towards us’, it was ‘highly probable that they be overborne by
the sense of parliament, especially by that of the House of Commons, if the
feelings of the public be not plainly expressed’.13 The time for public action
had come.
When the Committee of the whole House began taking evidence on East
India Company affairs on 30 March the examination of witnesses was not
advantageous to the missionary cause. Most of the questions concerning
Christianity were posed in such a way that the witnesses, even if favourable to
missionary activity – and most were not – could only reply that danger could
not be ruled out. Even Lord Teignmouth found it difficult to turn the ques-
tions to advantage. Once again, he was less than truthful about his knowledge
of missionaries.14 Warren Hastings was one of the key witnesses. He stated
that the Evangelical picture of Indians being in complete moral turpitude
was untrue and wholly unfounded. He said it was important to distinguish
between the ‘gentle’ Hindu and the ‘intolerant’ Muslim. In contradistinction
to the missionary view, Hastings described Hindus as:
gentle, benevolent, more susceptible of gratitude for kindness shewn them,

than prompted to vengeance for wrongs inflicted, and as exempt from the
worst propensities of human passion as any people upon the face of the earth;
they are faithful and affectionate in service, and submissive to legal authority;
they are superstitious it is true.… Gross as the modes of their worship are, the
precepts of their religion are wonderfully fitted to promote the best ends of
society, its peace and good order.15
As a result of testimony such as this, and with the examination of witnesses

in the Lords about to begin, the Saints were anxious to do something to limit
the damage. It was decided that Wilberforce should persuade both Houses
that religion should be left out of the questioning. Wilberforce waited on
Lord Grenville, who was ‘dry and cold upon the matter’.16 He wrote to Lord
Wellesley, a long-time friend, asking him to use his influence to stop any
unfavourable questioning in the House of Lords. First of all, Wilberforce tried
to separate Wellesley from the opponents of missionary activity by stating
that the ‘alarmists are enemies of the system which your Lordship certainly
established . . . that I mean of diffusing useful knowledge of all sorts among
the natives of India’. Second, he appealed to Wellesley’s vanity by comparing
his vast knowledge of India with the generality of his peers. Missionaries
were only mentioned once, the crux of Wilberforce’s argument being that
‘education, the translation and diffusion of the Scriptures, and advancement
in general knowledge, would be by far the most powerful agents in the great
work of Christianizing the natives of India’.17 These were the only methods
that had been approved by Wellesley during his time in India.
Wellesley appears to have done what Wilberforce asked and somehow the
Saints achieved a similar success in the Commons because after this the ques-
tioning in both Houses was confined to commerce and politics. However,
Wellesley’s role as defender of the missionary cause should not be taken at
face value. Wellesley strongly supported a more respectable footing for the
ecclesiastical establishment, which he believed ‘would tend to elevate the
European character in the eyes of the natives’. However, he also stated that
this was a matter of considerable ‘delicacy’, which needed to be accomplished
in a way that would not cause alarm to Indians. As for the conversion of
the ‘natives’, Wellesley agreed with Wilberforce that this was a prospect to
be desired but one that should be achieved gradually. Wellesley’s solution
was to combine religion and education, preferably via Fort William College.
However, he went on to stress that any such measure should ‘not appear to
be recommended by the authority of the government because in India the
recommendation of the government is supposed to be almost equivalent to
a mandate’ and might cause alarm. He stated that his policy as Governor-
General had been to allow the translation of the Scriptures but not to order
their dissemination, maintaining that ‘a Christian governor could not have
done less, and he knew that a British governor ought not to do more’.18
It could, of course be argued that Wellesley was following Wilberforce’s
lead in steering a very cautious line in mentioning missionary activity in the
House of Lords. It has to be said that he spoke highly of the Baptist mission-
aries in India while he was Governor-General and stated his belief that they
had caused no alarm. This was an important testimony in establishing their
respectability in the eyes of the Lords and Commons. However, Wellesley did
not say anything about his views on the future progress of missionary activity
except to state that there was a point beyond which a Christian assembly
legislating for an empire should not go in implanting its religion in its domin-
ions. This was hardly an unqualified approval and when, taken together with
his friendship and patronage of Prendergast, Montgomery, Forbes, Marsh
and Vanderheyden, ex-Company servants and the most bitter opponents of
missionary activity in the Commons, his commitment to the missionary cause
can only be regarded as in some doubt.
The opponents of missionary activity, mainly long-serving members of
the East India Company, including Warren Hastings, were horrified at the
cessation of questioning on religious topics in the Lords and Commons. They
also suspected Parry and Grant of exerting their influence to leave everything
relating to the clerical establishment and missionaries out of the Court’s
publication of evidence. Later Sweny Toone discovered that the omissions
were by order of Sir Hugh Inglis, the Chairman, who took the view that
discussion of religion would hamper the Company’s attempts to retain as
much as possible of its monopoly.19 Nevertheless, Wilberforce’s tactic was not

a complete success. He had persuaded Wellesley to stop the questioning on
religious aspects because he believed it was ‘far better for our cause, to rest
it on the notorious facts of the case, and on the plain undeniable obligations
which it involves, than on the evidence to be delivered at the bar’. However,
leaving the matter of religion out of the questions put to witnesses meant
that there was no evidence before Parliament on which to base a judgement
and Wilberforce found that he had to move for ‘sundry papers to illustrate
the moral character of the Hindoos, and the shocking practices prevalent
there’. He hoped that the public’s respect for religion would ‘counterbalance
the neutralizing efforts of the East Indians’.20
Despite their tactical successes, Wilberforce and his friends were appre-
hensive about the future. Always at the forefront of Wilberforce’s mind was
the failure he had experienced during the 1793 renewal of the East India
Company’s charter. He even began to doubt the ‘expediency’ of the proposal
for an episcopal establishment, telling a friend in Bristol that both he and
Babington feared that the person to be appointed Bishop by the Archbishop
of Canterbury would be hostile to both missionaries and Evangelicals.21
Henry Thornton was in no doubt that the ‘intended bishop is for the purpose
of controuling missionaries, not perhaps by his own power but indirectly
through his influence with the government’.22 Wilberforce therefore agonised
over how he should go forward and the specific terms for which to strive. He
consulted with the Baptists and the LMS over the wording of the clause and
told George Burder, secretary of the LMS that:
It is a most difficult question to decide upon. We may lose all by striving for too
much. Yet I wish to obtain as much as possible again. It is by no means clear,
that we may not enjoy more practical security for missionaries by conditions
which may appear more restricted on the face of them.23
Wilberforce advised the Baptists that it would be ‘in vain’ to ask for more
than for ‘fit and proper persons’, to be judged by the Board of Control.24 He
was astute enough to realise that insistence on unrestricted access to India
for missionaries might well jeopardise the overall cause. He therefore did
not repeat the mistake of 1793 and kept demands as limited and vague as
possible, leaving discretionary power as to how the religious improvement
of Indians could best be achieved in the hands of Government, through
the Board of Control. The PSPRL seems to have come to a similar conclu-
sion that Dissenters might lose all by demanding too much. A letter to Lord
Liverpool at the end of April demonstrates an anxiety not to alienate him
and much of it is spent assuring him of their respect and their reluctance ‘to
excite their country constituents to any exertions for the attainment of that
boon which you had already promised to confer’. They informed him that the
Society had agreed that its policy was to invite cooperation with the govern-
ment ‘for the attainment of an object which they were desirous to promote
[rather] than to endeavour to extort from them a benefit they were unwilling
to bestow’. Although the PSPRL now accepted that the Government was not
prepared to grant unrestricted residence to missionaries, it still hoped to be
able to influence the wording of the clause.25
The Petitioning Campaign
Most Anglicans were happy with Castlereagh’s declaration on 22 March that

the Government intended to provide an bishop and archdeacon for India.
This increased the status of the Church in India at the same time as bringing
the activities of Anglican missionaries under its control. To many Anglicans
no further action was required. This prevalent view was dangerous for the
progress of the ‘pious clause’. Wilberforce calculated that nine out of ten in
the House were against it and he knew that the religious public had to be
brought into play if Evangelicals were to have any success with forcing the
Company to do more for missionaries. The following discussion will try to
give some flavour of how they were so successful in gaining unprecedented
support in such a short space of time.
Wilberforce immediately began writing to his friends and contacts, urging
them to exert themselves to stir up petitions. To Churchmen he made the
point again that it should not only be Methodists and Dissenters who took ‘an
interest in the happiness of mankind’.26 Dissenters and Methodists were just
as active as Wilberforce in rousing their people and public meetings began
to be called. During April and May petitions poured into both Houses of
Parliament. In order to encourage as many people as possible to sign the peti-
tions Andrew Fuller suggested ‘general’ petitions rather than petitions from
particular groups.27 Wilberforce also wanted the petitions to be as general
and uncontentiously phrased as possible in order not to offend the Church
of England or the government. He suggested that it was important to obtain:
as many as possible of the friends of humanity who may not agree with us in
religious sentiments. All surely will join who do not wish to see such a vast body
of our fellow subjects … sunk in the greatest moral and social and domestic
barbarism without an effort to raise them on the scale of beings … the more
general the terms of the petition, the better.28
A general Committee for Promoting the Introduction of Christianity into

India was formed in London. The first task of this Committee was to draw
up a circular to send to ‘some Minister in every City and Town throughout
the Kingdom, to urge them to get petitions forwarded in aid of the general
object’.29 Zachary Macaulay took this job on and sent out approximately
100,000 circulars.30 There were intense efforts to whip up a favourable vote in
Parliament. Wilberforce stressed to prominent Methodists and Dissenters that

nothing would be done at the renewal of the charter unless there was ‘a clear
expression of the voices of the friends of religion in this country’.31 Dissenters
and Methodists did not need to be told this. The PSPRL, the Dissenting
Deputies, and the Wesleyans all lobbied Parliament and urged their members
to send petitions. The PSPRL informed Lord Liverpool that it was their inal-
ienable right to preach the Gospel to all nations. They told him they could
not repress their country constituents, who would not be satisfied unless they
could express their opinions to Parliament through petitions. In line with the
decision of the meeting of interested parties on 29 March, Liverpool was
told that both Houses would be petitioned from ‘the inhabitants of many
towns, not as congregations, or religious communities, but in their civil char-
acter’.32 The Methodists in London were very active, encouraged by Thomas
Thompson, the Methodist MP. The Baptists appointed their own committee
of twenty-six, which included the MP, Benjamin Shaw, to meet every night
at 6.00 p.m. to consider the progress of the day.33 The (London) Missionary
Society also orchestrated petitions. The campaign was just as energetic in
the provinces and, unlike London, where laymen organised the tactics, local
clergymen were the lynchpins. Each society held public meetings, announced
in advance in the press and chaired by prominent figures including members
of the Nobility, to consider the wording of the petitions and to arrange for
their signature. Subscriptions were commenced to provide the necessary funds
for the nationwide campaign. Copies of the approved petitions were then sent
to all the congregations connected with the individual societies. Petitions were
signed in hundreds of tiny villages as well as the larger towns.34 The country
responded and the religious public of Great Britain made its feelings about
the duty of the Company and Government abundantly clear.
One important characteristic of the groups who organised the petitioning
to parliament in 1813 was that, without exception, they felt excluded from
India. The language of many of the petitions was the language of ‘rights’.
Religious liberty was equated with civil liberty and many of the petitions
pointed out that missionary activity was an ‘inalienable right’. While Church
Evangelicals wanted an Anglican ecclesiastical hierarchy in India, they felt
excluded by High Churchmen and felt that Dissenting missionaries should be
free to work in the Company’s territories. The Church of Scotland demanded
that Scots in India had the same right to religious services as Englishmen.
The Scottish SPCK also wanted to be able to instruct their countrymen
and to ‘impart the benefits of Christianity to the natives of India’. Scottish
Dissenters kept up the pressure that had started with Haldane in 1796. This
significant involvement from Scotland was not surprising given the number
of Scots serving in India.35 Dissenters wanted the same access to India as the
Church of England. The opportunity to claim their ‘rights’ on the occasion
of the renewal of the Company’s charter gave the petitioning campaign a
dynamism and urgency, particularly for Methodists and Dissenters, that it

would probably not otherwise have had. It is hard to escape the conclusion
that, for many petitioners, the fate of the ‘perishing Hindu’ was distinctly
secondary to questions of toleration or rights.
The wording of the petitions tells us as much about the groups presenting
them as it does about the avowed aims of the petitioners. The petition from
the Dissenting Deputies to the Commons on 12 April stressed the efficacy of
Christianity in establishing the ‘fabric of social order’ and maintained that ‘to
represent a system of idolatry and superstitions as equally tending to repro-
duce moral virtue and human happiness was no less contrary to the dictates
of sound reason and philosophy than irreconcilable with the first principles on
which our faith is built’. The Protestant Dissenting Deputies, the elite of ‘Old
Dissent’, had established their respectability in the eyes of the Establishment
and did not want this jeopardised by espousing radical measures. Their aims
were therefore very moderate, merely expressing the hope that ‘persons of
the various professions of Christians, as may be disposed to devote themselves
to the promulgation of Christianity in India, may under certain conditions [my
emphasis] be permitted to enter that country’.36
This was far too vague and restrictive for the PSPRL, the LMS and the
BMS, who greatly feared that any conditions other than promises of prudent
behaviour once in India, would be used to exclude them. The LMS petition
pointed out that the requirement for licences, though necessary for commer-
cial and political purposes, was not intended to impede the progress of
Christianity or place this under the control of the Court of Directors. They
refuted any perceived danger from missionaries and stressed that they only
wanted protection from the Company. The LMS, perhaps remembering the
opprobrium heaped on Bogue and Haldane, seems to have felt particularly
vulnerable to the accusation of involvement in political radicalism. They
were keen to stress their patriotic principles and took care to point out to
Parliament that its missionaries ‘receive full instruction on the great Christian
principles which form good and peaceable subjects, and useful members of
civil society’. The LMS stressed that the petitioners were ‘most firmly attached
to the constitution of this country, and ardently desirous of its true pros-
perity, dignity and perpetuity’.37 This is very much the language of a society
feeling itself under threat, grasping for acceptance and respectability and
fearing that, if licences were required for missionary activity, its missionaries
might very well be debarred. The aim of the petitions was to put pressure
on the Legislature to do something for Christianity while not alienating it
by this expression of outside pressure. To this end, the petitions were care-
fully phrased, stressing loyalty to Government, pointing out the utility of the
measure both for the Company’s European employees and Indians, stressing
that no coercion would be used and concentrating on the depraved condition
of Indians, thus appealing to ‘Christian humanitarianism’. These were all

arguments Grant had used in 1786 and 1792.
The petitions abstained from linking trade and Christianity. Even the
PSPRL informed the Court of Directors that it was ‘solicitous to avoid all
interference, as to the great political and commercial contest’.38 In Parlia-
ment, speeches regarding the trading monopoly did not mention the reli-
gious resolutions and missionary supporters only used arguments about trade
to strengthen their own position; either to show how respectable mission-
aries were in comparison with the general run of trader, or to show that
the promulgation of Christianity would help commerce in the long term. A
comparison of the number of petitions sent into the House of Commons in
favour of ending the Company’s control of Christianity and those sent in
favour of ending the Company’s control of trade is instructive. Between 21
December 1812 and 12 April 1813, a total of 123 petitions were presented on
the commercial question. This includes both supporters and opponents of the
Company’s monopoly. The 908 petitions presented in favour of Christianity
were of a completely different order and amounted to the greatest number
of petitions ever presented to Parliament to that date.39
The Debate in Parliament
The petitions did their work and gave Evangelicals an advantage over the
Company. By 26 May, Wilberforce told Burder that Lord Buckinghamshire
had ‘acceded to our terms’ but warned him that as many ‘religious’ MPs as
possible would need to attend the debates if they were to achieve success.
In his journal the next day he wrote that ‘Lord Castlereagh agreed to Lord
Buckinghamshire’s and our arrangement for East India Christianizing Reso-
lutions – far surpassing my expectations.’40 On 3 June Castlereagh succeeded
in getting Resolution 13 accepted ‘pro forma’ despite the opposition.41 He
hoped that the question would not be discussed as it was ‘too likely to produce
mischief in India’. He did not succeed and Resolution 13 came under full
discussion on 22 June. In the meantime the PSPRL and the Methodists put
considerable pressure on Lords Castlereagh and Liverpool because they
believed that Resolution 12, which referred to the proposed ecclesiastical
establishment, should not have been separated from Resolution 13, the ‘pious
clause’. They feared, no doubt correctly, that this was a ploy to let the Estab-
lished Church achieve its demands while losing the more general missionary
clause later in the face of the hostility against it. Pellatt and Wilks pointed
out to Lord Liverpool that they had held back on the petitions, which could
easily have been doubled.42
The attitude of the East India Company towards the promulgation of
Christianity in 1813 remained the ambivalent one set out in its 1808 despatch
to Lord Minto. On the one hand, it was alive to the ‘benefits that would result
from the general diffusion of its doctrines’. On the other hand, it maintained
that great caution must be exercised and its duty as the paramount power
in India was to see that no coercion was used.43 The Company’s servants
examined in the Lords and Commons generally held fast to the premise that
Indians should be allowed the free exercise of their religions, while making it
clear that they were not against missionaries per se. They acknowledged that
missionaries had operated in Bengal for seventeen years, without causing
alarm but would not agree that the terms of the Company’s charter should
be changed. They were concerned that allowing free access to missionaries
would open the floodgates to adventurers of all sorts who would lower the
opinion of the British in the eyes of Indians and might even subvert them with
democratic principles. Many continued to regard Dissenters and Methodists
as undesirable. Opponents of the pious clause expressed the fear that, as the
missionaries were of the same race as the rulers, Indians would identify their
efforts with official attempts to coerce them into becoming Christians. The
argument was strengthened by reference to Vellore.
The debate on Resolution 13, the ‘pious clause’, occurred in an unusually
full house: 125 members felt strongly enough about the Resolution to turn
out for the division, despite the lateness of the hour and the fact that it was
towards the end of the parliamentary session. (It was unusual for more than
100 members to be present in the House at one time.) Castlereagh introduced
the debate on 22 June by attempting to allay fears on both sides. First of all,
he pointed out that it had never been the intention of Government to intro-
duce unrestrained access for anyone – commercial or religious. On the other
hand, the Government did not think that any danger would arise from a few
missionaries, under the control of the Board of Control. Moreover, while
Castlereagh did not perceive any danger, he also thought that great advan-
tages might ensue from leading Indians away from ‘immoral and disgusting
habits, such as the sacrifice of women’. Sir Henry Montgomery, ex-Company
officer and supporter of Lord Wellesley, who had lived in India for twenty
years, rose to object. He argued that the Portuguese had lost their Indian
empire by trying to force Christianity on it and mentioned the Vellore mutiny.
Montgomery pointed out that sati and infanticide formed part of the Hindu
religious code, with which the Company had promised not to interfere. In any
case, before trying to reform India, Montgomery remarked that ‘we should
first reform ourselves’. He ‘thought the moral character of the Hindoos a
great deal better than the moral character of the people of this country in
general’, ‘who at present only gave an example of lying, swearing, drunken-
ness and other vices’.44 Sir Frederick Douglas spoke next to say that mission-
aries should be tolerated rather than encouraged. He had no objections to
Company chaplains. As the previous chapters have shown, this in effect was
the reality of Company policy towards missionaries.
Wilberforce followed with a powerful and extremely lengthy speech. He

appealed both to Britain’s spiritual duty and to her self-interest. He tried to
draw the sting from objections to the clause by down-playing missionary
activity as such, arguing that more was to be expected from education,
the diffusion of knowledge, the progress of science and the circulation of
the Scriptures in Indian languages than the direct labours of missionaries.
Wilberforce stressed that he was against any kind of compulsion and all use
of the authority or influence of Government. He maintained that by the
above gradual means Indians would become Christian without knowing it.
As Wilberforce was aware, few Company officials disagreed with this way of
spreading Christian values and improving the condition of the Indian people.
Wilberforce then went on the attack by pointing out Britain’s spiritual duty
now that Providence had put 60 million souls under her care. He argued
that Britain had to raise Indians out of their wretched condition through
imparting Christian truth. This would also improve their material condi-
tion. Wilberforce made much of the practices of sati, infanticide, polygamy,
the degradation of women and idolatrous ceremonies with their ‘disgusting
and indecent exhibitions’. In short, he argued, ‘their religious system is one
grand abomination’. Christianity was ‘sublime, pure and beneficent’ while
Hinduism was ‘mean, licentious and cruel’. As in 1793, Wilberforce felt it
necessary to paint a picture of the depraved native, in the greatest need of
regeneration, which could not satisfactorily be achieved except through the
inculcation of Christianity. Wilberforce backed up his arguments with an
impressive array of authorities. He drew heavily on missionary literature
with its accounts of Indian religious practices and on Grant’s Observations,
which by now had been widely disseminated and was highly regarded. He
also cited well-known travellers and Company officials, including Clive, Shore
and Cornwallis. An inspired inclusion was the results of Wellesley’s 1801
Interrogatories to his magistrates in India, which were not at all flattering to
the character of Britain’s Indian subjects.45 Wilberforce argued that Indians
had already shown that they would accept change. He cited reforms in the
land tenure system and judicial and military systems, which had not aroused
violence. He pointed out that Indians had become Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists
and even Christians. Wilberforce argued that as the Persian Pamphlet had
only attracted one complaint and no violence had ensued, this proved that
‘the natives were so tolerant and patient in what concerns their religion,
that even the grossest imprudence could not rouse them to anger’. He also
pointed out that missionaries had been labouring in India for more than a
century without tumult and asked why missionaries were the most esteemed,
beloved and popular of the Europeans. Previous chapters have demonstrated
that these statements concealed more than they revealed. One of Wilber-
force’s more stinging comments was his assertion that those who opposed the
clause were the real enemies of the natives of India. Wilberforce’s oratory
was a tour de force. He had effectively demolished most of the arguments of

Company opponents of missionary activity. In the resulting division, there
was a majority of 53 for the Resolution.46
Wilberforce wrote to Burder of the LMS that ‘God has favoured us far
beyond my latter expectations.’ However, he warned that it was ‘of far more
consequence to carry what we do obtain with a high hand, than to obtain
a little more of the letter of the statute’.47 Wilberforce meant two things by
this statement. First of all, he meant that the missionary lobby in Parliament
must be seen to be strong in numbers. He expected a severe conflict at the
next debate and knew they needed all their strength for the fight. Wilber-
force therefore wrote to his friends, urging them to be present in London for
the debate, particularly as ‘so many people have gone out of town, and the
East Indians, our enemies, will assuredly stay’.48 Wilberforce also feared that
the Methodists and Dissenters would vitiate the progress made by insisting
on more. Allan, the Methodist solicitor, in particular, did not think that
Resolution 13 would give a legal protection to their missionaries. When the
Wesleyans waited on Castlereagh, he advised them to leave the clause alone
in case they lost all. Reluctantly they deferred to his judgement.49
As Wilberforce and the Dissenters feared, the opponents of missionary
activity returned to the fray at the second reading of the bill on 1 July, despite
Lord Castlereagh’s ‘strong wish that this clause might be allowed for the
present to pass without discussion’. He wanted the bill to get through the
committee as expeditiously as possible. This time the debate did not attract
such strong attendance and only eighty-six members were present. Concern
was expressed that the preamble to the Resolution might arouse Indian fears
because it stated that it was Britain’s duty to promote the interests and happi-
ness of the native inhabitants of India by adopting such measures as may tend
to introduce among them useful knowledge and religious and moral improve-
ment. Castlereagh admitted that the preamble had only been included to
satisfy the demands of the religious public. Sir Thomas Sutton disliked the
open avowal in the Resolution of the intention to bring religious and moral
improvement to India and its unqualified terms. Charles Marsh, who had been
in the Admiralty Court in Madras for many years, then countered Wilber-
force’s points with an extremely long and well-argued speech. He argued
that Indians would not be able to separate the Government from the actions
of missionaries. He also thought that a legislative enactment would make it
more difficult for local governments to exercise discretion. Marsh forecast
the clamour and resentment that would arise in England if any missionary
should be sent home or otherwise restricted. He maintained that Vellore
was a religious mutiny in the strictest sense. He was particularly concerned
about the Evangelical opinion of the Indian character and expressed the view
that, were the House to concur with this opinion, it was unfit to govern. He
pointed out that ‘hatred and contempt for those whom you govern, must, in
the very nature of things, convert your government into a stern and savage
oppression’. He quoted Thomas Munro’s view that, ‘if civilization was to
become an article of trade between the two countries, he was convinced this
country would gain by the import cargo’. Marsh then turned his attention to
missionaries and their converts, claiming that, on the whole, only the dregs of
society had turned to Christianity. He argued that Hindus were so attached
to their faith that the only way to convert India would be through oppression
and even extirpation. Marsh provided an eloquent spokesman for those who
regarded missionaries as ‘vulgar fanatics’. In words reminiscent of Sidney
Smith in 1808 and Lord Sidmouth in 1811, Marsh mentioned his fears that
Buckinghamshire’s successor at the Board of Control might feel that ‘every
inspired cobbler, or fanatical tailor, who feels an inward call, had a kind of
apostolic right to assist in the spiritual siege’. He wondered if the mission-
aries, ‘whom this Bill is to let loose upon India, fit engines to accomplish
the greatest revolution that has yet taken place in the history of the world’.
Wilberforce had to make another long speech in rebuttal. He immediately
seized on Marsh’s immoderate language when describing missionaries and
their converts. Wilberforce also spent some time refuting his assertions about
Vellore. He maintained that missionaries were only asking for toleration and
reminded the House of the number of petitions that had been received on
this subject. When the House divided the majority for Resolution 13 was
reduced to twenty-two.50
It is difficult to know just what those who had served in India really
believed about Hindus, but it is clear that the ‘missionary viewpoint’ had
gained ground since 1793. Both sides had axes to grind and used the argu-
ments most favourable to their case. However, the character of ‘the Hindu’
was not as important to the anti-missionary case as it was to the missionary.
What the opponents of missionaries had to demonstrate was that the reli-
gious prejudices of the natives were so excitable that there was a real danger
in passing Resolution 13. This they failed to do, the example of the Vellore
mutiny notwithstanding.
The final battle in the Commons took place on 12 July when the opponents
of the clause tried again to have the preamble omitted. Wilberforce argued
that this would imply that the Legislature was hostile to that which it had
already agreed. Wilberforce won the argument and the original clause was
approved by a majority of twenty-four.51 By this time numbers attending the
debate were down to seventy-three. The declining interest is not surprising:
it was late in the session and those MPs who did not turn up for the debates
indicated acquiescence, if not agreement, with the ‘pious clause’. Lord Buck-
inghamshire skilfully steered Resolution 13 through the Lords. In fact, the
question was scarcely discussed and Buckinghamshire was able to defuse
criticism of it by pointing out the safeguards and that for the first time there
was a clause inserted in the Company’s charter making it ‘imperative upon
the government of India to secure to the natives the free exercise of their
religion’.52
While Resolution 13 aroused heated discussion in the House of Commons,
Resolution 12, proposing an episcopal establishment for India, attracted very
little comment in either House, and the clause passed without division. It
was difficult not to support better provision for the 143,000 Anglicans said
to exist in India.53 The only amendment requested came from members of
the Church of Scotland, who demanded their own ecclesiastical establish-
ment. This demand was dropped after assurances from the Company that
‘they would at their own expence [sic] maintain the Presbyterian ministers,
and afford them all proper means to assist in the promulgation and exercise
of their faith’.54 Warren Hastings was one of the few people who seemed to
acknowledge the logical implications of granting an episcopal establishment
in India: that this, far more than the activities of unlicensed missionaries,
could be regarded by the natives as the beginning of official compulsion to
become Christian.55
Members of the Opposition in the Lords did not appear to be very inter-
ested in the religious clauses. Lord Grenville did not mention them at all and,
although Earl Grey asserted that he supported the principle of the petition, he
had reservations about the method and was absolutely against Government
interference and force. The Earl of Lauderdale’s concern was for the provi-
sion of a Church of Scotland ecclesiastical establishment. He was completely
against missionary activity and trusted ‘that the aid of power would not be
called in to attempt to give effect to the propagation of Christianity in India,
as that would tend to the utter ruin of our empire in that quarter’.56 In the
Commons, George Tierney, the leading Whig commoner, was one of Wilber-
force’s most obstinate opponents. Forbes, Keene, Moore, Robinson and, most
vehemently, Marsh, all spoke against the Resolution. These men seem to have
been speaking more as ‘old-India hands’ than as members of the Opposi-
tion, although the fact that they considered themselves to be in opposition to
Lord Liverpool’s Government must have been a factor. Tierney’s arguments
seemed to be a re-run of the arguments over Pitt’s India bill. He argued that
the destruction of the Company’s monopoly would place ‘directly in the
hands of the crown, the increased patronage which another army and an
Indian revenue of 17 million a year would give them’. Following this line
of reasoning, he regarded Resolution 12 as ‘a gross job, the object of which
was church patronage in India’. In his view, the power of licensing to be
given to the Board of Control meant that ‘he would be most successful in
obtaining licences who had the most parliamentary influence at his back’.
Tierney thought the whole thing was a mockery and perceptively remarked
that while the Board of Control could overturn this, officials in India would
still be able to object to any ‘dangerous’ characters.57
The Battle Won: Whose Victory?
Echoing Lord Wellesley’s words of 9 April, Sir Thomas Acland told the
House of Commons on 2 July that ‘a Christian Parliament could not do less
– a British Parliament could not do more’ (than include Resolution 13 in the
new charter). The Company also lost its monopoly of trade to India, although
it kept the China trade. The Company could not protect its monopoly let
alone defeat a clause about missionary activity. A major readjustment had
occurred in Britain’s political and economic priorities, which demonstrated
the power of new commercial interests and the extraordinary strength and
vitality of the religious public.
Wilberforce and his friends regarded this as a significant victory for the
missionary movement. They had been fortunate in a number of respects.
First of all, the proposal for an ecclesiastical establishment, in the event,
proved to be a non-issue and this meant that energies could be concentrated
on the ‘pious clause’. The cause was also helped by the fact that the Govern-
ment was not hostile to some provision for missionaries and was prepared to
be persuaded. Another favourable factor was the wording of the Resolution
itself. It was moderate, leaving discretion in the hands of Government while
maintaining the right of Indians to the free exercise of their religion. It was
difficult, therefore, for the enemies of missionary activity to build up a strong
case against it. Dissenters showed extraordinary restraint in accepting this
outcome. The Company, for its part, was far more concerned to salvage as
much as possible of its commercial monopoly than to spend time and energy
on religious clauses, which still left it with the right to control the activities
of the missionaries in India. Its financial difficulties left it at the mercy of
the Ministry. It was also not helped by the fact that the Directors were split
into two antagonistic groups. The majority under Hugh Inglis and Robert
Thornton were conciliatory towards the ministry. The group under Charles
Grant was determined to yield nothing to the Government or private traders.
The Baptists were sure that the petitions had a powerful effect on Parlia-
ment. Fuller told Carey, Marshman and Ward that ‘such was the effect of the
petitions both in the Lords and Commons that we met with a very respectful
reception in almost every instance. They seemed to think that if they did not
grant our requests the nation would rise up agst them.’58 Lord Liverpool’s
attitude was crucial and the success of the 1813 pious clause followed the path
charted by other successful issues in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, such as the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade, which
succeeded only once the Government was prepared to give it support or at
least not to stand in its way. Liverpool was also conscious that his Ministry
needed Wilberforce’s support in Parliament and he was indebted to him for
opposing the no-confidence motion in his ministry after Perceval’s assassina-
tion. Liverpool decided that concessions should be made to the demands of
the religious public and indicated his Government’s support of the principle.
He was not prepared to alienate such large numbers of loyal and respectable
subjects for a concession that could be granted with sufficient safeguards. The
fact that, without exception, all speakers in the debates found it necessary
to stress their personal commitment to Christianity, also seems to indicate a
concern not to alienate the religious public unnecessarily.
Once committed to support of Resolution 13, Castlereagh and Buck-
inghamshire used all their skill to get the measure through Parliament as
quickly as possible, although indications are that they were not personally
sympathetic. This support was probably critical. According to Philips, of the
100 members or so who turned out for the debates, the Government had a
comfortable majority.59 Neither the supporters not opponents of missionary
activity could muster a decisive vote on their own. Bradley has estimated that
there were perhaps twenty-nine regular ‘Saints’ plus eleven ‘occasional Saints’
in Parliament in 1813.60 Toone told Hastings that ‘the members of the Court
who were in Parliament; the City of London members, and all the London
interest, the old servants of the Company, altogether united made but forty-
three’.61 Numbers were therefore about even if the ‘Company interest’ was
not split on the question. The Company interest was split, but to balance this
some other members of Parliament shared their fears. However, the Evan-
gelical vote in Parliament was one which both Government and Opposition
tried to woo. The Government, with a war to prosecute, was also concerned
that there should be no problems of public order and wanted to get rid of the
Indian question as quickly as possible. Concessions to the religiously minded
‘middle ranks’ of society, with appropriate safeguards, seemed to be a politi-
cally expedient compromise.
The energy of the Saints in ensuring that as many sympathetic members
as possible attended the relevant debates was also crucial. Humanitarian feel-
ings may have been a consideration for those members who had no particular
opinions on the religious side. As the debates continued, the energy of the
Saints was necessary to keep the issues at the forefront of members’ minds
and to persuade supporters to turn out for the divisions. The attitude of the
Church of England hierarchy also helped tip the scales in favour of Resolu-
tion 13, despite the fears of Methodists and Dissenters. The acknowledge-
ment of the bishops of the principle that Christianity should be brought to
India helped make the idea of missionary activity there more acceptable. The
success of the Bible Society (B&FBS), which had adopted a deliberate policy
of letting the Established Church take the lead, had shown what could be
achieved if a scheme appeared to have the support of the Church of England.
Of course, the real reason for the Church’s involvement was to make sure that
it controlled ecclesiastical matters in India. The Church hierarchy had come
to the view that, as religious dissent was an unavoidable fact of life, it would
be better to ensure that the Church was in a position to control Dissenting
activities if necessary. This was provided by Resolution 12. Resolution 13

contained sufficient safeguards to prevent unbridled missionary activity. If the
Church opposed the resolution, it would only make it vulnerable to accusa-
tions of going against God’s commands. It was not worth the storm it would
raise. In the end the Company lost its monopoly of trade to India and had
to accept the oversight of licences by the Board of Control.
While Evangelicals trumpeted Section 33 of the new charter as a great
victory for the religious public of Britain, in private they admitted that their
success had been circumscribed. The statutory provision of a bishop and
three archdeacons, to be paid for out of territorial revenues, was undoubtedly
a success for the Church of England and the Saints had a great part to play in
this. Although not enshrined in statute, the East India Company also agreed
to provide for three Presbyterian chaplains in India. This recognised the large
numbers of Scots in the subcontinent and the Government’s concern to keep
the Church of Scotland sweet. Thus, the wishes of the established churches
in Britain were, to some extent, accommodated. The same cannot be said of
the more ambiguous clause asserting Britain’s duty to provide for the happi-
ness and religious and moral improvement of India. Both sides seem to have
accepted that the phrase referred to missionaries but it was a compromise.
The Saints did not want to press the point because they had learned the
lesson of 1793. On that occasion Wilberforce’s use of this phrase had been
accepted because of the ambiguity and it was not until Wilberforce made it
more explicit, specifying schoolmasters and missionaries, that the clause had
failed. The Government was prepared to accept the clause, as the House of
Commons had done in 1793, because it gave flexibility of action if ever it
was thought necessary to curb missionary activity. Of course, the passing of a
clause declaring that the country accepted it had a duty to promote religious
and moral improvement in India reflected popular feeling on the matter. It
was a moral victory for Evangelicals over the vested interests of both the
Company and their opponents in the Established Church. It reflected the
political influence that Dissenters now had. The Company would hencefor-
ward have to be sure it had a strong case before refusing licences to Church
Evangelical and Dissenting missionaries.
The Government seems to have been very skilful in its negotiations over
this ‘pious clause’. It is usually said that the clause ‘permitted’ missionaries
to go to India. However, as has been pointed out, missionaries had never
been excluded from India under the terms of the Company’s charter. Like
all other Europeans wishing to reside in India, residence was permitted at
the discretion of the Court of Directors and local governors. The Company’s
discretion to declare certificates and licences void ‘if it shall appear to them
that the persons, to whom they have been granted, have forfeited their claim
to countenance and protection’ remained in the new charter. The Court
could still determine where and how missionaries should proceed. Dissenters
had not gained the free access to India they had demanded. Apart from this
possibility of an appeal, the legal position of missionaries wishing to reside
in India remained unchanged. Moreover, missionaries were not specified as
such in the act, the relevant section of which was phrased in nebulous terms.62
The real ‘sting in the tail’ was the enshrinement in the Company’s charter
for the first time of the Company’s ‘compact’ with the Indian people, which
‘provided always that the principles on which the natives of India have hith-
erto relied for the free exercise of their religion be inviolably maintained’.
The success of Section 33 of the Company’s new charter could only be judged
by future events in India.
Notes
1 Wilberforce to Wellesley, 14 April 1806, BL Add. MSS 37309, p. 287.

2 Fuller to Ward, 7 January 1813, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
3 Fuller to Carey, Marshman and Ward, 14 February 1814, Fuller Letters, ALRPC,
BMS MSS. Liverpool also had Indian blood, via his grandmother ‘Begum Johnson’.
4 Fuller to Ward, 5 March 1813, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
5 Lord Gambier’s record of his conversation with Lord Liverpool, BUL, CMSA,
Committee Minutes, 8 March 1813, Book 1, pp. 545–7.
6 Fuller to Ward, 5 March 1813, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
7 Letter from Pellatt and Wilks to the Chairmen, 11 March 1813 in ‘Affairs of the East
India Company Lords and Commons 1813: Negotiations for the Renewal of the
Charter’, BL, IOR L/Parl/2/57, pp. 275–7.
8 Thornton to Bowdler, [April 1813], Thornton Family Papers, CUL, Add. MSS,
674/1/L5, pp. 100–4.
9 Fuller to Carey, Marshman and Ward, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, 14 February 1814,
BMS MSS.
10 Liverpool’s interview with the PSPRL is described in a letter to James Stephen, 30
March 1813, BL Add. MSS, 38410, pp. 230–2.
11 Thornton to Bowdler, n.d., CUL, Thornton Family Papers, Add. MSS 7674//1/L5,
p. 103.
12 PSPRL to Liverpool, 1 April 1813 BL, Add. MSS 38410, pp. 242–3.
14 Lord Teignmouth’s evidence to the Commons, PD, 30 March 1813, 25, cols 429–47.
15 Lord Hastings’s evidence to the Lords, PD, 5 April 1813, 25, col. 553.
17 Letter to Wellesley, 6 April 1813, Wilberforce, Life, 4, pp. 110–11.
18 PD, 9 April 1813, XXV, cols 697–8. See Minute in the Wellesley Papers, BL, Add.
MSS 37281, p. 176.
19 Toone to Hastings, 15 and 26 April 1813, BL Add. MSS 29188, pp. 47–50 and 58.
21 Wilberforce to Harford, 8 April 1813, Bristol City Library, Harford MS 28048.
22 Thornton to Bowdler, [April 1813], Thornton Family Papers, CUL, Add. MSS
7674/1/L5, p. 104.
23 10 May 1813, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS Home Office, Box 2, Folder 7, Jacket A.
24 Fuller to Sutcliff, 2 May 1813, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.

25 PSPRL to Liverpool, 26 April 1813, BL, Add. MSS, 38410, pp. 240–1.
27 Fuller to Sutcliff, 29 March 1813, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
28 Wilberforce to Harford, 31 and 25 March, Bristol City Library, Harford MSS.
29 Burls to Fuller, 30 March 1813, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
30 M. J. Holland (Viscountess Knutsford), Life and Letters of Zachary Macaulay (London,
1900), p. 297. 1000 people attended the meeting on 29 March at three days’ notice.
31 Wilberforce to Clarke, 30 March 1813, Wilberforce House MSS.
32 Pellatt and Wilks to Liverpool, 1 and 26 April 1813, BL Add MSS, 38410, pp. 240–3.
33 Evangelical Magazine (EM), 21 (1813), 188.
34 EM, 21, 221–3 for Edinburgh and Glasgow; Cowdray’s Manchester Gazette, 6 May 1813
and the Northampton Mercury, 10 April 1813, pp. 2–3.
35 See Commons Journals, 15 February 1813, 48, 157 and PD, 27 April 1813, 25, cols
1084–5 and 1092–3.
36 PD, 12 April 1813, 25, cols 764–5.
37 PD, 14 April 1813, 25, cols 817–8.
38 11 March 1813, ‘Negotiations on the Renewal of the Charter’, BL, IOR L/Parl/2/57,
p. 275.
39 The Missionary Chronicle (August 1813), pp. 321–4, listed 908 petitions sent to Parlia-
ment between 15 February and 22 June. It also detailed the MPs who voted in favour
of the petitions.
41 The final text of Resolution 13 (53 G.III, c.155) can be seen at Appendix 4.
42 Pellatt and Wilks to Liverpool, 19 June 1813. See also Allen to Liverpool, 21 June
1813, BL Add. MSS, 38410, pp. 263–5.
43 Court to Bengal, 7 September 1808, contained in Parliamentary Papers (East Indies), 8,
1812–13, pp. 71–4.
44 PD, 22 June 1813, 26, cols 828–30.
45 Parliamentary Papers (East Indies), 8 (1812–13), 409–13.
46 The debate on the 22 June can be found in PD, 22 June 1813, 26, 827–73.
47 Wilberforce to Burder, 25 June 1813, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS Home Office
(Extra) Box 2, Folder 1, Jacket B.
49 Allen to Liverpool 21 June 1813, and Allen to Castlereagh, 26 June 1813, John
Rylands Library, WMMSA, Box 664.
50 PD, 1 July 1813, 26, cols 1018–82.
51 PD, 12 July, 26, cols 1184–96.
52 PD, 16 July 1813, 26, col. 1218.
53 PD, 21 June 1813, 26, col. 786.
54 PD, 13 July 1813, 26, col. 1206.
55 PD, 5 April 1813, 25, col. 562.
56 PD, 3 May 1813, 26, cols 105–6 for Lord Grey and 16 July, cols 1217–18 for Lord
Lauderdale.
57 PD, 28 June 1813, 26, cols 954–5.
58 Fuller to Carey, Marshman and Ward, 14 February 1814, Fuller Letters, ALRPC,
BMS MSS.
59 Philips, The East India Company 1784–1834 (Manchester, 1940), pp. 193–4.
60 I. Bradley, ‘The Politics of Holiness: Evangelicals in Parliament: 1784–1832’, unpub-

lished D.Phil. (Oxford, 1974), p. 38.
61 Toone to Hastings, 29 July 1813, BL Add. MSS, 29188, p. 181.
62 See Appendix 4 for text of Section 33.
Nine
A TURBULENT FRONTIER: THE COMPANY

AND RELIGION 1814–1828
The English government in this country should never, directly or

indirectly interfere in propagating the Christian religion.1
(John Malcolm)
The Company’s despatch providing for Church of Scotland ministers as

stipulated in the new charter made much of the Company’s magnanimity,
maintaining somewhat disingenuously that this demonstrated ‘our desire
to encourage by every prudent means in our power, the extension of the
principles of the Christian Religion in India’.2 Its attitude towards granting
licences to missionaries had not, however, changed. The Court continued
to have concerns that missionary activity conducted by Evangelicals was
not prudent. Both the Chairman of the Company, Robert Thornton, and
Nicholas Vansittart, the Evangelical Chancellor of the Exchequer, advised
the CMS to defer its applications until the new charter came into effect in
1814.3 In November 1813, when both the CMS and BMS decided to apply
for licences, they were refused. The Court objected to the wording of the
BMS application which did not specify that Eustace, Carey’s nephew, was to
go out as a missionary. Fuller perceptively thought the Directors were ‘galled
with the rope wherewith the petitions and Government have tied their hands,
and do not like to grant a favour before they are obliged to it, and yet do not
know what to object’.4 The BMS and CMS then appealed to the Board, which
forced the Court to grant the licences. However, the Board altered the Court’s
draft despatch granting these licences in an unexpected way. The draft had
used the phrase, ‘as missionaries’. The Board deleted this, leaving the more
ambiguous phrase ‘for the purpose of introducing among the natives useful
knowledge and religious improvement’.5 This was the phraseology used in
the charter and it was perhaps the Board’s use of it that gave the Court the
courage to refuse licences to the Baptists, Yates and Shepherd, the following
year. The BMS then approached the Board of Control for Yates, which once
again over-ruled the Court.6 In 1817, probably because of the behaviour

of some of their missionaries, the Court asked the CMS to attend at India
House to give assurances that it would repatriate missionaries who misbe-
haved. Bonds in the sum of £450 each were demanded. As late as 1820
Joseph Butterworth, the Methodist MP, advised the newly formed Wesleyan
Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS) not to delay in making application
for their missionaries because the next Chairman of the Company (Robinson)
was ‘decidedly unfriendly to missions’.7 In 1823 the Court demurred about
sending two female missionaries to India and wished for more information.8
The Court, therefore, did not make the process easy for the missionary socie-
ties, who often had to write several letters and use influential contacts to make
approaches to the Chairmen before licences were granted.
Although the Court had bowed to pressure from the Board to grant licences
to missionaries, it continued to insist that it controlled their terms. The fact
that the Court was only prepared to grant licences to specific places rather
than to the continent of India caused problems for missionaries wishing to
change their place of work. In 1815 the Court refused to grant Norton and
Greenwood of the CMS licences to reside in India but allowed them to
proceed to Ceylon.9 The Governor of Madras tried to stop Bailey from going
to Travancore because his licence specified the Carnatic.10 The missionaries
were eventually permitted to go to where they wanted, but the Company had
made the point that it was in charge. Lord Gambier tried to persuade the
Court to be more liberal in its wording of the licences. However, the Company
was not prepared to permit any missionary society to determine where its
missionaries should go. The CMS felt it wisest not to press the point.11 The
missionaries who had illegally entered India in 1812 were ordered home.
In India Governors were even more cautious. Key figures influencing
policy in the 1820s were Charles Metcalfe and John Adam in Bengal, John
Elphinstone and John Malcolm in Bombay and Thomas Munro in Madras.
These men had many years of experience in India and had powerful friends
in the Court of Directors and Board of Control. The underlying assump-
tion of these predominantly military men was the tenuous nature of British
authority in India and the equally tenuous attachment of the population to
British rule. They were at one with the argument heard so much during the
1813 debates that Hindus and Muslims were deeply prejudiced in favour of
their religious systems and that interference with them was foolhardy. India
was frequently referred to as an ‘empire of opinion’. What this generally
meant was that India was held because Indians believed in the invincibility of
British power. However, as Douglas Peers has pointed out, this was an ‘empire
without any clothes’, as the mainstay of British might was the sepoy army.
Therefore, Indians also needed to be persuaded of the benefits of British
rule as well as of the futility of resistance. Policies of non-intervention and
indirect rule were therefore advocated so that the established Indian leaders
A Turbulent Frontier: The Company and Religion 1814–1828 153
and political order could be maintained as far as possible. By supporting the

laws and institutions of India and carrying on the key functions of an Indian
ruler, it was believed that British rule would be legitimated in the eyes of the
people. An important connection in England was the Duke of Wellington,
the ‘sepoy general’. Wellington had served in India from 1797 to 1804 when
his brother, Richard, was Governor-General. Wellington filled the vacuum
created by the fact that Ministers paid little heed to the Board of Control,
whose president was rarely in the Cabinet. He became the de facto ‘Minister
for India’ until his death in 1852 and ensured that security considerations
formed the bedrock of decision-making about India. The pre-eminence of
security issues did not augur well for relations between Company officials,
who wanted to keep the country stable, and missionaries, whose work would
inevitably destabilise the established order.12
In 1815 the Court finally responded to the requests of both Lord Minto
and his successor as Governor-General in 1813, Lord Moira (Marquess of
Hastings in 1817), for guidance on what to do about the missionaries who
had arrived without licences in 1812. The Court’s eventual instructions advo-
cated a hard line. After drawing the Governor-General’s attention to the
relevant sections of the new charter, the despatch ordered that ‘no persons
must in future be allowed to enter and remain in any part of the Company’s
possessions without producing a certificate, agreeably to the said act’. The
Court argued that this would protect the character of the real missionary, as
well as prevent ‘improper persons’ from settling in the Company’s territories.
Finally, the Governor-General was enjoined ‘to keep a strict watch’ over their
behaviour and ‘in the event of any impropriety occurring in their conduct
immediately to withdraw protection from them’.13
This despatch, two years after the Evangelicals’ so-called success of 1813,
was the harshest yet produced by the Court of Directors against mission-
aries and the first specifically to mention missionaries in connection with
the requirement for licences. This effectively made it more difficult for local
Governors to exercise their discretion. Even the 1808 despatch replying to
Lord Minto’s misgivings about missionary activity had taken care to reiterate
a belief in the benefits to be received from the propagation of Christianity
and warned the Governor-General not to interfere with missionaries unless
it was absolutely necessary for public tranquillity.14 Charles Grant tried his
utmost to have the 1815 despatch altered believing that, despite protestations
to the contrary, the Company was trying to deter missionaries. He reminded
the Court of the feeling at home on ‘subjects of this nature’ and told it that the
strictures in the despatch ‘proceed upon a very erroneous view of the subject
and ought to be omitted’. This time, however, Grant was not able to repeat his
1808 success in moderating the severity of the despatch. It was sent unaltered,
although Grant succeeded in having his objections minuted.15 The missionary
societies had good reason to continue to be apprehensive of the reaction of
the Court of Directors. William Carey wrote that while he blessed God for
the liberty that the clause had secured for missionaries, access to the interior
depended ‘as much upon the will of Government as before’.16 Ironically, by
the time the Court’s 1815 despatch ordering the illegally entered missionaries
home reached India, local Governors had decided they were respectable and
could be allowed to remain. This was largely the result of the help given by
Evan Nepean, the Governor of Bombay, and the intervention of the senior
chaplain, Thomas Thomason, with Lords Minto and Moira.17
The Company, Dissent and the Established Church
The 1813 charter provided for an Anglican Episcopate, to be financed out

of Indian revenues. The new Bishop, Thomas Fanshawe Middleton, was
appointed by the Crown and as such was an officer of the State. He was to be
subject to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to English ecclesiastical law. His
letters patent gave the Crown the right to cancel the appointment, withheld
the Bishop from a seat in the House of Lords and safeguarded the authority
of the Governor-General and Governors over him and his clergy. Otherwise
his jurisdiction was undefined. The Company did not object to an ecclesi-
astical establishment and had long recognised the need to provide religious
services for its employees. Company chaplains were on its payroll and under
its jurisdiction, although it tried to keep them to a minimum to keep the costs
down. The Company was, however, nervous about the effect the appointment
of a bishop might have on Indian feelings, so Middleton arrived in India
with neither fanfare nor official residence. The ambiguity of the relationship
between the Company and the Bishop led to tension. Middleton tried to
assert his authority over the chaplains and Lord Moira, the new Governor-
General, was inclined to agree, issuing an instruction that the Bishop could
determine where chaplains were to be stationed. When the Court learned
of this, it peremptorily ordered Moira to rescind his resolution and told him
that in future no new ecclesiastical officers were to be created nor allowances
given without its previous sanction. The Court regarded this as a matter of
lay patronage and therefore not in the realm of spiritual jurisdiction.18 In
1820 the Court reminded Bengal that chaplains on the military establishment
were under the Company’s care and reiterated: ‘We cannot consent to give
up powers of nomination and temporal control.’19 The Board of Control
occasionally softened the language of the Court’s despatches regarding the
jurisdiction of the Bishop, but nevertheless supported its basic stance that
the Company must retain the right to determine where chaplains should be
stationed. Lord Hastings (Moira) took a more cautious view when he consid-
ered that Indian ‘religious prejudices’ were directly threatened. In 1821 he
refused Middleton’s request for an ordinance forbidding the employment of
native artificers on Sundays. He felt that such a law would do violence to the
religious habits of Muslims and Hindus and would be connected in Indian
minds with the recent appointment of the bishop. Hastings and his Council
feared that ‘alarm might spread throughout the provinces’ and pointed out
that ‘the peaceable acquiescence in our rule . . . had been always attributed
(and we believe justly) to this forbearance’. The despatch to the Court shows
that other factors were also at work. It mentions the fifty-two productive days
that would be lost and the incessant demands for labour in the arsenal.20 Cost
loomed almost as much as security in official thinking.
The CMS had hoped that the new episcopal establishment would smooth
the way for its missionaries. The last-minute misgivings of Wilberforce,
however, proved to be only too true. Thomas Thomason told the CMS that
Bishop Middleton ‘has come amongst us with a spirit by no means calculated
to protect and promote missionary labours’. Thomason found that Middleton
would not ‘acknowledge any relation’ to the CMS missionaries, refused to
license them or to allow them to preach in any of his churches. Middleton’s
insistence on the pre-eminence of the Church of England upset the large
degree of harmony and cooperation that existed between Company chaplains
and the BMS and LMS. In 1821 Middleton gave a ‘charge’ to his clergy in
which he deprecated the fact that the 1813 charter had enabled ‘sectarian
schismatic sentiments’ to be brought into India.21 Dissenting missionaries
were obstructed, particularly over their work amongst European soldiers,
which was regarded as the perquisite of the Established Church. Middleton
castigated the chaplain of Berhampore for supporting the Baptists, whom he
called ‘schismatics and enemies of the Church’.22 Chamberlain told Fuller
that after meeting Corrie that he had come to the conclusion that the problem
was not just that they preached to Anglican soldiers but also because they were
Dissenters. Worse still, they were Baptist and because they did not support
the Anglican Church were regarded as ‘democrats, demagogues & enemies
of the state!!’23 The Baptists did not help by preaching that the Church of
England was not a pure church.24
The CMS missionaries felt that Middleton’s refusal to ordain their mission-
aries diminished their respectability, gave them the appearance of being unli-
censed preachers, and heightened divisions within the Church of England.
As a result, the CMS became extremely defensive in attitude and felt it had
to distance itself from Dissenters, forbidding public worship with them. In an
attempt to control the CMS missionaries further, Middleton encouraged the
SPCK to set up a Calcutta Diocesan Committee.25 He also wanted the SPG
to work in India. The SPG was closely connected with the Episcopate and its
archives show clearly that its main reason for commencing work in India was
to halt the progress of Dissenters.26 Virtually all the annual sermons preached
for the SPG at this time revolved around this theme. In 1818 Middleton
suggested to the SPG that a mission college should be established as he
believed that education was the ‘great instrument’ for the success of Christi-
anity. Middleton stressed that the there was no cause for alarm as there would
be no direct and open affront to Indian religious prejudices.27 He managed
to get the Court’s approval for what became known as ‘Bishop’s College’ by
arguing that the college would help prevent any abuses that might arise from
‘indiscreet zeal’, an aim that was close to the hearts of the Directors of the
Company.28 Lord Hastings granted land for the purpose and the CMS and
B&FBS both gave £5000 towards the expenses. The SPG obtained a Royal
Letter in order to raise funds from Anglican parishes. The high standing of
the SPG and SPCK in England over-rode any hesitation the Company might
otherwise have felt towards their declared intention of propagating Chris-
tianity. The underlying assumption was that missionary activity under the
episcopally sanctioned SPCK and SPG would contribute to the good order
of society. Once SPCK and SPG missionaries arrived in Bengal (the SPCK
had hitherto confined its work to South India), pressure began to be put on
Dissenters to relinquish their Company chaplaincies and schools so that the
SPG and SPCK could move in.29
The fact that the Bishop became responsible for the superintendence of
Anglican missionaries under the India Bishops and Courts Act of 1823 had
far-reaching implications for the relationship between the State and missionary
activity. As Bishops became more involved with missionaries and their work,
it became increasingly difficult to separate the Government from attempts to
propagate the Gospel. Heber, Middleton’s successor after his death in 1823,
had no doubt that it was part of his task to promote evangelism, and told
the SPCK that he hoped to be ‘the chief Missionary of the Society in the
East’.30 Later Bishops also regarded themselves as missionary bishops. They
became drawn into acrimonious debates about the validity of caste in a Chris-
tian setting and soon became champions of attempts to secure further rights
and protection for Christian converts. Fears that Indians could make connec-
tions between Government and missionary activity also had validity as far as
some of the activities of certain Company chaplains were concerned. Some
undoubtedly regarded missionary work as part of their duties. Daniel Corrie,
who was later to become the first Bishop of Madras in 1835, disagreed with
the Company view that chaplains should abstain from missionary work. He
argued that far from this exciting alarm, their official role as Company chap-
lains ‘would enable them to promote most effectually and least ostentatiously
the knowledge of Christianity among the Natives’.31 Henry Martyn was one
of the most successful and energetic in making converts in the period before
1813. Thomas Thomason, the senior Presidency chaplain, did all he could to
promote missionary work. Corrie and Thomason were on the Bengal Corre-
sponding Committee of the CMS and founded a CMS auxiliary in Calcutta.
Likewise Marmaduke Thompson, senior chaplain in Madras, became the first
secretary of its CMS Corresponding Committee. The Corresponding Commit-
tees supervised the activities of the CMS missionaries. The ties between Evan-
gelical chaplains and missionary activity could not have been closer.
The Company and Roman Catholicism
The Company’s attitude towards Roman Catholicism continued much as

before. It was increasingly brought into disputes involving ritual status and the
jurisdiction of churches and ownership of property, particularly in Bombay
Presidency where tension between Padroado and Propaganda churches was
high. The Directors tended to take the pragmatic line that the congregations
themselves should decide. In 1812 Lord Minto ruled that he did not have
to confirm appointments made by the Archbishop of Goa if they did not
accord with the wishes of the people, maintaining that ‘the Roman Catho-
lics are entitled in the fullest sense of the term to the free and uncontrolled
exercise of their Religion equally with respect to matters of spiritual jurisdic-
tion as to rites and modes of worship’. Clashes continued, with petitions and
counter-petitions to the Company. When the Archbishop of Goa suspended
three priests in Salsette, he was told that he had no right to do so and that
the judge and magistrate should deal with complaints of priestly miscon-
duct. This policy was confirmed in 1819 when the magistrate at Thana was
considered the proper authority to superintend the Roman Catholic clergy
of Northern Konkan.32 In Travancore, as we shall see later, disputes between
Jacobite and Latin-rite Syrian Christians, fomented by Anglican interference,
were brought to the Resident.33
Evangelicals did not approve of the Company giving financial support
to Roman Catholicism.34 They felt, with some justification, that Protestant
missionaries were not being treated with equal generosity. In 1814 the Vicar
Apostolic asked for a pension in order to carry on work in the newly opened
stations of Gujerat. The Bombay government was sympathetic and gave him
an immediate grant of Rs 1000. The Court of Directors subsequently rati-
fied a pension of Rs 400 a year. In 1820, in an attempt to counteract the
Archbishop of Goa’s influence, it was suggested that if priests were paid an
independent stipend they might be more responsive to the Government’s
wishes. It was also suggested that the Archbishop of Goa’s influence would be
reduced if the Company financed a seminary and paid the priests a modest
stipend. It took the Court eight years to respond to this unwelcome sugges-
tion of financial support for Roman Catholicism. Eventually it agreed to a
grant of Rs 150 a month to the seminary and small stipends to priests ‘in
places where there was a danger that Christians might otherwise lapse into
heathenism’.35 Roman Catholic priests were also paid stipends to act as mili-
tary chaplains to the Irish soldiers, although at a lower rate than that granted
to Protestant chaplains.
The Presidencies after 1813: The Power of the Man on the Spot
Bengal Presidency: The Supreme Government, Education and Missionary Collaboration

No matter what edicts were issued from Britain, and despite any pressure
put on the Court and Government by Evangelicals at home, the new regula-
tions had to be applied by the men on the spot. It still took six months for
letters to travel between England and India. This left the initiative very much
with local officials who were determined to lead events rather than react to
them. Governors-General had concurred in the firm line adopted by most
Company officials towards missionary activity. This also applied to Frances
Rawden Hastings, Lord Moira, soldier and statesman, who succeeded Lord
Minto in 1813. Although Moira was a vice-president of the B&FBS and made
encouraging noises to missionary leaders before he went out to India, this
was not without caveats. Moira was a deist and was more concerned with
dispelling superstition and providing moral education for the people than
with promoting Christianity. He was also wary of offending Indian religious
sensibilities. Moira made his position vis-à-vis missionaries clear in a letter to
the LMS before he left England, in which he told the Society that he would
gladly afford every protection but would also restrain ‘any zeal that might
take an impolitic course’. He further pointed out to the LMS, in a direct
echo of Lord Minto’s views, that as far as the propagation of Christianity
was concerned, he believed that ‘any line other than the meekest persuasion’
would be hopeless in India. He warned that ‘procedures calculated to alarm
and revolt those who can be won only by prudent and patient conciliation
would defeat your object no less surely than it would hazard those interests
which I am sent to maintain’.36 So, Lord Moira arrived in Bengal, holding the
traditional Company line that he would not allow missionaries to do anything
that might endanger Company rule. Moira’s caution over religious matters
would have been reinforced by the fact that his position in India was difficult.
Buckinghamshire, President of the Board of Control, was ill disposed towards
him and did all he could to have him recalled. The Company was in a parlous
financial condition. The Court of Directors offered him little aid and there
was much criticism over his attempts to deal with the Nepalese threat.
The first issue that had to be dealt with post-1813, in the absence of any
instructions from the Court, was the fate of the four missionaries who had
been ordered to leave India in 1812. The role of Thomas Thomason, the
senior chaplain at Calcutta, was crucial in persuading both Lords Minto
and Moira that there would be no harm in leaving the missionaries in India
until the decision of the Court of Directors was known.37 This decision
gave the missionaries two years’ grace because the Court did not respond to
Minto’s concerns until March 1815. The Court’s eventual despatch seemed
to fly in the face of the spirit of the ‘pious clause’. It ‘entirely approved’ of
Minto’s conduct in ordering home the missionaries who had ‘clandestinely
got out to India on an American ship’ and was prepared to leave the final
decision on the fate of the American missionaries to the discretion of the
Governor-General. Lord Moira decided not to exercise his right to expel
them. The Court permitted Robert May, the LMS missionary at Chinsurah,
to remain because he had replaced Forsyth and was not therefore increasing
the overall numbers of missionaries and because the inhabitants and Forbes,
the Commissioner, had petitioned Government to allow him to stay. Lawson,
a Baptist, was left ‘under the care of Mr Marshman’ because his knowledge
of the Chinese language was very useful to the Company for its China trade.38
Only Johns, a doctor, was forced to return to England, perhaps because there
was other medical aid available and the Company wanted to make the point
that it had the power to expel.39
Although Moira was sceptical about missionary methods, he and other
Bengal officials passionately believed in the power of education to transform
lives.40 An educational partnership between the Government and the LMS
was soon begun. Gordon Forbes, the British Commissioner for Foreign Settle-
ments, allowed May of the LMS to use a room at the Dutch fort at Chinsurah
as a schoolroom. By 1815 May had founded 15 schools. These attracted the
attention of Watson, the fourth judge of the Calcutta circuit, who pleaded for
a government subsidy to May’s schools, as did Forbes, praising May’s talents,
zeal and prudence. The Court of Directors sanctioned a subsidy of Rs 600
per month, which was increased to Rs 800 in 1816. This subsidy was given
on the understanding that the Scriptures would not be used in the schools, a
critical caveat, which enabled the Company to say that it had honoured its
promise not to promote conversions.41 Section 43 of the 1813 charter had
provided for the expenditure of a lakh of rupees (approximately £10,000) on
the ‘revival and improvement of literature, and the encouragement of learned
natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of knowledge and
sciences’. Unfortunately, the state of the Company’s finances precluded such
an amount being used for this purpose until 1823. Moira, therefore, had to
think of other ways to achieve his educational aims. Education was also a high
priority for missionaries. Little progress could be made with conversions until
Indians could read the Bible. Missionaries also believed that education would
improve Indian morals and character and undermine the Hindu scriptures,
thus making Indians more amenable to reception of the Gospel. The Indian
desire for education was seen as ‘a need through which the nation as a whole
might be approached’.42 Missionary resources, however, were scarce. Thomas
Thomason approached Lord Moira with a request for support for his plan
for the establishment of native schools, funded by government, as the best
way of spreading the Gospel. This impressed Moira but was turned down
in the Bengal Council. Thomason believed that it was opposed because of
fears that it might arouse Indian hostility. The cost would also have been a
significant factor.
In 1815 Moira visited the Baptists at Serampore, the first Governor-General

to do so, in order to discuss educational schemes as the best means of civilising
India. The following year Joshua Marshman wrote his Hints Relative to Native
Schools, together with an Outline of an Institution for their Extension and Management
(Serampore, 1816), which impressed Lord Moira, who contributed Rs 1000
to its appeal for funds and gave permission for his name to be used.43 The
plea for funds was so successful that within fifteen months the Baptists had
established 103 elementary schools with 6703 pupils.44 In 1818 Moira, now
Lord Hastings (1817), made the connection between the Governor-General
and missionaries even more explicit when he asked William Carey to send
a missionary to Ajmer in Rajputana to start elementary schools under the
supervision of Sir David Ochterlony. Hastings contributed Rs 3000 from his
own purse to add to the same amount provided by the Nawab of Oudh.45
Lord Hastings also became the first patron of Serampore College for the
Instruction of Asiatic, Christian and other Youth in Eastern Literature and
European Science. He and John Malcolm agreed to become patrons because
of the secular education the College provided for both Christians and non-
Christians.46 They felt able to contribute because the Scriptures were not
being used.
Hastings had supported the Baptist schools from his private funds. However,
he felt able to recommend the use of government funds for strictly secular
educational schemes. In 1817, largely at the instigation of Lady Hastings, the
Calcutta School Book Society (CSBS) was formed to provide non-religious
textbooks for schools. Lord Hastings was its first patron. However, the secular
aims of the Society hid the close involvement of Evangelical officials and
missionaries. Thomason and Carey took part in its formation and mission-
aries were prominent on its managing committee. The Society received Rs
6000 a year from the Bengal government for its maintenance and the CMS
made a grant of Rs 1000 a year in 1820.47 While the Society did not publish
books of a particular religious tendency, missionaries wrote most of them.
By 1823 the CSBS was the main provider of books in the elementary schools
of lower Bengal.48 The following year the Calcutta School Society (CSS) was
founded, which aimed at improving native schools. This had been May’s idea,
who had sent a plan to Forbes, the Commissioner, for his consideration. The
LMS gave the largest single donation of Rs 1000 and the Government also
made an annual grant of Rs 6000. Again, missionaries were active on the
managing committee.49 The missionary presses were also important and were
frequently used by Government. The Baptists had thirteen presses operating
in 1820 and the Calcutta Baptists claimed to have published 71,000 books by
1828. The CMS also had presses.50 Thus, by 1823, missionaries were in close
alliance with the Bengal Government for educational and other purposes, a
fact that did not escape Hindus and Muslims.
The growing influence of Evangelicalism at home was reflected in
increasing numbers of Evangelical Company officials who were prepared

to initiate or participate in educational schemes in which conversion was an
aim. W. B. Bayley, who became chief Secretary to the Supreme Government
in 1819, was an active supporter of missionary educational experiments, as
was J. H. Harington, Buddhist scholar, chief judge of the Sadr Diwani and
Nizamat Adalat, member of the Supreme Council and President of the Board
of Trade. He examined the government-supported schools and was prob-
ably instrumental in persuading the Council to grant the allowance to May’s
schools. Bayley, Harington and Lieutenant Stewart and Captain Irvine of
the 11th Regiment, Bengal Native Infantry saw no difficulty in combining
their official duties with membership of missionary organisations. Bayley was
a member of the Calcutta Diocesan Committee of the SPCK and a regular
subscriber to the Serampore schools. Harington was also on the Diocesan
Committee and the committee of the Calcutta Auxiliary CMS and became an
honorary life-governor of the CMS. He was president of the Calcutta branch
of the B&FBS. Irvine supported the Serampore schools. Both Harington and
Irvine in their time were appointed to inspect the Chinsurah schools. Neither
Lord Hastings nor the Supreme Council seemed to find the active support
of missions by these men a bar to their becoming Government inspectors.
J. W. Sherer, the Accountant-General, was also on the Calcutta Diocesan
Committee.51 None of these officials hid the fundamentally religious motive
for their educational activities. Despite such considerable official support,
missionaries were initially very cautious about introducing the Scriptures into
their schools, relying instead on moral tales and Christian ethics. Indians were
nonetheless sceptical about missionary aims in providing schools and Pearson,
May’s successor, in his official report to the Bengal government on the state
of his schools, acknowledged that the natives suspected a ‘political object in
view’. He had the honesty to admit that they ‘were not entirely mistaken’ in
suspecting a political end, viz., that Christianity would bind rulers and ruled
and thus help consolidate British dominion.52
Perhaps because of the growing support of government officials for their
educational schemes, by the 1820s, missionaries began to be more confident
in the use of the Scriptures in their schools. Indian opposition increased in
response to this and was so great that at times schools had to be moved or
even abandoned. Missionaries were even accused of planning to kidnap the
children and take them abroad. Former teachers who had lost their employ-
ment often whipped up resistance. Hostility usually stopped if Hindu masters
rather than Christians were employed. More complex issues were also at stake.
Nevertheless, while all this opposition was occurring, there was the paradox of
scarcely a month passing without a request for another school. Indians wanted
the education but they did not want the Christianity. When disputes arose,
both missionaries and Indians were quick to appeal to Company officials for
adjudication. This did not always go the missionary’s way. While Hastings
encouraged missionary schemes for education, he also told the missionaries

‘not to stimulate the parents into opposition by teaching on points adverse
to their superstitions’. May had to be told not to use boards with Christian
Proverbs on them in his schools in case Brahmins took umbrage.53 When
Mundy, one of May’s successors, attempted to introduce the Scriptures in the
1820s, Bayley requested that he should not attempt to introduce them further.
He also told Mundy that it would be inappropriate to petition the Governor-
General on this issue. Two years later Bayley had to remind Mundy of the
‘strict injunctions’ laid on them by the Court of Directors.54 When a distur-
bance was created at Mrs Hill’s school and Indians appealed to the military
commandant, rather than support Mrs Hill, the commandant forced her to
give up the land on which her school was situated.55 This was not over-ruled
by the Governor-General-in-Council.
Officials were particularly cautious about missionary schools being set up
in border areas. Despite the fact that Lord Hastings had been instrumental in
getting the Baptist missionary Jabez Carey to Rajputana, Jabez was forbidden
to use the Scriptures or any other religious tracts in his schools ‘because
Rajpootana was newly conquered territory’. Lord Hastings told Jabez’s father,
William, that rumours were circulating that these schools were ‘only a prelude
to introducing Christianity among them and then getting their children to
Calcutta for sinister purposes’.56 Missionaries and their societies at home were
frustrated with the situation and did what they could to circumvent the ruling.
They were able to manipulate the secular Calcutta School Society (in which
they were prominent on the managing committee) by avoiding the inclusion
of any express resolution against the use of the Scriptures in the schools.
This left the way open to use the English class as a means of introducing the
Scriptures.57 Increasingly, missionaries would not budge from the principle of
introducing the Scriptures and by 1823 Christian religious teaching was being
given in most mission schools. There were opportunities for missionaries to
impart Christian religious knowledge even in Government-supported schools.
In some ways the policy pursued by Lord Hastings towards missionaries
was revolutionary. He regarded education without explicit Christian teaching
as a patient and silent way of educating the people without arousing their
fears. Although not forbidden by the Company, his large private contribu-
tions to missionary schemes were of a different order to anything that had
occurred in the past. Wellesley and Barlow had supported the translations of
the Scriptures in their private capacities but had gone no further. Lack of
resources and expensive wars meant that there was little scope for Hastings
to develop a proper educational policy and he had to rely on missionaries if
he was to achieve anything in this area. Under Hastings’s aegis, the Supreme
Council gave Government subsidies to the LMS schools at Chinsurah and
a plot of land for Bishop’s College. Bayley, Harington and others would
have been able to do little for missionary educational schemes had it not
been for Hastings’s implicit approval. At the same time as operating a more
relaxed policy towards missionary schools, the Bengal government was also
giving subsidies to Hindu and Muslim institutions of higher education and
encouraging Indians to take part on the managing committees of the secular
educational societies. It was trying to be even-handed.
Lord Hastings’s successor as Governor-General in 1823, William Pitt
Amherst, was less sympathetic than his predecessor towards anything that
looked like missionary activity. This was reinforced because he relied on
Major-General Thomas Munro, Governor of Madras, for much of his
advice.58 In 1825 Amherst overruled his Council and refused a government
grant to a female education society on the grounds that ‘the government
had hitherto avoided connecting itself with any society established for the
purpose of promoting Christian education’.59 The founders of the society,
in a public meeting, attended by Indians as well as Europeans, had publicly
declared that the propagation of Christianity was one of its objects. The
Court’s response, drafted by J. S. Mill, endorsed Amherst’s action, stating
that ‘we have always discountenanced any cooperation, or the exertion of any
influence whether direct or indirect, on the part of our Indian Government
in aid of the attempt of individuals to convert the Natives to Christianity’.60
The despatch, however, with an eye on the religious public in Britain, also
took care to say that it was neither indisposed to the objects of the society,
nor to the blessings to be received from Christianity.
Lord Hastings had supported missionary educational schemes partly
because there was no government revenue available for education until 1823
when there was at last a surplus of revenue for educational purposes. Amherst
and his council needed to make decisions about how the money was to be
spent and the degree to which missionaries should be involved. A General
Committee of Public Instruction (GCPI) was formed to supervise and make
recommendations for education within the Presidency.61 It was decided to
continue the grants of Rs 9600 per annum to May’s schools and Rs 3600 to
the Rajputana schools. In 1826 Lord Amherst decided to grant Rs 13,000,
to the Baptist Benevolent Institution because ‘an Establishment so beneficial
to the indigent classes of the Christian community should be maintained
in efficiency’.62 The following year a regular grant of Rs 200 a month was
made. It is significant that these grants were given to an institution providing
education for at least nominally Christian Eurasian children. The hope was
that these children would provide candidates for the lower administrative
posts. It was therefore in the Government’s interest to educate them. The
GCPI was keen to be seen to support Indian educational efforts. It decided
to support the Benares madrasa to the tune of Rs 30,000. The Vidyalaya or
Hindu College, which had been started by David Hare and some prominent
Hindus in 1816, was given Rs 25,000. In addition, the Government estab-
lished new Sanskrit colleges in Calcutta, Agra and Delhi.63 The appointment
of the new secretary of the General Committee of Public Instruction, the

Sanskrit scholar, Horace Hayman Wilson, heralded a shift towards primary
government support being given to Indian, rather than missionary, educa-
tional institutions. Mundy thought Wilson was hostile to missionaries and
would try to harm their schools. Wilson was certainly unhappy that money
was being given to the Chinsurah missionary schools. He thought that the
benefits were not proportionate to the expense incurred on them. He argued
that their existence might retard the progress of native schools and that the
grant gave them an unfair advantage.64 According to Mundy, Wilson there-
fore tried to find as much fault as he could when he inspected the schools.65
In 1828, the Benthamite, Holt Mackenzie, secretary to the Territorial Depart-
ment and also on the GCPI, wanted the grant to be withdrawn completely.
Others opposed him in the Committee and the grant continued. This was
part of an on-going debate between ‘Anglicists’ and ‘Orientalists’ over how
the small amount of money available for education should be spent.66 The
end was nigh for government grants to missionary schools.
Madras Presidency: A Hindu Raj?

The situation in the south was very different to that of Bengal in the years
after 1813. Away from Bengal, the Presidency Governors in Bombay and
Madras wielded considerable power over what happened in their Presidencies
as they answered directly to the Court of Directors and not to the Governor-
General. They did not have to be as responsive to feelings in Britain as the
Governor-General. Missionaries in Madras found the previous easy-going
and helpful attitude of Company officials had largely evaporated with the
arrival of Hugh Elliot as Governor 1814–1820.67 The Evangelical Presidency
chaplain, Marmaduke Thompson, complained in 1818 of a ‘very virulent
anti-missionary disposition’ in Madras.68 Elliot insisted that before any
missionary left Madras for other stations, he must first obtain the permission
of the chief civil officer of the proposed station, followed by ratification by the
Governor-in-Council.69 A Madras public despatch of 1816 put the policy in
unequivocal terms when it castigated a CMS missionary for going to Alleppey
without permission, stating that ‘the Governor-in-Council cannot recognize
the competency of any Society in England, or of the Agents of any Society
even to form a judgement with regard to those considerations’.70 In 1818 the
Governor removed the LMS missionary, Pritchett, from his chaplaincy for
‘insubordinate behaviour’.71
Restrictions on missionaries for security reasons continued. When the
LMS missionary, William Lee, decided to start a station at Ganjam in the
unstable northernmost district of the Madras Presidency he was informed
that his arrival had caused ‘considerable alarm among the natives who were
afraid they would be obliged to become Christians’. The magistrate informed
Lee that:
Nothing could be attempted among the hills in the present unsettled state of
things as the least irritation there, would probably bring the natives (who are
half savage) down upon us, to cut our throats.
Lee was not permitted to preach or even to put the Scriptures in the hands
of the native population. The magistrate, however, was happy for him to
establish schools.72
In 1816/17 Elliot passed two laws that caused Evangelicals considerable
alarm. Regulation VI strictly forbade the employment of any except Hindus
and Muslims in the native courts as agents or conductors of suits. Missionaries
felt that this amounted to a complete bar to the employment of Christians in
public office. In 1817, in order to reassure Indians that no change was contem-
plated in the Company’s relationship with Hinduism, the Madras government
codified its involvement in Hindu festivals under Regulation VII. Under this,
the Madras Board of Revenue took direct responsibility for maintaining each
deity ‘in that state of dominion to which his ministers and devotees had so
long been accustomed’. The Madras government thus became legally respon-
sible for administering landed endowments and managing and maintaining
Hindu temples. This law was significant because it formalised Company
involvement that had taken place in an ad hoc manner just when Evangelical
Christians were bringing the matter to public attention. In the opinion of
Evangelicals, this made the Company appear as if it gave implicit sanction
to ‘heathenism’ and practices such as temple prostitution. The attendance
of officials at ritual ceremonial festivals was also formalised. The Company
found itself enforcing local demands for labour to pull the temple cars. This
was a particular bone of contention as in certain areas many of the labourers
were now Christian. Legalisation had the effect of increasing the extent of
the Company’s involvement with Hinduism. Robert Frykenberg argues that
the Company in effect was operating a ‘Hindu raj’.73 Evangelicals certainly
thought it was and the campaign against the Company’s involvement began
in earnest.
Elliot was unhappy about some of the missionary publications and in
1818 put their press under strict censorship. Missionaries were forbidden to
set up an association for the publication and distribution of tracts. They had
to obtain a licence from the Madras government for everything they wanted
to print.74 This was far more authoritarian than anything emanating from
Calcutta. Elliot and his Council also interfered in decisions over where to site
churches, an issue that arose in other parts of India. In 1817, when the resi-
dents of a Hindu street in which a CMS church was being built complained
to Government, the CMS had to move elsewhere. The Government wanted
to guard against any breach of the peace, and avoid ‘just cause of offence’ to
the inhabitants. It tried to sweeten the pill by telling the Society the Govern-
ment would help with the choice of another site and it would be indemnified
for any sums already spent. The following year the Madras government went
even further and prohibited the appropriation of any place to the purposes of
public worship for Christians, without the previous sanction of Government.75
Once the new church was built, Thompson turned the situation to advantage
by telling the CMS that this was the first church to be built expressly for the
natives in India at the sole charge of Government.76 The question of who
should pay for the erection and maintenance of Christian churches for both
Europeans and Indians was to become a contentious issue. The missionary
societies were thus left in absolutely no doubt that their activities in India
would be controlled by the Madras government and that converts would
receive little help. They were certainly in a worse position than they had been
prior to 1813. Indian hostility was also increasing. While most missionaries
felt they were making little progress, Marmaduke Thompson admitted to the
CMS that ‘opinion was gaining ground amongst Indians from the success of
British arms that their gods could no longer help them and the present course
of events would lead to Indians becoming Christian’.77
Major-General, Sir Thomas Munro, who had arrived in India as an
infantry cadet in 1780, succeeded Elliot as Governor. He did not need to be
told by Ravenshaw, his supporter in the Court of Directors, ‘to keep a lookout
after the missionaries in India and do not let us have a religious war there’.78
Munro was firmly of Warren Hastings’s belief that the ‘ruling vice of our
government is innovation’, amongst which he included missionary activity.
He approved of Elliot’s Madras Regulations of 1816/17, which he believed
would ‘strengthen the attachment of the natives to our government by main-
taining their ancient institutions and usages’ and believed that it was his
duty to keep missionaries and the press under control. As he put it, ‘The law
and the Church will always encroach unless they are restrained by superior
authority and they are more apt to do so when there is no Government on the
spot which can control them’.79 In 1826 Munro refused the LMS permission
to set up a seminary in Bangalore, in the Muslim state of Mysore.80 The Court
of Directors approved his refusal to give a grant to the Madras District SPG
‘because it was foreign to the design of your Government that Missionaries
should be maintained at your expense and under your superintendence’.81
Munro was well aware that a few Evangelical officials were prepared to
help missionaries where they could. For instance, a Christian village was
established in Mysore with the help of the judge and assistant Collector.82 It
is not surprising to find missionaries moving to places where they knew that
key Company officials had Evangelical sympathies. Sullivan, the Collector
of Coimbatore, had made it known that he felt there should be a missionary
in every district.83 He stopped the custom of forcing Christians to perform
services at Hindu temples, although threatened with his life if he did so.84
Salem was chosen as a mission station by the LMS with similar hopes. Cock-
burn, the Collector, was believed to know ‘the value of true religion and to
be earnestly desirous of lending his extensive and important authority for the
furtherance of any measure which may tend to the promotion of it among
the heathen within his jurisdiction’.85 Dacre, the judge at Chittoor, set up
Christian schools for girls and boys in his garden and supported many of the
converts. Like other helpful officials, he asked that his name ‘on no occasion
be published . . . because of the peculiar light in which the government look
upon the exertions made by any of the Company’s servants for the purpose
of introducing Christianity among the heathen’.86 Munro decided to take
decisive action against the sub-Collector at Bellary, who used his official posi-
tion to distribute tracts and otherwise further the Gospel. Munro considered
this to be ‘incompatible with a proper discharge of his official duties and
inconsistent with the security of the state’ and dismissed him.87 He pointed
out to the Court of Directors that in a country ‘where the rulers are so few,
and of a different race from the people, it is the most dangerous of all things
to tamper with religious feelings’. He reminded the Court of the massacre at
Vellore and warned that the people might ‘be set in motion by the slightest
casual incident, and do more mischief in one year than all the labours of
missionary collectors would repair in a hundred’.88
Bombay Presidency: Nepean, Elphinstone and Malcolm

The Governor of Bombay, Sir Evan Nepean, stands out from the other Presi-
dency Governors for his positive support of Christianity. He was duplicitous
in the way in which he acted, failing to bring contentious matters to the
attention of the Court and helping the American missionaries who had fled
to Bombay in 1813 after their official expulsion by the Company. In 1815
the Court expressed annoyance that it did not know of the existence of an
auxiliary Bible Society in Bombay when informed of its presence by Marriott,
the magistrate at Caranjah. Marriott complained to the Court that reports
were circulating that the Bombay government was endeavouring to secure
conversions by holding out pecuniary awards and threatening that if this
failed compulsion would be used. He stated that the presence of the Bible
Society was giving offence to Indians, particularly as they had recently heard
about the debates over the ‘pious clause’ in Parliament. Marriott feared that
unrest would be unleashed unless something was done.89 The Court’s reply to
the Bombay government emphasised that although such fears were ground-
less the Bible Society must:
in deference to the prejudices and feelings of the natives, most explicitly and
unequivocally disavow the remotest intention of interfering, in any respect,
with the religious opinions of the natives, and declare, that to such only, as
voluntarily desire it, the Sacred Volume is offered.
Nepean had had to pass Marriott’s complaint on to the Court but played
it down, saying that although there had been similar alarm elsewhere in the
Presidency, no further action was necessary.90 Similarly, when a society was

formed in Bombay for promoting the education of the poor, Nepean was not
entirely candid. Although he knew that the ‘conversion of the heathen’ was
the ultimate object of the society, as he was a member (a fact he omitted to
mention to the Court of Directors), he agreed that its application to Govern-
ment would merely say ambiguously that it was for the children of Protes-
tants or ‘such other as may be disposed to avail themselves of its benefits’.91
Nepean told the missionaries he would do all he could to further their cause.
He allowed the LMS to set up a station in Surat and gave Donaldson of the
LMS a letter of introduction to the Commander-in-Chief.92 He also sent
a ‘very strong letter of recommendation for the Methodist missionaries to
every Collector’.93
Mountstuart Elphinstone, Nepean’s successor, on the other hand, believed
that ‘no engine could be put into the hands of this discontented priesthood
so powerful as an opinion that we entertained even the remotest design of
converting the people’.94 He would not allow missionaries to go to newly
conquered or turbulent areas and confined them mainly to Bombay. Elphin-
stone had a narrow vision of what was acceptable for an officer of Govern-
ment to support. He told an American missionary that their school books
had ‘too much of the Christian Religion in them, and condemned the Gods
of the people which ought not to be’.95 In contrast to Hastings in Bengal, he
would not allow missionaries to be involved with the School Book Society and
was unwilling to become a patron of a religious society. When Archdeacon
Barnes asked Elphinstone to be patron of the Bombay Committee of the SPG
in 1825, it did not appear to him ‘advisable’ to accept because he feared ‘it
might give the appearance of connection between Government and a Society
for converting the Natives, which might create alarm and be injurious both
to the Society and to the Public’.96 Nevertheless, he, the Commander-in-
Chief, and many government officers were present at its founding meeting,
possibly because Bishop Heber was also present. Elphinstone neither presided
nor spoke at the meeting. In this way, he believed that he was fulfilling the
Court’s injunctions against government support of missionary activity.97 He
also felt that it was permissible to give a private donation of Rs 200 to the
newly formed Gujerati Auxiliary Mission.98 Sir John Malcolm, his successor,
was prepared to be more liberal and allowed all missionary letters to pass free
of postage and permitted the missionaries to preach in the Presidency.99 He
agreed to become a patron of Serampore College but told Marshman that
‘while he was proud to be asked to be a patron’, ‘the English government
should never, directly or indirectly interfere in propagating the Christian
religion. The pious missionary must be left unsupported by government or
any of its officers.’100 Neither Elphinstone nor Malcolm was anti-Christian.
However, they were responsible for security in their Presidency. They took
care both to control missionaries and to divorce themselves from their work as
much as possible. The slight differences between what Malcolm and Elphin-
stone considered acceptable point up the subjective nature of exactly where
the boundaries between government and missionaries should lie.
Christianity and the Military
Not surprisingly, given the attitude of most Company officials at the time,
military commanders made life difficult, particularly for Dissenting mission-
aries. They were paranoid about sepoy conversions because of the excite-
ment these aroused among the troops and local Indian populace. There are
numerous examples of missionaries being forbidden to go near the troops,
native or European. In 1814 the Bengal government issued an instruction
prohibiting the circulation of the Scriptures in military stations. As a result
of the instruction, commanding officers at Allahabad and Cuttack confiscated
the books of the missionaries and prohibited them from preaching.101 Smith,
the missionary at Allahabad, was even taken into custody for a short time.102
In Madras Christians were not permitted to join the army and converts were
dismissed. Any sepoy brave enough to convert was certain to be persecuted.
A furore arose when one of the chaplains converted a Brahmin, a naik in the
25th Regiment of native infantry. The Commanding Officer complained to
the Bengal government, saying that the conversion had caused consterna-
tion, threatened good order and was hindering the regiment’s recruiting. The
Bengal government intervened and the convert’s pay was suspended and he
was eventually dismissed. Fisher, the chaplain responsible for the conversion,
believed that it was only his official position that saved him from expulsion.103
It is unlikely that Fisher would have been expelled because the Company did
not want to antagonise the religious public in England.
John Chamberlain, the missionary who had given Carey and Fuller so
much anxiety prior to 1813 caused the local military commander ‘dreadful
apprehensions of the public minds being disturbed in this country’ by
preaching at fairs in Delhi and Hardwar. Metcalfe, the Resident, agreed
that there was danger and wrote to Begum Samru, the ruler of Sardhana,
a colourful woman who had converted to Roman Catholicism, informing
her that if she continued to retain Chamberlain she would be no ‘friend to
government’. Lord Moira supported Metcalfe, telling Chamberlain that ‘he
was not permitted to come into this part of the country to insult the prejudices
of the people as [he] notoriously had done’. Eventually the Begum bowed
to the pressure and Chamberlain was expelled from Sardhana. However, he
was permitted to settle ‘in the lower provinces’. Chamberlain told the BMS
that there would be no improvement in the situation for missionaries in India
until ‘the Board of Controul or royal authority imposes’, a statement that was
not wide of the mark.104
There was also considerable antipathy to Dissent. The last thing military
commanders wanted was democratic notions being spread amongst their
soldiers. These concerns were not entirely without foundation. The demo-
cratic notions of Carey, Ward and Chamberlain were discussed in Chapter
Four. In 1816 Mead, the LMS missionary destined for Travancore, was nearly
sent home immediately on arrival. On the voyage out he had refused to drink
the King’s health and, on being challenged, had said he ‘should have no
objection to drink confusion to Royalty’.105 Mr Lawrence, the acting judge
at Dacca, expressed a common view when he told the Baptist missionary,
Leonard, in 1816 that ‘Dissenters are like a set of miners rocking under the
foundations of the church which will soon come tumbling down and carry the
state along with it.’106 At a number of military stations soldiers were restricted
from attending Dissenting chapels except when the military chaplain was
away. There are numerous examples of missionaries being forbidden from
preaching in military cantonments and of chaplains trying to eject Dissenters
from their land and chapels. By the end of the 1820s interdenominational
rivalry seemed to be on the increase, fuelled by the attitude of the Anglican
Bishop.107
This discussion of the way in which local Governors dealt with matters
concerning Christianity, demonstrates that certain maxims had developed
as officials attempted to maintain a separation between government and
missionary activity. First and foremost, missionary activity was not to be aided
by government money. Thus, the Scriptures were not permitted in govern-
ment-aided schools, nor were Governors supposed to give financial help to
charitable societies suspected of any intention to proselytise. There was a
grey area here because, although Governors were ordered not to give direct
donations for missionary work, they were permitted to contribute to educa-
tional and charitable schemes. Missionary publications were censored to the
extent that tracts were not to include anything considered offensive to Hindus
and Muslims. Company chaplains were supposed to look after Europeans
and not to act as missionaries. The Company was, nonetheless, prepared
to employ missionaries in other capacities, such as chaplain to European
soldiers, running orphanages and asylums and using their presses for Govern-
ment publications. The Company avowed that it would protect missionaries
and their converts from persecution in the same way that it protected others.
However, officials were so concerned about increasing Indian hostility by
any signs of undue favouritism, they were not always even-handed or just. In
many of the decisions they had to make officials were caught between their
own Christianity, with Evangelical demands that it should be favoured, and
their fears that India would rise up if the Government showed any signs of
interfering with its religions.
Evangelicalism Triumphant? The Case of Travancore108
From Grant’s first proposal for missionary activity in India, Evangelicals

had maintained that the Company should do all it could to encourage Indians
to become Christian. They refused to accept the Company’s argument that
undue promotion of Christianity might lead to the loss of its Indian empire.
On the contrary, they argued that this would lead to an identity of interest
between the rulers and ruled which would cement rather than destroy the
British Raj. For a time Evangelicals were able to pursue their ideas about the
correct relationship between Government and Christianity in Travancore, a
princely state which had come under British control in 1801. Travancore’s
large numbers of Syrian Christians had been integrated for centuries with
the wider Hindu community and become accepted as high status, earning
rights of access to Hindu sacred space and procession routes, often sharing
regalia and holding joint shares in goddess festivals. These were important
status markers in South Indian society.109 The arrival of two ardently Evan-
gelical Residents in succession upset the balance, not only between the Syrian
Christians and their Hindu neighbours, but also between Jacobite and Latin-
rite Syrians. Colonel Colin Macaulay, the first Resident, invited the LMS
missionary, William Ringeltaube, to work in Travancore in 1806.110 In 1808
the Diwan of Travancore rose up against the British and issued a proclama-
tion expressing the fear that the English were determined to overthrow the
caste system, dishonour the higher castes and impose Christianity on the
land. Thousands of native Christians were killed.111 The uprising was put
down and Macaulay persuaded the Travancore government to give money
and land to Ringeltaube and to exempt Christians from performing forced
labour on Sundays.
Macaulay’s successor, Colonel John Munro, encouraged by the 1813
‘success’ in Parliament and by his powerful position in Travancore, invited
the CMS to work with the Syrian Christians, ‘under his advice’. Munro was a
member of the Madras Corresponding Committee of the CMS. Contrary to
Company policy, Munro believed that it was his duty as Resident to support
and encourage the propagation of ‘genuine’ (Protestant) Christianity.112
Munro wanted to detach the Jacobites from the Latin-rite Syrians and make
them a client community of the British, without losing their high standing
in Travancore society. He aimed to do this by granting them privileges,
believing that in return the British government would receive ‘their grateful
and devoted attachment on every emergency’ as ‘the reward due to its benevo-
lence and wisdom’ and thus consolidate British power. He also forecast the
conversion of the greater part of the Roman Catholics on the coast as a result
of attaching the Jacobites to Protestant Christianity and British influence.113
Rani Lakshmi Bai, the new ruler, was only too aware that she needed
Company support if she was to survive and asked Munro to be Diwan as
well as Resident. This put him in an extremely powerful position. Munro

persuaded the Rani to take a considerable number of Jacobite Syrians into
public service and to pass a law that a Christian judge should be present in
every district court. He made the missionaries the channel of communication
between himself and the Jacobite Syrians, ordering that all applications for
appointments and redress of grievance were to pass through them. In a bold
move he persuaded the Rani to appoint Norton of the CMS and Mead of the
LMS as judges to deal with disputes involving Christians.114 At Munro’s behest
the Rani granted generous gifts of money, land and building materials to the
Protestant missionaries. He also persuaded her to grant Christian converts tax
concessions, inheritance rights and full exemption from all duties connected
with temples.115 This was revolutionary, particularly in a princely state and
hardly likely to endear Christians to the predominantly Hindu population.
Munro’s actions were widely regarded as a breach of the Company’s policy
of religious neutrality. The Madras government wrote to him ‘in terms of
such asperity and hostility’ that he gave the idea up of appointing another
missionary as a judge but did not dismiss those already appointed.116
Indian opposition to Munro’s moves and the large numbers of low-caste
Shanar conversions, which followed in their wake, was immediate. The
concessions challenged the status quo and short-circuited the local judicial
and revenue machinery. They also led to loss when Christians refused to
contribute shares in village festivals or to perform public services. This antag-
onised landholders and notables and aroused jealousy in groups who were not
so fortunate. Resentment was also caused within the Syrian Christian commu-
nity by missionary interference in disputes over church ownership. The CMS
missionaries were instrumental in ensuring that a number of churches used by
the Latin Syrians were taken away from them on the grounds that they had
originally belonged to the Jacobites. These developments led to their aliena-
tion from other Syrian Christians and the wider Hindu community. Such
antipathy to the missionaries was created that Norton, one of the missionary
judges, told the CMS that ‘it was doubtful whether we should remain in
the country another month’.117 The CMS then ordered the Madras Corre-
sponding Committee to tell its missionaries not to take part in any affairs that
might give umbrage to Government.118
When Munro left Travancore in 1819, the Rani’s concessions to Syrian
Christians virtually ceased and nearly 300 Syrian Christians in public service
were dismissed almost immediately. Christians began to be harassed by
junior officers of the Travancore Government. Colonel McDouall, Munro’s
successor, refused to investigate ‘general accusations’, pointing out that ‘the
natives will know the channel of redress for real grievance’.119 He also became
drawn into increasing tension between Roman Catholics and the Protestant
missionaries.120 Priests deeply resented Protestant successes amongst their
flocks and this sometimes led to violent clashes. Catholics appealed to the
British Resident for redress. Colonel McDouall told Bailey, one of the CMS
missionaries, that he did not ‘think it right that 340 Roman Catholic families
should be deprived of their only place of worship in order to give churches
to the new Metran [of the Jacobite Christians]’.121 He left the missionaries
in no doubt as to the policy he would pursue towards the Jacobite Christians,
telling them:
In regard to the protection you solicit for the Syrians from the British govern-
ment, … they are already more highly favoured than any class of the subjects
of the Travancore government.… What is just I will seek to support them in;
and this is all that becomes the national representative to interfere with.122
McDouall defused the tension caused by the CMS interference and Norton
acknowledged that it was due to the new Resident that the Travancore govern-
ment did not expel them.123
In the early 1820s Hindus and Christians began to clash violently over
issues of temple honours and the organisation of festivals and the alloca-
tion of temple shares.124 One of the more emotive disputes, which outraged
Western notions of decency, was the ‘breast-cloth’ controversy, in which
Shanars took to wearing an upper cloth over their bosoms in the manner of
high-caste women. As opposition and persecution increased, the missionaries
engaged in voluminous correspondence with the Travancore government and
the British Residents in order to obtain redress for their Shanar converts.125
Violent clashes over the breast-cloth issue were particularly fierce in 1827/8.
Women were insulted and attacked in the bazaars and military aid had to be
called in to restore order. Twenty-four Christians were placed on false charges
of murder and assault. After the LMS missionary, Mead, was threatened
that his house would be burnt down and he would be speared, mission-
aries had to station guards on their homes. In 1829 petitions were sent to
Morison, the Resident, concerning the use of the breast-cloth. Both Morison
and the Madras government declined to intervene in favour of Christians,
regarding the issue as one of local caste usage. The tumult and missionary
propaganda eventually had an impact and the Diwan issued a proclamation
allowing the wearing of a jacket but absolutely prohibiting the use of an upper
cloth. He permitted Christians to be exempt from labour on a Sunday and
service to temple ceremonies. However, it was also made clear that Chris-
tians were liable for government labour along with everyone else and that
they were under the authority of the government officers, as were all other
subjects. A proclamation had also been issued requiring permission before
places of worship could be erected and this remained in force.126 Mission-
aries felt this was specifically directed towards Christian churches and was
therefore an action against Christianity. The Court approved of the actions
of the Resident and Diwan.127 Persecution gradually died down but was to
flare up again in later years. The pattern of opposition to missionary work
and persecution of converts outlined with regard to Travancore repeated

itself throughout India. Despite the care that both missionaries and Company
officials took elsewhere to ensure that no connection could be made between
them, missionaries reported that they were often asked if they were paid by
Government to force Indians to become Christian.
Church/Dissent rivalry was also a factor in the attitude of these Residents
towards the missionaries. The long-term aim of Munro’s intercessions had
been to help the propagation of Anglican Christianity. Newell, McDouall’s
successor as Resident, told Crow of the LMS that if he (Newell) did any more
for missionary activity, ‘it would not be without the pale of the Established
Church’. Newell disapproved of the LMS concentration on the poorer classes
and entirely disapproved of the introduction of catechising in the schools,
recommending instead Aesop’s Fables. Nonetheless, he gave Rs 14 a month
towards the schools.128 Colonel Newell had been warned by Thomas Munro
before he took up his appointment as Resident, to be very careful and to
refrain from making changes.129
This brief rundown of events in Travancore demonstrates that Colin
Macaulay’s and John Munro’s policy of favouring Christianity had done
the cause of Christianity more harm than good. Admittedly, Travancore
was a princely state where opposition could be expected to be more intense.
However, events in the rest of India demonstrated a similar pattern of oppo-
sition to missionary activity and accusations that the Government aimed at
conversion. Indian reactions to events in Travancore gave some indication of
what might happen if Christianity was to be privileged in other parts of India.
The Company and Persecution of Christian Converts
The persecution of Christians in Travancore were not isolated occurrences.

The example of Travancore gives the lie to Wilberforce’s statement during
the 1813 debates over the renewal of the Company’s charter that the Prot-
estant missionaries in India were not only the ‘most esteemed, but the most
beloved and popular individuals in the country’ and that ‘the natives were
so tolerant and patient in what concerns their religion, that even the grossest
imprudence could not rouse them to anger’.130 Missionaries far more often
met with abuse and violence than with grateful thanks for their redeeming
message. Their reports tell of how severely many converts were suffering
because of their adherence to Christianity. As punishment for breaking caste
converts were refused essential services such as that of barber, mid-wife and
washerman. Zamindars were increasingly refusing to renew leases to Chris-
tians, particularly in areas where missionaries appeared to be making some
progress. Houses were destroyed, gardens pillaged and granaries plundered.
In one village the home of a Christian was burnt down and the Christians
reading the Scriptures inside were attacked by a mob with swords. Children
attending missionary schools were often beaten up and many schools had
to be abandoned. Missionaries themselves were not exempt from threats to
their lives. Many Company officials feared that hostility might reach the stage
where it threatened political stability.
The results were two-fold. On the one hand, Company officials became
even more inclined to support Hindus and Muslims against Christians. On
the other, in the face of increased hostility from Indians and the continuing
caution of Company officials, missionaries became more vocal in their view
that a Christian government should protect both them and their converts.
They were no longer prepared to heed the injunctions of their societies to stay
out of political matters. John Devasagayam, the first Indian CMS missionary,
appealed to the local magistrate when one of his schools was burnt down
and several Christians were wounded. The magistrate found in favour of
the Christians and punished the ‘oppressors’.131 However, persecution of
Christian converts increasingly led to tension as missionaries expected the
Company officials to take the side of their Christian converts. Two CMS
missionaries in the Tinnevelly area were prime examples of a new confident
breed of missionary, the Lutherans, C. T. E. Rhenius and B. Schmid. Rhenius
and Schmid were very successful in making converts from Tinnevelly’s Shanar
population and the breast-cloth issue was as violently resisted by higher castes
there as in Travancore. By 1823 persecution of their converts had reached
the point where the missionaries decided that it was their Christian duty to
help the people stand up for what they perceived to be their rights. Rhenius
wrote in his journal that:
I think it right that whatever can be done for securing their persons & estates &
rights from the wanton attacks of their enemies, ought to be done, & therefore
I either advise them to seek justice with the Collector, or request the Tasildar
of the district to render them justice.132
Rhenius did not restrict his role as mediator to cases of violence but also
believed he should help his Christians in representations against the unfair
taxation which he believed they suffered.133 James Monro, the Collector, had
little choice but to become involved in the disputes. Rhenius felt that eventu-
ally they received justice from him but it was a long, slow battle, despite the
fact the Monro had promised to do all he could to help on first taking up his
appointment.134 Rhenius did, however, have one significant victory when, in
May 1825, Monro forbade the tasildars ‘to force the people to pull the idol
cart at [Hindu] feasts’.135 In 1825 the new sub-Collector, Kindersley, told
the missionaries that the practice of writing to the Collector was ‘contrary
to regularity’. He pointed out that it was impolitic because ‘the opinion has
gone abroad among the people that through the influence of their pastors,
[the Shanars] are the objects of peculiar regard with their rulers’.136 Later,
when representations were made to him about Christians paying idol taxes,
Monro replied that only the Board of Revenue could order relief.137 Distur-
bances became more frequent as the decade came to a close. This was partly
due to the significant success Rhenius was having in making converts. Also
news of the abolition of sati would have travelled swiftly through the country
and caused further alarm that the British were intending to force Indians to
become Christian. In 1828 a petition signed by 183 brahmins and sudras
was sent to the Collector complaining that Rhenius spoke ill of their gods
and impeded tax collections and asking for him to be removed.138 While the
Company did not accede to this request, Company officials did not always
take the side of Christians.139
Conclusion
The ‘Pious Clause’ had given Evangelicals great hope that the Company
would now promote Christianity in India or, at the very least, put no restric-
tions on missionary activity. The Court, however, initially had to be forced
to grant licences to missionaries by the Board of Control. Until at least the
mid-1820s, the Court raised queries and objections to applications from
Evangelical missionary societies. This does not appear to have been the case
for the SPCK and SPG missionaries, who were routinely granted licences.
Although Dissenters were not refused licences after 1814, Church/Dissent
tensions continued to hamper their operations. Both the Company at home
and its officials in India demonstrated a determination to control mission-
aries and, indeed, all ecclesiastical officers. Encouraged by Lord Wellington,
various Presidents of the Board concurred with the Company’s position
and the question of missionaries to India did not become a trial of strength
between the Court and the Board. The crucial factor as to how missionaries
were treated was the attitude of the man on the spot. Sympathetic Collectors
and Residents could do much to help missionaries and they did so knowing
that they were contravening Company policy. Such officials were increasing in
number. However, apart from Nepean, the key Governors in the first fifteen
years after the 1813 renewal of the charter were wedded to the principle that
India could only be held if Indians believed that their religions would not
be interfered with and therefore they should not support missionary activity.
Lord Hastings encouraged missionary educational schemes but held the line
on other dealings with missionaries. He forbade the use of Scriptures in
government-supported schools and their circulation in military lines. He sanc-
tioned the dismissal of a sepoy convert and ratified the dismissal of Chamber-
lain from Sardhana. Amherst carried on this policy. Company maxims about
the relationship between Christianity and Government remained entrenched.
Events in Travancore where Evangelical Residents broke the ‘rules’ seemed
to confirm the validity of the Company position. The Anglican Bishop of

Calcutta further complicated matters. Missionaries felt caught in an impos-
sible dilemma. Because of Indian opposition to their work, they were only
too aware of their dependence on official support. The 1813 charter, far
from improving the situation for missionaries, appeared to have made them
worse. In 1821, eight years after to so-called ‘victory’ of 1813, one missionary
bitterly complained that:
On the one hand missionaries are constrained and confined by the political
authorities, on the other they are libelled and censured by Ecclesiastical
authority.… In this state what are missionaries to do?140
They had no doubt that once again the only solution was an appeal to Parlia-
ment at the 1833 renewal of the Company’s charter.
Notes
1 J. Malcolm, The Political History of India 1784–1823, 2 vols (London, 1826), 2, p. 289.
2 Public letter to Bengal, 12 November 1813, para. 2, BL, IOR, E/4/678.
3 26 July 1813, BUL, CMSA, Committee Minutes, Book 2, p. 30.
4 Fuller to Sutcliff, 15 November 1813, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
5 Draft Public letter to Bengal, 26 November 1813, para. 5 and 18 February 1814,
paras 4 and 5, BL, IOR, E/4/678.
6 Fuller to Carey, Marshman and Ward. 19 August 1814, Fuller Letters, ALRPC, BMS
MSS.
7 Butterworth to Taylor, 7 January 1820, John Rylands Library, WMMSA, Home
Correspondence, Box 3. The Society was founded in 1814.
8 10 March 1823, BUL, CMSA, Committee Minutes, Book 6, p. 277.
9 13 February 1815, BUL, CMSA, Committee Book 2, p. 267.
10 Bailey to CMS, 20 September 1816, BUL, CMSA, South India Calendar, C1 2/E1.
11 Letter from Gambier to Bebb and Pattison, 1 September 1817, BUL, CMSA,
Committee Minutes, Book 3, pp. 66–7.
12 D. M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon, Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in India,
1819–1835 (London, 1995). Peers’s book is an important discussion of how crucial
military considerations were to Company policy and how the military soaked up most
of the resources.
13 Public letter to Bengal, 6 March 1815, paras 110–20, BL, IOR, E/4/683.
14 Public letter to Bengal, 7 September 1808, BL, IOR, E/4/663.
15 Grant’s ‘Remarks Relative to American Missionaries arrived in Bengal without
licences from the Company’ are contained in Board Collection 10461A, BL, IOR,
F/4/427.
16 Carey to unnamed, 22 February 1814, ALRPC, BMS MSS, Box IN/13.
17 Thomason to Nott, 13 October 1813 and 19 November 1813, Board Collection
10461A, BL, IOR, F/4/427.
18 Ecclesiastical letter to Bengal, 11 October 1816, paras 1–7, BL, IOR, E/4/689.
19 Ecclesiastical letter to Bengal, 18 February 1820, para. 91, BL, IOR, E/4/698.
20 Bengal Ecclesiastical letter, 4 January 1821, paras 27–31, BL, IOR E/4/106.
21 Fletcher to WMMS, 22 March 1821, John Rylands Library, WMMSA, Box 433.
22 Hill to LMS, 4 June 1824, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North India (Bengal), Box 2,
folder 1, Jacket A.
23 Chamberlain to Fuller, 3 May 1815, ALRPC, BMS MSS, Box IN/26.
24 Thomason to Pratt, 31 August 1815, BUL, CMSA, CI 1/E1.
25 M. A. Laird, Missionaries and Education in Bengal, 1793–1837 (Oxford, 1972), p. 74. This
began educational work in 1818.
26 See SPG MSS now held in Rhodes House (RH), Oxford, especially the SPG East
India Journals, East India Committee Books and the SPG Annual Reports.
27 Middleton, to SPG, 16 November 1818, RH, SPG MSS, C IndI (1), Letter 3.
28 Draft letter from SPG to the Court of Directors, n.d., RH, SPG MSS, Box C IndI
(1), Letter 8. See also Ecclesiastical Letter to Bengal, 23 July 1824, para. 41, BL, IOR,
E/4/711.
29 See, for instance, Hill to Bogue, 11 October 1824, and Mundy to LMS, 27 August
1825, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North India (Bengal), Box 2, Folder 1, Jacket A
and Box 2, Folder 2, Jacket C.
30 S. Neill, A History of Christianity in India 1707–1858 (Cambridge, 1985), p. 267.
31 Corrie to Henry Hoare, 19 May 1813, BUL, CMSA, Early Correspondence, CI 1E1.
32 K. A. Ballhatchet, Caste, Class and Catholicism in India 1789–1914 (London, 1998), pp.
58–9.
33 See below, p. 172.
34 The Company gave regular grants to RC chaplains. See, for instance, Ecclesiastical
letter, 4 January 1821, para. 41, BL, IOR, E/4/106.
35 See E. R. Hull, Bombay Mission History, 2 vols (Bombay, 1927), 2, pp. 207–8 and BL,
IOR H. Misc. 59, p. 141. There were ten rupees to the £.
36 Moira to LMS, 8 February 1813, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, Board Minutes (1813),
Box 5/6 (1809–15).
37 See correspondence in Maharashtra State Archives, Bombay Public Department,
diary 360 and letters from Thomason to Hall and Nott, 13 October and 19 November
1813, in Board Collection 10461, BL, IOR, F/4/427.
38 Public letter to Bengal, 6 March 1815, paras 110–20, BL, IOR, E/4/683.
39 Carey, Marshman and Ward to Fuller, 29 March 1813, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/21.
40 Laird, Missionaries and Education, pp. 123–4.
42 Corrie to Thomason and Udny, 21 May 1814, BUL, CMSA, North India Calendar,
Letter 68.
43 Carey to Ryland, 4 October 1818, ALRPC, BMS MSS, Box IN/13.
45 Carey to Ryland, 4 October 1818, ALRPC, BMS MSS, Box IN/13.
46 Malcolm’s reply to Marshman’s invitation, in J. Malcolm, Political History of India, 2
vols, 2, p. 289.
47 K. Ingham, Reformers in India: An Account of the Work of the Christian Missionaries on Behalf
of Social Reform 1793–1833 (Cambridge, 1956), p. 60.
48 Laird, Missionaries and Education, p. 104.
49 Printed circular at the Formation of the Calcutta School Society, LMS MSS, North
India (Bengal), Incoming Letters, Box1, Folder 2, Jacket A.
50 Ingham, Reformers, p. 69.
52 Pearson’s report on his schools, 5 October 1818, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North
India (Bengal), Box 1, Folder 3, Jacket A.
54 Mundy to LMS, 10 October 1821 and 10 May 1823, LMS MSS, North India
(Bengal), Box 1, Folder 4, Jackets A & D.
55 Hill to LMS, 4 June 1824, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North India (Bengal), Box 2,
Folder 1, Jacket A. Missionary wives often ran schools.
56 W. Carey to J. Carey, 16 July 1822, ALRPC, BMS MSS.
57 Pearson to LMS, 12 December 1818, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North India.
(Bengal), Box 1, Folder 2, Jacket A. A printed circular ‘Formation of the Calcutta
School Society 1817’ is included.
58 See, for instance ‘Memorandum of a Conversation Between Amherst and Munro’,
23 July 1823, who told him not to persecute missionaries but not to encourage them
either, BL, IOR, MSS Eur. F140/114(a).
59 Bengal Public Letter, 30 September 1825, paras 54–7, BL. IOR E/4/116.
60 Public Despatch to Bengal, 13 December 1826, paras 3–6, BL, IOR, E/4/720.
61 Bengal Revenue Letter, 30 July 1823, Board Collection 25693, BL, IOR, F/4/908.
62 E. D. Potts, British Baptist Missionaries in Bengal, 1793–1837: The History of Serampore and
Its Missions (Cambridge, 1967), p. 203. The Serampore Baptists founded the Benevo-
lent Institution in 1811 for Calcutta’s destitute Eurasian children.
63 Ingham, Reformers in India, p. 65.
64 H. Wilson to Mundy, 26 May 1825, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North India (Bengal)
Box 2, Folder, 2, Jacket A.
65 Mundy to LMS, 1 April 1825, SOAS, CWMA, North India (Bengal), Box 2, Folder
2, Jacket A.
66 There is a large literature on this subject. For recent works, see L. Zastoupil and
M. Moir, eds, The Great Education Debate (Richmond, 1999), and P. Carson, ‘Golden
Casket or Pebbles and Trash? J. S. Mill and the Anglicist/Orientalist Controversy’,
in J. S. Mill’s Encounter with India, ed. M. Moir, D. Peers and L. Zastoupil (Toronto,
Ont., Buffalo, NY and London, 1999), pp. 149–72.
67 Elliot was the younger brother of Lord Minto and an uncle of Lady Buckingham-
shire.
68 Thompson to the CMS, 9 July 1818, BUL, CMSA, Committee Minutes, Book 3, p.
461.
69 Thompson to CMS, 26 September 1816, BUL, CMSA, South India Calendar, CI
2/E1, Letter 64b.
70 Extract of Fort St George Public Consultations, Hill to Bailey, dated 5 October 1816,
BUL, CMSA, South India Calendar, CIE 2/1, p. 84.
71 Madras Military Letter, 4 February 1818, paras 357–65, BL, IOR, E/4/920.
72 Lee’s Journal, 30 July 1814, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India Journals, Box
2.
73 See, for instance R. E. Frykenberg, ‘The Impact of Conversion and Social Reform
upon Society in South India During the Late Company Period: Questions Concerning
Hindu-Christian Encounters with Special Reference to Tinnevelly’, in Indian Society
and the Beginnings of Modernisation c. 1830–1850, ed. C. H. Philips and M. Wainwright
(London, 1978), p. 211.
74 Thompson to CMS, 9 July 1818, BUL, CMSA, Committee Minutes, Book 3, pp.
460–2.
75 Thompson to CMS, 10 October 1817 and extract of Madras Public letters, 23
December 1817 and 15 May 1818 contained in CMSA, Committee Minutes, Book
3, p. 271 and pp. 462–3. See also Public letter from Madras, 19 March 1818, paras
220–1, BL, IOR, E/4/348.
76 Thompson to CMS, 20 July 1819, CMSA, Committee Minutes, Book 4, p. 348.
77 Thompson to CMS, 2 August 1819, CMS Committee Minutes, Book 4, pp. 573–4.
78 B. Stein, Thomas Munro (Delhi and Oxford, 1989), p. 257.
79 Munro to Canning, 1 May 1823, Canning Papers, ‘Political Correspondence: India,
Sheepscar Library, MSS 99. See below, p. 000, for Bentinck’s comments.
80 Laidler and Massie to LMS, 1 August 1826 containing correspondence and extract
of Madras Public Consultations, 14 April 1826 (No. 264), SOAS, CWMA, LMS
MSS, South India (Canarese), Box 2, Folder 1, Jacket D.
81 Public Letter to Madras, 15 September 1829, BL, IOR, E/4/939.
82 Howell to LMS, 1 January 1825, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India (Telegu),
83 Devasagayam’s Journal, April to June1822, BUL, CMSA, C1 2/M2, p. 477.
84 Gosling to CMS, 18 October 1822, BUL, CMSA, C1 2/M3, p. 168.
85 Crisp to LMS, 21 November 1827, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India (Tamil),
86 Crisp to LMS, 27 February 1826, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India (Tamil),
87 Extracts from Fort St George Secret Consultations, 29 November 1822, Board
Collection 64969, F/4/1618, pp. 1–17.
88 J. Bradshaw, Rulers of India: Sir Thomas Munro and the British Settlement of Madras Presi-
dency (Oxford, 1906), pp. 183–4.
89 Bombay Public Consultations, 3 November 1813, contained in Board Collection
10532, BL, IOR, F/4/432.
90 Public Letter to Bombay, 9 March 1815, para. 206, Board Collection 12032, BL.
IOR, F/4/503.
91 Public Letter from Bombay, 19 July 1815, paras 131–2, Board Collection 12032,
BL, IOR F/4/503.
92 Donaldson to LMS, 19 September 1817, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North India
(Gujerat) Box 1, Folder 1, Jacket A.
93 Harvard to WMMS, 7 October 1814, John Rylands Library, WMMSA, Box 433.
94 Elphinstone to Suares, 3 November 1818, cited in K. A. Ballhatchet, Social Policy and
Social Change in Western India (London, 1957), pp. 83–4.
95 Fletcher to WMMS, 7 April 1821, John Rylands Library, WMMSA, Box 433.
96 Letter from Elphinstone to SPG, 13 May 1825, RH MSS, USPG East India
Committee Book X49, 1825–6.
97 S. Neill, Christianity in India, p. 185.
98 Fyvie to the LMS, Report for 1825, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North India
(Gujerat), Box 1, Folder 2, Jacket A.
99 Taylor to LMS, 27 June 1832, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India (Canarese),
Incoming, Box 3, Folder 3, Jacket A.
100 Malcolm, Political History, 2, 289.
101 Peter to Ward, 17 November 1814, RPC, AL, BMS MSS, IN/28.
102 Smith to Ryland, 21 January 1814, Serampore Circular Letters, VII (1814–15), p. 8.
103 Fisher to Cheap, n.d., BUL, CMSA, North India Mission, Mission Books, CI 1/M1.
104 Chamberlain to Carey, 30 November 1814, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/24. For more
information on Begum Samru, see Neill, Christianity in India, p. 284.
105 East India Committee Minutes, 6 February 1817, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South
India (Travancore) Box 1, Folder 1, Jacket A.
106 Leonard to Marshman, 11 November 1816, ALRPC, BMS MSS, IN/28.
107 See, for instance, Taylor to LMS, 26 October 1826 and 7 September 1829, SOAS,
CWMA, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India (Tamil), Box 2, Folder 2, Jacket
B and Box 3, Folder 2, Jacket B which tells of Revd Sawyer’s attempt to eject them
for their chapel, supported by the Archdeacon.
108 Largely what today is the state of Kerala.
109 See S. Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society,
1700–1900 (Cambridge, 1989). The Jacobite or Thomas Christians, who were said
to have first been converted by St Thomas, came under the authority of Antioch.
The Portuguese had converted the Latin-rite Syrians to Roman Catholicism.
110 Colin Macaulay was the brother of Zachary Macaulay, one of the Clapham Sect.
111 L. Kitzan, ‘The London Missionary Society and the Problem of Authority in India,
1798–1833’, Church History, XL (1971), 471.
112 Munro to Thompson, 3 January 1816, BUL, CMSA, South India Calendar C1 2/
E1, Letter 28.
113 Munro to Norton, 29 May 1817, P. Cheriyan, The Malabar Syrians and the Church
Missionary Society 1816–1840 (Kottayam, 1935), p. 368.
114 Mead to Burder, 4 April 1818, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS South India (Travancore),
Box 1, Folder 1, Jacket A. See also Munro to Thompson, 19 July 1816, BUL, CMSA,
South India Calendar, C1 2/E1.
115 See P. Cheriyan, The Malabar Syrians and the Church Missionary Society 1816–1840
(Kottayam, 1935), K. V. Eapen, A Study of Kerala History (Kottayam, 1986), pp. 164–8.
and C. M. Agur, Church History of Travancore (Madras, 1903), in addition to the corre-
spondence held in the CMS and LMS archives.
116 Munro to Knill, 18 January 1819, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India (Travan-
core), Box 1, Folder 1, Jacket B.
117 Norton to CMS, 4 March 1820, BUL, CMSA, CI 2/M1, South India Mission,
p. 382.
118 11 October 1819, BUL, CMSA, Committee Minutes, Book 4, p. 210.
119 ‘Correspondence Relative to the Cotym Missionaries’ Alleged Interference in Secular
Affairs’, BUL, CMSA, CI 2/M1, South India Mission, p. 358.
120 Thompson’s Report of the Quilon Stations, 1828, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS,
South India (Travancore) Box 1, Folder 3, Jacket A.
121 McDouall to Bailey, 27 August 1819, BUL, CMSA, CI 2/M1, South India Mission,
p. 73.
122 McDouall to Bailey, 27 August 1819, BUL, CMS MSS CI 2/M1, p. 74.
123 Norton to CMS, 4 March 1820, BUL, CMSA CI 2/M1, South India Mission,
p. 383.
124 S. B. Bayley, ‘Hindu Kingship and the Origin of Community: Religion, State and
Society in Kerala, 1750–1850’, Modern Asian Studies, 18 (1984), 177–213.
125 Fenn to CMS, 26 February 1820 and Bailey to Mortlock, 24 March 1820, BUL,
CMSA, South India Mission, CI 2/M1, p. 297 and p. 350.
126 Mead to LMS, 23 June 1829, ‘Account of the Persecution of Christians in Travan-
core’, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, Box 1, Folder 3, Jacket D.
127 Political letter to Madras, 1 February 1832, paras 12–14, BL, IOR E/4/941.
128 Crow to LMS, 24 September 1825, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS South India (Travan-
core), Box 1, Folder 2, Jacket C. Morison, a later Resident, also donated to the LMS
schools.
129 Bradshaw, Munro, p. 179.
130 PD, 22 June 1813, 26 cols 868–9.
131 See Devasagayam’s Journal, April–June 1821, BUL, CMSA, South India Mission,
C1 2/M2, pp. 551 and 179–87.
132 Rhenius’s Journal, 24 May 1825, BUL, CMSA, South India Mission, C1 2/M2, pp.
281–2.
133 Rhenius’s Journal, 26 October 1824, BUL, CMSA, South India Mission, CI 2/M4,
p. 151.
134 Appendix to the Tinnevelly Mission Report for 1825, BUL, CMSA, South India
Mission, CI, 2/M4, p. 328.
135 Rhenius’s Journal, 31 May 1825, BUL, CMSA, South India Mission, CI 2/M4, p.
283.
136 Appendix to the Tinnevelly Mission Report, 25 October 1825, BUL, CMSA CI 2/
M4, p. 333.
137 Rhenius’s Journal, 22 June 1826, BUL, CMSA, South India Mission, CI 2/M5, p.
11.
138 Rhenius to CMS, 6 December 1828, BUL, CMSA, C1 2/M6, pp. 513–14.
139 Rhenius’s Journal, 24 February 1829, BUL, CMSA, CI 2/M7, p. 55.
140 Fletcher to WMMS, 7 April 1821, John Rylands Library, WMMSA, Box 433.
Ten
A NEW DAWN? THE ERA OF LORD WILLIAM

BENTINCK 1828–1835
Christians and Legislators in their zeal are too often blind to their
own intolerance.1 (William Bentinck)
By the end of the 1820s, a new imperial vision was gaining ground in which
‘young men in a hurry’ wanted to sweep away the old ways of doing things in
order to bring a new, progressive order to India. The belief of Malcolm and
Munro that India needed to be ruled as far as possible in an Indian idiom was
anathema to the new breed of official, who argued that Indian society was so
corrupt that only the introduction of Western institutions, morals and culture
could remedy the situation. Evangelicals in Britain and India continued to
press the Company and the Government to legislate for India on the basis
of Christian morality. Evangelicalism and reform seemed to be united in
the person of the new Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck, who was
appointed in 1828. Bentinck arrived in India with little time for ‘old-India
hands’ and intended to preside over the redemption of India via a series
of reforms. He wanted India opened to more Europeans who, he believed,
would build a ‘community of faith and language’, which would bind Britain
and India together.2 Missionaries awaited Bentinck’s arrival with the hope
that at last they would be able not only to go about their work unhindered
by Government but also with its positive support. Anglicans hoped he would
improve the standing of the Church in India. The stage seemed set for the
dawning of a new era.
The Abolition of Sati
Bentinck was determined to abolish sati, a Hindu religious practice in which

the widow joins her husband on the funeral pyre, as a voluntary or often
forced sacrifice. The practice was not widespread but was strong amongst
the higher castes in certain parts of Bengal and amongst the Rajputs. The
Company line was that because sati was considered a religious ceremony, to
stop it would be a breach of its undertaking to allow Hindus the free exercise
of their religion. Missionaries had campaigned against sati since the time
of Lord Wellesley, who declined to interfere, although he was prepared to
ban the practice of female infanticide at Saugar. William Wilberforce and
other key Evangelicals had used the example of sati at the 1813 renewal
of the Company’s charter both to shock and to argue that Indian morals
were so depraved that only the redeeming message of Christianity could
reform them. In 1821 Thomas Fowell Buxton, the famous abolitionist, raised
sati in the House of Commons and moved for the publication of all corre-
spondence relating to it.3 Buxton pointed out that they were not discussing
a question of religious toleration but whether or not murder and suicide
were to be permitted in British territory. Canning, who had been nominated
Governor-General but did not take up the post, responded that as Christianity
was a religion of persuasion rather than force, Indians should gradually be
persuaded to end the practice. Wilberforce was also against compulsion and
thought religion and education would achieve the desired result. The House
of Commons agreed with the Company’s cautious approach and decided not
to take action. Two years later, 103 petitions were presented in Parliament
demanding action, mainly from Dissenters. Despite the pressure, neither
Lord Hastings nor Lord Amherst would act, fearing that abolition might
inflame religious sensibilities and particularly affect the Company’s sepoys.4
The matter was brought up again in Parliament in 1825. Charles Forbes and
Sir Edward Hyde East, who had both served in Bengal, attempted to blame
the ‘shoals of missionaries’ for aggravating the situation by awakening ‘the
religious jealousies of the natives’.5 Once more, no action was taken. The
Baptist missionary, James Peggs, then wrote his emotive pamphlet, India’s
Cries to British Humanity (1826). In 1829 he followed this up by founding the
Human Sacrifice Abolition Society in Coventry, which issued pamphlets and
continued to campaign for the eradication of sati. Despite the pressure, the
Court of Directors and Board of Control remained nervous and wanted
the Governor-General to take the final decision. In May 1829 the Bengal
missionaries sent a very long petition to Bentinck urging him to abolish sati
and to reform the Hindu laws of inheritance so that Christian converts did
not lose their property. They suggested ways in which these could be accom-
plished without arousing undue animosity.6 Bentinck conducted surveys
and canvassed opinion widely, especially that of the military. In addition to
support in Parliament, the Company and from large numbers of the British
public, Bentinck knew that several influential Indians, such as Rammohun
Roy, had argued that sati was not required by Hindu Scriptures.
Bentinck felt able to abolish sati by the end of 1829. His long Minute to
his Council sets out his reasoning, with Christian and humanitarian instincts
A New Dawn? The Era of Lord William Bentinck 1828–1835 185
overriding all other consideration. As Bentinck put it: ‘In a case of such
momentous importance to humanity and civilization that man must be reck-
less of all his present or future happiness who could listen to the dictates
of so wicked and selfish a policy.’ He agreed with Buxton that he would be
‘guilty of little short of the crime of multiplied murder if I could hesitate
in the performance of this solemn obligation’. Bentinck concentrated on the
moral goodness of abolition. In order to stave off criticisms on grounds of
security, he argued how little political danger there would be. In an attempt
to forestall Indian opposition, he also took care explicitly to disavow any
intention of conversion to Christianity and maintained that ‘the first and
primary object of my heart is the benefit of the Hindus’ and that he wrote
and felt as a ‘legislator for Hindus’.7 Sati was formally abolished by Bengal
Regulation XVII of December 1829. Bombay and Madras followed in 1830.
Abolition led some Indians to argue that the Government was in league with
Christian missionaries and had embarked on a course of interference with
their religions. Missionary correspondence mentions the ‘excited mind of the
people’ throughout India at this time and heightened opposition to mission-
aries generally.8 As a direct result of abolition, Hindus formed a defensive
association, the Dharma Sabha, which petitioned the Governor-General against
the legislation. Bentinck’s reply was firm, telling the petitioners that they
‘could not require the assurance that the British government will continue to
allow the most complete toleration in matters of religious belief ’. However,
he assured them that ‘to the full extent of what is possible to reconcile with
reason and natural justice they will be undisturbed in the observances of
their established usages’. He reminded the deputation that his predecessors
had found it necessary to prohibit certain practices for the security of human
life and the preservation of social order and informed them that they could
appeal to the King-in-Council. The appeal was rejected in 1832.9 After this
refusal opposition appears to have died down. Bentinck’s refusal to allow
religious toleration in all circumstances was a radical departure from the
declared policy of the Company as far as Indian religions was concerned.
Bentinck and the Church Establishment
Bentinck arrived in Calcutta during an interregnum caused by the death

of the third Bishop of Calcutta in six years. John Mathias Turner, the next
bishop, arrived in India in 1829 and became a close friend of the Evangelical
archdeacon of Calcutta, Daniel Corrie. Turner immediately set about trying
to consolidate his authority over ecclesiastical matters in the Company’s
domains. This brought him into conflict with Bentinck, who strongly disliked
religious establishments and regarded the setting up of the Anglican Episco-
pate as a breach of the Company’s principle of neutrality.10 He told Turner
that he could not ‘think it just to make Hindus pay for an Establishment, and
a very costly one too, for Christians who, infinitely richer, will not contribute
themselves a doit towards their own spiritual comfort and instruction’.11
Bentinck had expressed similar opinions when he was Governor of Madras.12
It was soon clear to Turner that there would be no meeting of minds between
himself and Bentinck, although their personal relations remained cordial.
Bentinck’s attitude towards the Anglican Church intimated that all might
not go as smoothly towards the propagation of Christianity as Evangelicals
had hoped, although Bentinck thought that the missionaries were ‘the best
clergymen’ in India.13 With the Bishop holding one of the highest offices
of state as well as being patron and head of Anglican missionary socie-
ties, Bentinck found it difficult to see how Indians could ‘avoid a suspicion
that the Government must have some connexion with and interest in their
proceedings’. In words almost identical to those of John Malcolm to Joshua
Marshman, Bentinck told a missionary deputation that the propagation of
Christianity had to be left to the ‘pious missionary’, unsupported by Govern-
ment.14
Bentinck was astute in recognising that the appointment of a bishop would
add to Indian suspicions that the British government intended to convert
India to Christianity. Turner made no secret of the fact that he believed
the diffusion of Christianity was part of his duties in addition to looking
after Anglican Christians. He exercised ecclesiastical control over Anglican
missionaries and visited their stations. As well as being head of the SPCK and
SPG operations in India, Turner was a patron of the CMS and accepted the
post of vice-president of the Calcutta Auxiliary Church Missionary Society.15
Bentinck, unlike the Marquess of Hastings, was unhappy with these intercon-
nections. Evangelical Company chaplains had already demonstrated that they
would use their positions to further the progress of Christianity and many of
them were affiliated to the Anglican missionary societies. It is not surprising to
find that many Indians could not distinguish between government chaplains
and missionaries who were independent of the Government. In 1827 Arch-
deacon Corrie, who was to become the first Bishop of Madras, had suggested
to the Bishop of Llandaff that when a native Christian congregation was
formed, the Government should be requested to provide the salary for a
clergyman. Corrie argued that this would enable the missionaries to extend
their labours and by degrees lead the Government to support the Christian
ministry. He urged the Bishop to lobby for this at the 1833 renewal of the
Company’s charter, particularly for the native congregations in the south.16
The question of who should provide the money for building and maintaining
churches and the salaries for clergy for new native Christian congregations
was one that would get more urgent and contentious as time went on.
Turner, like Middleton before him, attempted to make Sunday a holy day
for all and wanted the Government to stop Hindus from working on Sundays.
The Supreme Council appears to have sanctioned the request. Astell, the
Company Chairman, after learning of the step from a Calcutta newspaper,
told Bentinck the he believed the move was ‘highly injudicious and ill-timed’,
coming as it did just after the abolition of sati. Astell felt the order would
be ‘misconstrued and misrepresented’ and excite ‘dangerous feeling’ and
the Court could not sanction it.17 By 1831 Bishop Turner was so exasper-
ated with Bentinck that he threatened to resign and warned Bentinck not to
flout the power of the SPCK at home.18 Turner tried to get the Evangelical,
Daniel Wilson, who was to become the next Bishop of Calcutta, to arouse
public opinion in Britain. He told Wilson that the important question of ‘the
nature and extent of the obligations under which Great Britain lies bound to
India, Christian Britain to Heathen India’, had to be raised. Turner argued that
every measure that diffused Christianity was politically a good measure and
anything that delayed or hindered the diffusion of Christianity was politically
a blunder. Like Charles Grant, Turner believed that the only tie that would
bind India to Britain was a common faith.19 This put his commitment to the
propagation of Christianity in no doubt. Turner and the SPG also believed
that the clerical establishment was totally inadequate and that the Company
would have to be forced to do something about this. The SPG, horrified by
the untimely deaths of the first few bishops, had asked the Company for an
increase in 1829. The Court’s response was that no additional bishops were
needed and, in any case, the Company’s finances were in an ‘embarrassed
state’ because of the Burmese war.20
Turner only lasted eighteen months and died in July1831. Daniel Wilson,
who was to reign as Bishop of Calcutta until his death in January 1858,
replaced him. Although he had been born into a prominent mercantile
Dissenting family, Wilson was as fervent a Churchman as he was an Evan-
gelical.21 Bentinck believed that Wilson was ‘too much a stickler’ for the Estab-
lished Church and needed to be more generous towards other Christians. He
reminded the Church Evangelical, Charles Grant, the younger, who was now
President of the Board of Control, that it was the ‘whole Christian church,
whose cause in this heathen country we are to cherish’.22 Bentinck was not
prepared to favour the Church of England over other denominations. Wilson,
like his predecessors, tried to establish his right to expand and control the
Company chaplains.23 Bentinck refused to allow this and a lengthy war of
words ensued. Bentinck maintained that the principle at issue was the inde-
pendence of the ecclesiastical establishment from the civil government and,
using Turner’s argument, told Wilson that this question was most important
because it affected the relations ‘of a Christian Government to a Hindoo or
Musselman population’ and needed a decision from the home authorities.
Bentinck likened the clergy under the Bishop to the way soldiers came under
the control of the Commander-in-Chief. He told Wilson that commanding
officers would fix the timings of divine service in concurrence with the chap-
lains rather than the other way around as requested by the Bishop. Further-
more, he pointed out to Wilson that ‘Government made no promises’. As
Governor-General, he was the chief of both the military and ecclesiastical
departments and must keep ultimate control because:
What danger would there not be to our very Empire, if in an indiscreet or
overzealous performance of duties strictly spiritual, public preaching, or the
conversion of the natives, for example, the Government had no right of inter-
ference and had no power to issue any orders upon the subject. The old and
wise policy of Government had always been to discourage its own established
Clergy from missionary labours, lest the natives should take alarm, and should
suspect in the acts of its ecclesiastical servants a design to force upon them
the Christian religion. To the missionaries, with whom the Government had
ostensibly no connection, was left the task of conversion: and one of the great
objections to the introduction of an Episcopacy into India is, that the greater
the pomp and power, and prominancy, you give to your own religion, the
greater will be the distrust excited.24
Despite Bentinck’s Evangelical sympathies, he was as determined as the

Court of Directors had been in 1744 to ensure that the Church must never
be independent of the State.25 In the same letter Bentinck also told Wilson
that he would not allow the clergy to act in ways that might offend Indians
and put British rule in jeopardy. Thus, Crawfurd, a Company chaplain, was
forbidden in 1831 to frequent the lines of the native soldiers attended by a
Muslim convert distributing religious works and tracts. The Court of Direc-
tors agreed with the Supreme Council’s censure of Crawfurd’s actions.26
Nevertheless, Bentinck was prepared to employ missionaries as chaplains. In
1831 Bentinck, despite Metcalfe’s objections, recommended two missionaries
for posts at Chinsurah and Chunar. Clergymen were desperately needed and
the measure was passed.27 Bentinck also suggested that the CMS missionary,
Greenwood, should act as chaplain as Lucknow, provided he did not practise
his ‘missionary avocations’. After heated discussion, the Supreme Council also
passed this.28 Bentinck, somewhat duplicitously, told Charles Metcalfe, his
Vice-President, that he thought the employment was only locum tenems during
the absence of the chaplains. Nothing in the correspondence indicates that
these were merely temporary appointments, nor did the missionaries appear
to think so. Indeed, they regarded the appointments as a significant mark
of approval by the Bengal government.29 Bentinck thought the employment
of missionaries as chaplains was a lesser evil to leaving Europeans without
religious services.30 In a letter to Charles Grant, President of the Board of
Control, he revealed another reason. Missionaries were cheaper than the
chaplains, whom he thought were paid too much.31 The Court of Directors
disagreed and was disturbed to discover that twenty-eight ordained mission-
aries were working as chaplains in India and Ceylon by the 1830s. Making
Bentinck’s point that it was not right to tax the ‘natives’ to provide clergy for
anyone other than Company servants, in 1833 it forbade the employment of

missionaries as chaplains except in cases of ‘absolute necessity’.32
Wilson backed down from his battle with Bentinck over jurisdiction but
took firm action in another area that was to have far-reaching consequences.
In 1833 he issued an instruction to his clergy and Church of England mission-
aries that the distinctions of caste amongst Christian converts were to be
abandoned. This was an important issue for Christians because it affected,
amongst other things, the reception of Holy Communion and communal
eating and the organisation of schools. The tension aroused in Travancore
and Tinnevelly when Christian converts insisted on dressing in the manner
of higher castes was discussed in the previous chapter. The hard line insisted
upon by the Bishop caused considerable commotion and many converts left
the church. Numerous petitions were sent to Government asking it to inter-
vene and on occasion it had to restore order. Missionaries often resorted to
the law in their efforts to undermine the caste system. As Neill has observed,
the establishment of an Anglican Episcopate led to increasing insistence on
the observance of every detail of church life as carried on in England. The
Western imprint was all too plain to see and led to a further alienation of
Indian Christians from their Hindu countrymen.33 Wilson’s edict on caste
meant that there was little possibility for Anglican converts to retain links
with the wider community.
The Pilgrim Tax
Perhaps even more emotive for Evangelicals than sati was the Company’s
continuing refusal to abolish the pilgrim tax. Evangelicals had wanted express
orders forbidding Company involvement with Hinduism included in the
Company’s charter. Lord Melville (Robert Dundas) had been opposed to any
such orders being issued and nothing was included in the Company’s 1813
charter.34 Fresh from the 1813 ‘victory’ over access to India for missionaries,
Evangelicals had decided to press the question once again. The publicity
given to the matter during the renewal of the Company’s charter had roused
the religious public in Britain, especially Buchanan’s 1811 Christian Researches
in Asia and William Ward’s Account of the Writings, Religion and Manners of the
Hindoos, also published in 1811. Daniel Corrie preached a series of sermons
in England against the tax in 1816, as did William Ward in 1819 and Henry
Townley of the LMS in 1823. Lord Gambier, president of the CMS, sent a
forceful letter to the Court of Directors, attacking the Company and British
government for disregarding their Christian duty and severely censuring
them for ‘the grievous sin of government support of idolatry’.35 In India,
the question was raised by Mr Richardson, the Evangelical Commissioner
of Cuttack, who proposed abolition of the tax in 1814 after a number of
pilgrims had been trampled to death. He argued that abolition would give
the Company a reputation for liberality and tolerance. Dowdeswell, the chief
Secretary to Government, did not agree and replied that the tax was not new
and had only been regularised by the Company. Far from recommending
abolition, the Bengal government suggested that a wall be built to prevent
evasion of the tax.36 While the temple at Jagannath captured most attention
from Evangelicals, the Company was even more involved with Hindu festivals
and temples in the south. Hugh Elliot and his Council became concerned that
unrest might ensue because Indians felt that the Company was changing its
policy in the wake of the passing of the ‘pious clause’. In order to reassure
Indians that no change was contemplated, the Madras government in 1817
had codified its involvement in Hindu festivals.37 Bishop Heber supported
abolition of the tax and the Baptist newspaper, Friend of India, founded in
1818, took up the cudgels.
In 1826 James Peggs, a Baptist missionary who had been stationed at
Cuttack, returned to Britain and began campaigning in earnest against the
tax. Two years after his return he submitted a pamphlet to the Court of
Directors, ‘The Pilgrim Tax in India’, pointing out the need for reform and
the safety with which it could be abolished. This was incorporated into his
book India’s Cries to British Humanity, which reached three editions by 1832.
In the pamphlet, ‘Pleas to the Christians of England’, the pilgrim tax was
likened to the slave trade ‘traffic in souls’ and the Christians of England were
called upon to demand the ‘abandonment of a policy so weak in the sight of
the nation and heathen and against the majesty of heaven’, pointing out that
Indians were fellow-subjects.38 Evangelical officials became more prepared to
use their official positions to stop such Christian involvement in Hindu festi-
vals. The Collectors, Sullivan and Monro, at Coimbatore and Palamcottah,
refused to compel people to assist in drawing the idol cart, maintaining that
this should be a voluntary act.39 In 1827 the Evangelical, John Harington,
President of the Board of Trade in Calcutta and a member of the Supreme
Council, recorded a Minute against levying the tax anywhere in India.40 A
survey was conducted of District Officers in Bengal. Eight out of thirteen
were decidedly against abolition. Amherst, the Governor-General, would
not take action. Evangelicals then put pressure on Bentinck, who declined
to interfere with the collection of the pilgrim tax. He argued that it was
the ‘bounden duty’ of a ‘Government ruling over a Hindu and Musselman
community and professing to respect their religion and customs, to manifest
a friendly feeling, and to afford every protection and aid towards the exercise
of those harmless rites associated with the religions of India that were not
opposed to the dictates of humanity … I therefore think … that a tax upon
pilgrims is just and expedient’.41 The Company derived considerable revenues
from the tax and Bentinck had been sent to India to sort out the finances.
The tax also provided useful money for building roads, one of Bentinck’s
schemes for India’s improvement. Bentinck agreed with the argument that
government superintendence simply regulated and protected an established
custom, which he regarded as ‘harmless’. Indian elites were not happy about
the way in which Company officials were increasingly absenting themselves
from festivals that had previously been attended. This was regarded as a slight,
as in Tanjore where the acting Resident reported that the Raja regarded this
as ‘a systematic determination to withhold from him that mark of public
respect he considers himself entitled to’.42
In 1832, in the run-up to the renewal of the Company’s charter, the House
of Commons called for evidence on the subject of the pilgrim tax. A random
sample of Company servants was asked its opinions by the Board of Control.
One question asked ‘How far do Pilgrim Taxes identify the British govern-
ment with superstitious and idolatrous worship and how far would the aban-
donment of such taxes aggravate evils that result from the assemblage of
large bodies of pilgrims?’ The majority felt that the tax did not identify the
Government with idolatry. Only one, Mr Dalzell, the revenue officer casti-
gated for distributing religious tracts in 1822, felt no evil would result from
abolition of the tax. In the face of this contradictory evidence, the House of
Commons Select Committee deferred to the view of the Court of Directors.43
Grant was determined that the pilgrim tax should be abolished and altered
the Court’s draft despatch on the subject. He ordered the abolition of the
tax everywhere in India, pointing out that ‘the smallest degree of interfer-
ence by the Government in the religious affairs of their subjects, beyond the
mere maintenance of order by means of a police force, must inevitably be
regarded by the Indian people as implying approval or even encouragement
of their religions’. For this reason Grant declared that even the levy of a tax
to be devoted solely to the payment of police was unjustifiable. Echoing his
father’s opinion, he maintained that ‘a government which believed those rites
to be productive, even from a civil point of view, of serious evil was neither
obliged nor at liberty to show any degree of positive sanction or encourage-
ment’. Grant was, however, ready to agree with Bentinck that all religious
rites and offices which were not flagrantly opposed to common humanity and
decency ought to be tolerated. Grant’s despatch went on to express revulsion
at the idea of deliberately making a profit from practices whose existence
they deplored. Under pressure from the Court, Grant flinched from making
the order absolute and left it ‘as a standard to which the Indian governments
should ultimately conform rather than a rule that they must instantly adopt
without respect of circumstances’. The methods to be employed, ‘whether
swift or gradual, final or experimental’, were left entirely to the discretion
of the Governments concerned.44 While the Court was forced to sign the
despatch, the Directors recorded their ‘regret that the Board should have
imposed upon them the necessity of transmitting to India orders which …
appear to the Court to be so highly impolitic’.45 In a letter to Charles Grant
in June 1833, protesting against further instructions on the matter from the
Board, the Court declined ‘to originate instructions on the subject of idola-
trous practices’ because it was ‘at variance with the compact [my emphasis]
of the British government with the people of India’. It did not wish to send
out specific instructions that Christians were not to be involved in Hindu
festivals, nor did it think it expedient to stop the collection of pilgrim taxes
where this practice had been carried on for some time.46 It is clear that the
war was not yet over.
Persecution of Converts
Evangelical concern over the Company’s involvement with ‘idolatry’ was

aggravated by the way in which officials treated converts and sometimes
blocked missionary efforts to build churches for them. By 1828 opposition
to missionary activity throughout India seems to have become more virulent
and churches and chapels were sometimes broken up. Indians maintained
that the Government was trying to force them to become Christians. This
was possibly because of the excitement surrounding the abolition of sati, news
of which would have swiftly spread. In Bengal a convert was murdered and
missionaries themselves were threatened with their lives. The Wesleyans came
to the conclusion that no progress could be made in Bengal and closed their
Calcutta mission down.47 Opposition to missionary labours was particularly
violent in Mysore state. Towards the end of 1832 a plot to seize the fort at
Bangalore and murder all Europeans was discovered. A pig was placed in a
mosque in Cuddapah and Howell, the LMS missionary, was accused of insti-
gating this. Macdonald, the sub-Collector, and several sepoys were hacked to
death as they went to rescue Howell and his family from the mob excited by
this incident.48 There was also unrest at Bangalore, Bellary, Arcot and Nellore.
These were all areas that had been unsettled at the time of the Vellore mutiny.
Casamaijor, the Resident, was sent to investigate the Cuddapah disturbance
and found that there was ‘a very general belief that the religions of the
country were intended to be overthrown’.49 Stephen Rumbold Lushington,
the Governor, attributed the disturbances directly to the efforts of mission-
aries to convert Muslims. In the face of such adversities the missionaries
decided that it would be prudent to suspend their public exertions altogether
for a time.50 Campbell, one of the LMS missionaries at Bangalore, told his
directors that sepoy converts were being ‘persecuted beyond all endurance
and expelled from their regiments because they have embraced the gospel’.51
Shortly afterwards missionaries and catechists were prohibited from visiting
the jails following an incident involving the missionaries at Bellary, who were
preparing a convict for his execution.52 Lushington refused to promote the
assistant judge, Waters, who had permitted this, believing him ‘a dangerous
enthusiast in matters affecting the religion of the native inhabitants’. On this

occasion, the Court of Directors thought Lushington had over-reacted and
was being too harsh on Waters.53 The following year European soldiers were
restricted from attending missionary chapels at Bangalore, Bellary, Arcot,
Nellore and Belgaum except when the Company chaplain was absent.54 There
had been disturbances at these stations but there also seems to have been
an anti-Dissent element in the last order. Sir Frederick Adam, Lushington’s
successor, told Bentinck that he was afraid that the Mysore troubles had been
due to the ‘indiscreet zeal’ of some individuals in disseminating religious
tracts, although he had no concrete evidence.55 The WMMS decided that
the situation was so discouraging that it abandoned its Bangalore mission.56
Missionaries believed that many of the difficulties experienced by their
converts were a direct result of the Company’s involvement in idolatrous
festivals and the ineligibility of Indian Christians for many public situations.
They were worried about the implication of a number of laws and regula-
tions for Christian converts. The Hindu and Muslim laws of inheritance
effectively disinherited converts to Christianity. Presidency orders strictly
forbidding the employment of any except Hindus and Muslims to native
courts as agents and conductors of suits, were regarded by missionaries as
injurious to the progress of Christianity as the loss of caste itself. They felt it
was in effect a complete bar to the employment of Christians in public office
because ‘the law operates extensively by implication and unless repealed it
will always offer a serious obstacle to the general spread of Christianity’.
The LMS instigated a check that revealed that in both Madras and Bombay
Presidencies there were regulations and customs prohibiting the employment
of native Christians in government posts and the army. There was a ban on
the employment of Christian converts in the Bengal army, apart from the
Christian drummers.57 In 1831 the LMS missionaries asked the Society to
consult with the other missionary societies about tactics and, as in 1813, to
lobby the British public and appeal to the British Legislature.58 The Court
of Directors, however, refused to receive a deputation about the civil disa-
bilities of converts.59 In Bengal, Carey and eighteen missionaries called on
Lord Bentinck to protest about the loss of inheritance rights by Christians.60
Bentinck was not encouraging. He told them that any active interference
on the part of the ruling power in the diffusion of Christianity would be a
‘grievous error’, which would create distrust.61 Bentinck, however, addressed
some of the missionaries’ concerns. In 1831 he banned discrimination against
any individual on the grounds of race, caste or religion. This meant that
Christians in Bengal were now eligible for public posts. Bengal Regulation
III of 1832 banned the operation of the Hindu law by which a convert to
Islam or Christianity became an outcast and forfeited his claim to the share
of any heritable property, to which as a Hindu he would have been entitled.
This was an important step in improving the situation for Indian Christians.
Bentinck’s action in passing this law ties in with the view he expressed to
Charles Grant in 1806 that as the Company supported and protected Hindus
and Muslims, so should it protect Christian converts.62 Bentinck regarded this
as a civil matter of justice. However, he ignored the fact that the inheritance
of property amongst Hindus carried with it sacred rites and duties. The law
caused much disquiet amongst them.
Missionaries hoped that their demands for protection for their converts
would be met when Charles Grant became President of the Board of Control.
However, Grant’s actions to promote Christianity gave rise to considerable
tension between the Court and the Board. The Court sent a number of
Dissents to the Board’s alteration of its drafts on religious issues. In 1832 it
expressed grave concern about Grant’s despatch proposing special protection
to the Syrian Christians of Travancore. It thought this would be ‘pregnant
with evil consequences’ and would be ‘a species of interference, which has
no example in the history of our intercourse with other states in India’.63
The Court also disapproved of the Board’s alteration of Political Draft 741
to Madras, paragraphs 2 and 9, about the compulsory pressing of labourers
to draw idol cars. While the Court felt this should stop, it believed that ‘the
language of strong recommendation, rather than that of positive command’
should be used.64 Finally, in 1835 Collectors were ordered not to interfere
in any disputes amongst native Christians unless they posed a breach of the
peace or violence.65
Education: Seeds of Improvement and Conversion
While Bentinck was not prepared to interfere with the Company’s involve-
ment with Hinduism, his attitude towards education, which he believed
would be the ‘panacea’ for India’s regeneration, appeared to be different.
Bentinck believed that ‘the ground must be prepared and the jungle cleared
away before the human mind can receive, with any prospect of real benefit, the
seeds of improvement’ and education was therefore a necessary precursor.66
He also believed that education alone would lead to conversion and that
without conversion, Indians would not change their ways. Astell, the Court
Chairman, also believed that education would lead to the Christianisation
of India.67 Bentinck, however, had to rely on missionary help if anything
substantial was to be achieved. In 1831 government-aided schools taught
3000, while missionary schools reached 8000.68 The government-supported
LMS schools, however, did not fit into the new imperial vision, which relied
on the higher education of Indian elites to filter down English and Western
education to the people, rather than providing vernacular education for the
masses. In 1831, the LMS was informed that the Government intended to
give the schools up. Bentinck was far more interested in another missionary
experiment: Alexander Duff ’s English-medium school. He was encouraged

in this by Charles Trevelyan, Deputy-Secretary to the Supreme Council,
who was friendly with Duff, and agreed with his views of the importance of
English education as a Christianising force.69
Alexander Duff was sent to India in 1830, as its first missionary, by the
Church of Scotland. He was instructed to found a school to give higher
literary and religious instruction. He decided to found an English-medium
school, rejecting Bengali. He courted influential Indians but insisted that the
Scriptures should form an integral part of the school. Duff was a gifted
teacher and his institution was a great success. Bentinck was impressed. He
approved of Duff ’s ‘downward filtration’ philosophy and his use of English
and of Christian teaching. Such was Bentinck’s friendliness and enthusiasm
that Duff got the impression that he might obtain a government grant in
due course. His school board accordingly made an application to Govern-
ment but was disappointed with Bentinck’s reply that ‘he doubted whether a
Government grant could be given just then to an institution in which Chris-
tian teaching occupied such a prominent place’.70 Bentinck adhered to the
Company line that government and missionary activity must be kept sepa-
rate. The application was rejected. The Hindu College, on the other hand,
continued to get a government grant. Lord and Lady Bentinck visited it often
and presented the prizes.71 After Bentinck left Bengal, Brunton, secretary
of the Church of Scotland missions, tried to persuade him to use his influ-
ence with the Company in their favour. Bentinck replied that ‘the principle
of religious interference which it invokes would probably ensure its failure’.
Brunton also approached the Company, which passed the buck and told
Brunton that it would do nothing unless strongly requested by the Bengal
government. However, once Bentinck was no longer Governor-General, he
sent money in his private capacity to Duff ’s school and also to Serampore
College.72 Bentinck put more flesh on his attitude towards government grants
to missionary schools in a Minute he wrote to the Political Department in
August 1832. While he approved of Duff ’s missionary schools, he was clear
that ‘Hindus may learn our language and science without changing their
religion or diminishing the respect for their institutions and their parents.’73
Bentinck would have been well aware of continuing Indian opposition to
mission schools, which seemed to be increasing in intensity. Indians were far
from passive recipients of these covert efforts to convert them and were able
to use missionary schools on their own terms.
Bentinck had arrived in India determined to make reforms and initially
pressed forward with some determination. However, by 1830 he seemed to
have misgivings about the pace at which change should proceed. He was
being hard pressed by the Anglicists on the General Committee of Public
Instruction to impose the use of English on Indians. Although Bentinck
approved of English-medium schools, he became increasingly cautious about
any schemes that might interfere too much with existing Indian ways of
doing things and was anxious not to be seen to be attacking Indian religions.
Thomas Babington Macaulay arrived in India early in 1834 as law member
of the Supreme Council and put Bentinck under even more pressure to end
his support of Oriental education and to impose the use of English. Macaulay
was the architect of the famous ‘Minute on Education’, which on his own
admission had a religious intention behind it. Macaulay told his father, with
supreme confidence, that it was his firm belief that ‘if our plans of educa-
tion are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable
classes of Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected without the
smallest interference with religious liberty, merely by the natural operation
of knowledge and reflection.’ Macaulay ‘heartily’ rejoiced in the prospect.74
While he was sceptical of the efficacy and wisdom of missionary activity, he
had high hopes for education as an unobtrusive way of attaining the same
ends.
Bentinck was not so sanguine. In a letter to Macaulay, written in 1834 on
the general subject of reform, in words that strongly echo Munro in 1823, he
had told him that the ‘great curse of our rule has been a constant interfer-
ence with the long established native systems of Indian society, and of the
introduction of our own fancies and schemes, which coupled with our own
ignorance, have desolated, more than any Maratha invasion, some of the
finest provinces of our empire’. Bentinck went on to state that ‘time with
consideration and kindness would gradually introduce this and most other
improvements. Christians and legislators in their zeal are too often blind to
their own intolerance.’75 Such views had a considerable impact on the extent
to which he was prepared to favour missionary schools. Bentinck continued
that he thought it ‘very likely that the interference of Government with educa-
tion, as with most of the other native institutions with which we have too
often so mischievously meddled, might do more harm than good’. He hoped
that the Government might help without meddling and that Indian institu-
tions might be fitted into a future ‘improved general system’.76 Nevertheless,
before Bentinck left India, Macaulay’s Education Minute was enacted, which
withdrew public funding from Oriental education, giving it to institutions that
provided Western education through the medium of the English language.
This gave the initiative to the CMS and Baptists who were already teaching
English in many of their schools. As with his minute on sati, Bentinck took
care to try to dissociate the actions of Government from those of mission-
aries. He wrote: ‘We abstain, and I trust shall always abstain, from giving any
public encouragement to those who are in any way engaged in the work of
converting natives to Christianity.’77 It is to be doubted that this reassured
many Indians. John Stuart Mill, who by this time was writing the Court’s
political despatches, tried to have the education resolution rescinded. Mill
disapproved of the sudden departure from an established policy of helping to
maintain Oriental languages and culture towards the exclusive support of the
English language and Western culture. He thought this might be construed
as an attack on Hinduism and Islam. In Representative Government, he explained
that English politicians were trying to ‘force English ideas down the throats of
the natives; for instance by measures of proselytism, or acts intentionally or
unintentionally offensive to the religious feelings of the people’.78 The Court
of Directors accepted his draft, which was then thrown out by Hobhouse at
the Board of Control.
Rosselli states that how far Bentinck believed in the Christianisation of
India remains a puzzle.79 Bentinck had approved a Resolution to keep Sunday
as a holy day for all and had ordered that Christian converts should not lose
their inheritance rights. He was prepared to employ missionaries as chaplains.
However, the degree to which Bentinck was prepared to overturn Company
policy towards government support of proselytism and the extent to which
he can be described as an Evangelical, must be questioned. Bentinck’s public
utterances took care to separate his actions from any desire to convert Indians.
He would not give government grants to missionary schools. He did not
approve of the Bishop’s connections with missionary societies, nor did he
approve of Metcalfe’s attempts to force Indians to work on Hindu and Muslim
holy days. He stood out against Evangelical demands for the abolition of
the pilgrim tax and refused to stop Company troops from attending Hindu
religious ceremonies. He declined to abolish slavery, despite considerable
Evangelical pressure to do so. His experience of Vellore was never far from
his mind and his words and actions demonstrate that he was conscious that
Indian religious susceptibilities could easily be upset. In such questions he
believed it was more prudent to take a gradualist course. This would have
been reinforced by his extensive tours. He met Indian notables in private
audience and he and his wife hosted evening parties for the Indian elite
of Calcutta. It is often argued that when Bentinck insisted on the inclusion
of a clause in the 1833 charter, which provided for the equal admission of
Indians to every office, irrespective of religion, descent or race that this was
mainly to help Christian converts. However, Bentinck was also being pressed
by the Court of Directors to take this step, as it was a less costly way of
administering India. His aim was to increase employment possibilities in the
administration for Indians generally, rather than specifically for Christians.
Nevertheless, it was an important step in improving conditions for Chris-
tian converts. When one looks at Bentinck’s time as Governor-General as a
whole, his abolition of sati seems to have been carried out as an exception
to the long-held Company rule that the Company should interfere as little
as possible with Indian religious ‘prejudices’. Bentinck abolished it because
of the inhumanity of the practice, which he believed no Christian could
condone. He regarded his Bengal Regulation regarding inheritance rights as
a matter of justice. Bentinck’s letters demonstrate an increasing concern at
the hard line being adopted by Macaulay and Trevelyan. His 1834 letter to
Macaulay made his position on Christianity clear. First, he pointed out that
the Government had engaged to maintain Indian rights and customs. Second,
he argued that ‘the conversion of the natives to Christianity must be the result
of conviction and persuasion can never be very successful, which begins by
treating the opinions of those who are to be convinced, with contempt, and
their long-established rights and most sacred privileges with what they would
deem spoliation and injustice’. Bentinck believed British rule had not thus
far brought much improvement to the Indian people and that the British also
did not practise the Christianity they preached. As he told Macaulay: ‘We do
not do as we would be done by. We profess but do not practice Christianity,
and know that charity best which begins at home.’80 Bentinck had put both
Evangelicals and Indians on notice that his Government made no promises
and would act as it thought appropriate in particular circumstances.
Renewal of the Company’s Charter
By 1831 Evangelicals had become convinced that ‘nothing will be conceded

by the present government but shall have to be wrenched from it by the public
voice . . . Missionary privileges ought to be known and respected.’81 Mission-
aries urged their societies to call upon the Legislature to place Christianity in
India on the same footing as ‘idolatry’. They argued that no Indian should
lose the civil privileges of caste on conversion and felt that the Government
had passed oppressive measures against Christians. The situation for Chris-
tianity had, if anything, deteriorated in the years after 1813. Evangelicals
were still trying to ‘secure liberty of conscience and unrestrained toleration
for Christianity in India’.82 The Company’s charter was once more due for
renewal and Evangelicals were determined to avail themselves of the oppor-
tunity.
Their hopes of success had been raised by the appointment of the ardent
Evangelical, Charles Grant, the younger, as President of the Board of Control
by Earl Grey in 1830. He replaced Lord Ellenborough, who had agreed with
the long-standing Company policy towards religious matters. Evangelicals
had not made any headway with Ellenborough. Grant was determined to use
his official position to do what he could to promote Christianity. He pushed
through the Bishop of Calcutta’s request for more bishops to share the load,
despite the objections of both Bentinck and the Court.83 Grant’s determina-
tion to abolish the pilgrim tax has already been discussed. Despite strenuous
efforts, the cause did not grip the religious public in the way that the 1813
campaign to get the Government to do more for missionaries had. Only six
petitions against the tax were sent into Parliament. In the face of this lack
of support and the sustained opposition of the Company, Grant drew back
from making abolition absolute. The Select Committee had recommended

that the way in which the pilgrim tax should be abolished should be left in the
hands of the Court of Directors. The matter was brought up in the charter
renewal debates by several speakers but abolition of the tax was not made a
condition in the Company’s new charter, Parliament being content to leave
the timing in the hands of the Company’s Directors.
Far more time was spent discussing the proposal for an increase in the
number of bishops. The Company reluctantly agreed to the increase, with
the proviso that it would not add to the expense. It was not pleased to
discover that the cost would rise from Rs 66,000 per annum to Rs 129,000.
Eventually Grant agreed that the cost of the increase in establishment would
not exceed Rs 120,000. The debate on the increase in the number of bishops
revealed widely differing opinions on the subject of church establishments.
The whole question was becoming more emotive in British politics. Some
speakers disapproved of church establishments altogether. Others objected
to the principal of establishing one form of Christianity in preference to
another. Roman Catholics and Dissenters thought they should also have
some state provision. Macaulay had argued that the Anglican establishment
was only just because Britain’s Indian government paid for the upkeep of
Hindu and Muslim places of worship. However, a number of speakers did
not believe the burden of its maintenance should fall on Indians. Buck-
ingham, who had been expelled by Bengal government for his constant criti-
cisms of it in the press, pointed out that it was the revenues of India that
paid for the Anglican ecclesiastical establishment. He believed that every
religion should be supported by those who believed in it rather than the
State. Wynn, who had been President of the Board of Control 1822–1828,
stressed that it was important that the rulers of India should have the bless-
ings of religion. He also pointed out that bishops were needed to superin-
tend the chaplains and to ordain and consecrate churches.84 In the end the
increase in the number of bishops was passed and the Church of Scotland
was assured that it would be provided for as well. Dissenters and Roman
Catholics gained nothing further.
Unlike the debates over the renewal of the Company’s charter in 1813, the
House was thinly attended in 1833, with only forty to fifty members present.
The debates in 1833, as in 1813, reflected more of concerns in Britain than
the welfare of the Indian people. The Company, as ever, was primarily
concerned about the cost. Interestingly, missionaries were not criticised on
this occasion. On the contrary, it was argued that they had done sterling work
and that it was through them, rather than any church establishment, that
Christianity should be brought to India. This was a considerable advance
over the situation in 1813 when missionaries were vilified and an Anglican
Church establishment was seen as the safest way to promote Christianity.
Grey’s ministry had confirmed that the Company’s monopoly of trade to
the East Indies would end and with it the requirement for licences for those
wishing to live and work within the Company’s territories. Christian missions
were among the chief beneficiaries of this and the numbers of missionaries
greatly increased over the coming years, including from America and Europe.
Bentinck’s Bengal Regulation, which provided for the equal admission of
Indians to every office, irrespective of religion, birth, descent or race was
included. This was an important proviso in the new charter which made it
much more difficult for anyone to exclude Christian converts from public
employment. The Government did not, however, take the opportunity to
abolish the Company. It had other worries and left the administration of
India in its hands. Macaulay, Secretary to the Board at this time, carried
the bill through a thinly attended House, most of whom were hostile to the
Company. Dissension amongst the Directors, lack of firm leadership and the
collapse of the Agency houses had left the Company seriously weakened. It
lost its remaining commercial privileges with barely a whisper. The Charter
gave the Governor-General more power over the subordinate Presidencies,
which effectively increased the power of the Board and Government over the
Court of Directors. Changes instituted during Lord Ellenborough’s time as
President of the Board and the introduction of the steamship had greatly cut
down the delay in the preparation and sending of despatches, which increased
the control of the home government on Indian policy. Ellenborough was
also the first President to deny the Directors a voice in determining external
policy.85 Presidents were increasingly less willing to defer to the Chairmen
of the Court. This would affect the progress of Christianity in India as the
powerful Evangelical lobby in Britain would be able to exert its influence
more effectively. In 1834 Macaulay had told Bentinck that the ‘religious
party’ in Britain was almost too strong to resist.86
Conclusion
Far from bringing in the ascendancy of Evangelicals over Indian policy,

Bentinck did his utmost to keep them in check. No doubt this was partly due
to his experience of Vellore, which had taught him how volatile Indians
could be over religious matters. Both Turner and Bentinck recognised that
the key question was the relationship of Christian Britain to ‘heathen’ India:
in particular, how far Britain’s Indian government should be Christian.
Bentinck believed that the Government had to provide religious services for
its Christian employees. He was, however, against the principle of church
establishments. He did not change Company policy towards missionaries as
he was sure that Indians should not be under pressure to become Christian.
An 1834 Bengal Ecclesiastical letter, signed by Metcalfe, in response to the
Bishop’s statement that it was the duty of chaplains to banish all erroneous
and strange doctrines, reiterated the Supreme Council’s determination to

control religious matters, particularly where these affected the Company’s
Indian subjects. It feared that the Bishop’s interpretation would prevent the
Company from taking steps to ensure that there was no over-zealous inter-
ference by Company chaplains with the religions of others. The Bengal
despatch made clear that:
Interference with non-Christians could never be left to the personal discretion

of individual chaplains uncontrouled by any authority … it was a temporal
matter in which the safety of the Empire was concerned and it was necessary
that it should be carefully looked to and strictly controuled by the Government
which could never divest itself of that imperative duty.87
Although Bentinck’s reign had not led to a new dawn for missionary activity,
the Company no longer argued against their presence. On the contrary, their
contribution was praised. The tables had turned and the Company now
directed its fire on any increase to the Anglican Church establishment. The
balance of power between the Court and Board had changed forever. From
now on home opinion and the needs of Britain would exert more influence
on what went on in India. The removal of the requirement for licences in the
Company’s 1833 charter meant that the Company could not henceforth deny
entry to India for missionaries of any denomination. In addition, four signifi-
cant pieces of legislation had been passed as a result of Evangelical pressure
in Britain that caused Indians to suspect that Britain was indeed trying to
force Christianity upon them, despite all protestations to the contrary. The
first was the abolition of sati. The second was the Board’s February 1833
instruction to cease involvement in Hindu religious festivals and temples.
The third was Bentinck’s Regulation regarding the inheritance of property by
converts, which made it easier for Indians to become Christian. On the face
of it, this was not a religious matter. However, the inheritance of property
had a religious dimension for Hindus. The fourth was Bentinck’s Regulation
that no one was to be barred from public office on the grounds of religion,
descent or race. This provision was included in the new charter. While it was
aimed at helping Indians generally, the provision was widely perceived as a
measure to help Christian converts. All this added to Indian disquiet about
the aims of Government. In addition, Bentinck had been unequivocal in
telling Indians that the Government would only allow toleration of religious
beliefs to the extent that they were humane and consonant with ‘reason and
natural justice’. He had also refused to make promises to Evangelicals and
stressed that ‘harmless’ Indian religious rites were not to be tampered with.88
Neither Indians nor Evangelicals were happy. Indians also continued to be
suspicious of the motives behind Government educational projects. Hindus
began to form defensive associations in response to the perceived threats to
their religion and Muslims were concerned too. Despite Bentinck’s efforts to
be even-handed in his treatment of both Indians and Christians, the pres-
sure of Evangelicalism in Britain was beginning to have an impact in India,
particularly in Bengal.
Notes
1 Bentinck to Macaulay, Draft Minute on Reform, 1 June 1834, NUL, Portland Collec-
tion, BP/PwJf/2643/1.
2 Minute (General), 30 May 1829, NUL, Portland Collection, BP/PwJF/2903.
3 PD, NS, 5 (3 April–11 July 1821), cols 1217–22.
4 Parliamentary Papers 1823, 17, Papers relating to East India Affairs (Hindoo Widows),
pp. 64–5.
5 PD, New Series, 13 (19 April–6 July 1825), col. 1045.
6 Petition of the Missionaries to Bentinck, May 1829, Letter 100, C. H. Philips, The
Correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck, Governor-General of India, 1828–35, 2
vols (Oxford, 1977), 1, pp. 191–4.
7 Minute on Sati, 8 November 1829, Letter 157 in Philips, Bentinck Correspondence, 1, pp.
335–45.
8 See, for instance, CMS Committee Minutes, 12, 27 March 1832, p. 267.
9 Bentinck’s reply to the petition on sati, 14 July 1830, Philips, Bentinck Correspondence,
Letter 222, 1, p. 470 and Ravenshaw to Bentinck, 9 July 1832, Letter 464, 2, p. 851.
10 15th Report of the LMS Bengal Auxiliary Missionary Society (1835) in the bound
volume of reports in Bishop’s College Library, Calcutta, pp. 130–2.
11 J. Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck: The Making of a Liberal Imperialist (London, 1974),
p. 212.
13 Bentinck to Grant (private), 10 March 1833, NUL, Portland Collection, BP/
PwJf/2709/iii.
14 Fifteenth Report of the Bengal Auxiliary Missionary Society (1835). See also p. 168,
above.
15 BUL, CMSA, Committee Minutes, n.d., Book 10, p. 20.
16 Corrie to Bishop of Llandaff, 17 November 1827, RH, SPG MSS, East India Jour-
nals, vol. 2, 1827–30, p. 132.
17 Astell to Bentinck, 4 October 1830, Letter 254, Philips, Bentinck Correspondence, 1,
p. 531.
18 Rosselli, Bentinck, p. 212.
19 Turner to Wilson, 15 February 1831, RH, SPG MSS, C IndI (1)25J.
20 Astell to the Archbishop, 26 February 1829, RH, SPG MSS, East India Journals, vol.
2 (1827–30), p. 478.
21 M. J. Harrison, Unravelling the Threads: A Guide to the Wilsons of Stenson in the County of
Derbyshire 1664–1800 (Essex, 2008). The family were silk merchants and had impor-
tant Indian connections.
PwJf/2709/iii.
23 There are numerous letters from Wilson to Bentinck in this vein in the Bentinck
Papers.
24 Bentinck to Wilson, 6 June 1834, NUL, Portland Collection, BP/PwJf/565.
25 See Rosselli, Bentinck, pp. 56–66 for a discussion of Bentinck’s Evangelicalism. See
also above, p. 00.
26 Bengal Judicial letter, 18 December 1830, para. 19, BL, IOR, E/4/134 and Ecclesi-
astical letter to Bengal, 24 July 1833, para. 18, BL, IOR, E/4/738.
27 Bengal Ecclesiastical letter, 29 March 1831, paras 6 and 7, BL, IOR, E/4/135.
28 Bengal Ecclesiastical letter, 22 January 1833, para. 2, BL, IOR, E.4/142.
29 Morton to Hamilton, 14 January 1828, RH, SPG MSS, C IndI (1)21.
30 Bentinck to Metcalfe, 31 July 1834, Letter 756, Philips, Bentinck Correspondence, 2,
p. 1337.
PwJf/2709/iii.
32 Ecclesiastical Letter to Bengal, 20 November 1833, para. 1, E/4/739.
33 S. Neill, A History of Christianity in India, 1757–1858 (Cambridge, 1985), p. 409.
34 See Melville to Wellesley, 5 January 1811, BL, Add. MSS, 37,310, pp. 47–8.
35 Gambier to EIC, 1 September 1817 contained in Committee Minutes 8, September
1817, BUL, CMSA, Book 3, pp. 66–7.
36 N. G. Cassels, Religion and Pilgrim Tax under the Company Raj (New Delhi, 1987), pp.
85–9.
37 Madras Regulation VII of 1817.
38 Drew citing Poynder’s tract ‘Pleas to the Christians of England’, found in SOAS,
CWMA, LMS MSS, South India (Tamil), Box 5, Folder 1, Jacket B.
39 BUL, CMSA, South India Mission, CI 2/M3, p. 168 and CI 2/M4, p. 332.
40 See discussion in Cassels, Pilgrim Tax, p. 95.
41 Minute to Military Board 1831, NUL, Portland Collection, BP/PwJf/2666/v.
42 Madras Political Letter, 31 July 1832, para. 9, BL, IOR, E/4/365.
43 Report from the Secret Committee of the East India Company, Parliamentary Papers
(1831–2), III, Paper 730 and above, p. 167.
44 Revenue Despatch 587 to Bengal, 20 February 1833, BL, IOR, E/4/736.
45 P. Auber to T. B. Macaulay, 21 February 1833, Letters from the Company to the
Board, BL, IOR, E/2/12, p. 57.
46 Court Dissent No 3063, 13 June 1833, BL, IOR E/2/12, pp. 225–6.
47 Minute, 30 October 1832, John Rylands Library, WMMSA, Box 24, p. 362.
48 Howell to the LMS, 22 June 1832, SOAS, CWMA, South India (Telugu) Box 1, Folder
5, Jacket B. Howell had been a former civil officer with the Company.
49 Casamaijor to CMS, 23 August 1832, BUL, CMSA, South India Mission, CI 2/M9,
pp. 381–2.
50 Campbell to LMS, 2 January 1833, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India (Cana-
rese), Box 3, Folder 4, Jacket B.
51 Campbell to LMS, 24 June 1831, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India (Canarese)
52 Howell to LMS, 21 February 1831, SOAS, CWMA MSS, South India (Telegu), Box
1, Folder 4, Jacket D.
53 Judicial letter to Madras, 3 April 1833, paras 1–9, BL, IOR E/4/942.
54 Beynon and Taylor to LMS, 29 September 1832, South India (Canarese), Box 3,
Folder 3, Jacket B.
55 Adam to Bentinck, 28 November 1832, Philips, Bentinck Correspondence, Letter 525, 2,

952.
56 Minute 18 February 1834, John Rylands Library, WMMSA, India Synod Minutes,
Box 354.
57 Taylor to LMS, 17 March 1831, SOAS, CWMA, South India (Tamil), Box 4, Folder
1, Jacket A and Gogerly to LMS, 24 February 1831, North India (Bengal), Box 3,
Folder 2, Jacket A, SOAS, CWMA.
58 Gogerly to the LMS, 24 February 1831, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, North India
(Bengal), Box 3, Folder 2, Jacket A.
59 11 March 1831, BUL, CMSA, Committee Minutes, Book 11.
60 E. D. Potts, British Baptist Missionaries in India, 1793–1837 (Cambridge, 1971), pp.
222–3.
61 15th Report of the Bengal Auxiliary Missionary Society 1832, pp. 22–32.
63 Remonstrance against the Board’s Alterations to Bengal Political Draft 43 as to
Travancore, No 2931, 31 May 1832, IOR E/2/11, pp. 195–204.
64 Court Dissent, No 2874, BL, IOR, E/2/11, p. 194.
65 Foreign Department letter, 2 January 1835, BL, IOR, E/4/945 (5).
66 Bentinck’s ‘Minute on Reform’, 1 June 1834, NUL, Portland Collection, BP/PwJf/
2643/I.
67 Astell to Bentinck, 4 October 1830, Philips, Letter 254, Philips, Bentinck Correspondence,
1, p. 531.
69 Trevelyan to Bentinck, 9 April 1834, Portland Collection, BP/PwJf/2104. Trevelyan
married Macaulay’s sister. He became governor of Madras in 1859.
70 Laird, Missionaries and Education in Bengal 1793–1837 (Oxford, 1972), p. 232.
72 Cited in Laird, Missionaries and Education, pp. 231–3.
73 Minute on British Prestige, 5 August 1832, NUL, Portland Collection, BP/PwJf/2912.
74 G. O. Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (London and New York, 1889),
p. 330.
75 Bentinck to Macaulay, 1 June 1834, NUL, Portland Collection, BP/PwJf 2643/I and
above, p. 166.
76 ‘Minute on Education of Indians’, 20 January 1835, NUL, Portland Collection, BP/
PwJf/2902.
77 S. B. Harper, In the Shadow of the Mahatma: Bishop V. S. Azariah and the Travails of Chris-
tianity in British India (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, 2000), p. 101.
78 Cited in R. Moore, ‘John Mill of John Company’, in East India Company Studies: Papers
Presented to Professor Sir Cyril Philips, ed. K. Ballhatchet and J. Harrison (Hong Kong,
1986), p. 174. The draft despatch can be found in BL, IOR, H. Misc. 723, pp. 49–55.
80 Bentinck, ‘Minute on Reform’, 1 June 1834, BP/PwJf/2643/I.
81 Campbell to LMS, 24 June 1831, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India (Cana-
rese), Box 2, Folder 2, Jacket B.
82 Mead to the LMS, 13 October 1829, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India
(Travancore), Box 1, Folder 2, Jacket D.
83 Proposed Addition of Two Bishops, 10 July 1833, Court Dissent No. 3070, BL, IOR
E/2/12, pp. 237–47.
84 PD, 19, 17 July 1833, cols 797–807 and PD, 20, 26 July 1833, cols 14–50.
85 C. H. Philips, The East India Company 1784–1834 (Manchester, 1940), pp. 261–75.
86 Bentinck to Metcalfe, 31 July 1834, Letter 756 in Philips, Bentinck Correspondence, 2, p.
1337.
87 Ecclesiastical letter to Bengal, 29 September 1834, para. 20, BL, IOR E/4/147.
Eleven
BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARIBDIS 1836–1858
India is on the eve of a great moral change … Everywhere the

same decided rejection of antiquated systems prevails … the aboli-
tion of the exclusive privileges of the Persian language … will
shake Hindooism and Mahommadenism to their centre and firmly
establish our language, our learning and ultimately our religion in
India.1 (Charles Trevelyan)
Trevelyan’s words to Bentinck demonstrate the arrogance that was begin-

ning to pervade senior official thinking by the 1830s. He rejected the views of
men like Warren Hastings and Thomas Munro, who had believed that there
was much to admire in Indian culture and civilisation and were anxious not to
upset Indian sensitivities. Britain’s territories now seemed secure; Britons were
confident of their superiority; and there was little hesitation in most British
minds that Western civilisation and Christianity should be brought to her
empire. The Company was coming under increasing pressure to relinquish
its policy of religious neutrality in favour of positive support for Christianity.
Trevelyan shared Macaulay’s confidence that Indians could be educated to
perceive the blessings of Western civilisation and religion. He agreed with the
elder Grant’s argument that Britain, as conqueror, had a duty to impose its
own morality on India. In India, Evangelical officials, knowing that they had
strong support in Britain, were pushing at the boundaries of what was consid-
ered acceptable in their public capacities. Even those who did not approve
of proselytism conceded that missionaries could bring much needed help to
Indians through their educational and social work. Indeed, what missionaries
were doing in these areas was respected and their advice and involvement
was often sought.
Initial indications that a more Christian policy would be pursued in
India in the wake of the 1833 charter were not encouraging. George Eden,
Lord Auckland, Bentinck’s replacement as Governor-General (1836–1842),
continued the Company’s cautious line. The new Governor of Madras, Sir
Frederick Adam, was hostile to Evangelicals and, according to Reeve, an LMS
Between Scylla and Charibdis 1836–1858 207
missionary, scattered ‘the religious people’ to other stations.2 Lord Ellenbor-

ough, Auckland’s successor had no time for missionaries. Lord Hardinge,
soldier statesman, the next Governor-General, maintained after he had
arrived in India in 1844 that: ‘In this vast empire, let your political econo-
mists say what they will, our power rests exclusively on the fidelity of this
native army and must do so for several years to come, for the prejudices of
Mahommedans and Hindoos are very strong and hitherto we have made very
little impression.’3 Thus, despite an increase in pro-missionary attitudes and
the removal of the requirement for licences in the 1833 charter, missionaries
felt more than ever that pressure needed to be exerted from home to ensure
that they could operate without restriction. Dissenters also felt that Company
chaplains and magistrates continued to treat them badly.
Evangelical Officials
The strength of Evangelicalism in Britain was demonstrated by the increasing

numbers of officials prepared to do all they could to spread Christianity. By
the 1840s there was extensive patronage of missionary institutions by Evan-
gelical officials, such as the senior officials, R. M. Bird and R. Mangles, who
were active members of the CMS. John Goldingham, Collector of Guntur
District, asked the CMS to establish a mission there in 1841. Between £2000
and £3000 was raised by various civil and military officials to finance this. The
Residents in Nagpur, Assam and Kathiawar also invited missionaries to set up
missions. The victorious army in the Punjab in 1849 raised a subscription for
the CMS as a thanksgiving. In Bombay, the Evangelical Robert Grant, the
second son of Charles, was Governor 1834–1838 and many officials contrib-
uted liberally to missions. Lord Tweeddale, Governor of Madras, 1842–1848
had no compunction about using his position to further Christianity.4 James
Thomason (Thomas Thomason’s son), Henry and John Lawrence, Herbert
Edwardes and John Nicholson, the most famous Evangelical officials of the
era, believed that Christians should carry Christian principles into their daily
work as public servants. They believed that ‘Christian things done in a Chris-
tian way will never alienate the heathen.’5 When James Thomason was on
tour all work ceased on a Sunday and he would conduct divine service if
there was no chaplain available. Nevertheless, few senior officials believed that
they should take part in direct proselytism. When Edwardes, Commissioner
of Peshawar, was asked if two missionaries might come, he agreed, making
the following speech that made clear his distinctions between what was and
was not acceptable:
Our mission then, in India, is to do for other nations what we have done for our
own. To the Hindoos we have to preach one god, and to the Mahommedans
to preach one Mediator.… The British Government has wisely maintained a

strict neutrality in religious matters, and Hindoos and Mohammedans, secure
of our impartiality, have filled our armies and built up our empire. It is not
the duty of the Government, as a Government, to proselytise India.… The
duty of evangelising India lies at the door of private Christians; the appeal is
to private consciences, private effort, private zeal, and private example.… In
this crowded city we may hear the Brahmin in his temple sound his shunkh
and gong – the Muezzin on his lofty minaret fill the air with the azan, and
the civil Government, which protects them both, will take upon itself the duty
of protecting the Christian missionary who goes forth to preach the Gospel.6
Edwardes went on to warn that ‘if anything like compulsion entered into our
system of diffusing Christianity, the truths of that religion itself are disobeyed,
and we shall never be permitted to profit from our disobedience’.7 At the other
extreme was Colonel Mackeson, Edwardes’s predecessor as Commissioner,
who was openly hostile to missionaries. When asked for permission to open
a mission, he told the CMS that ‘no missionary shall cross the Indus while I
am Commissioner … do you want us all to be killed?’ His caution was to no
avail, as he was stabbed to death on his own veranda.8
Despite their fervent Evangelicalism, Thomason and Edwardes were
adamant in their refusal to allow military officers to show any official support
for Christianity. Lieutenant-Colonel Wheler of the 34th Regiment, while
stationed in Agra in the 1830s, preached openly to the troops and was friendly
with the missionaries. He regarded himself as free to approach anyone outside
his military duties, including sepoys, with the Gospel. An enquiry was made
into his activities but he was not relieved of his duties. The rule prohibiting
converts from serving in the Bengal army continued, although Madras and
Bombay operated a more liberal policy. When Robert Clark of the CMS
managed to convert thirty Sikhs of the 24th Punjab Infantry in 1857, orders
prohibiting officers from discussing religion or worshipping together with
Indian Christians and forbidding missionaries access to military lines were
issued. In 1847 the Bengal government became so concerned that Indians
were identifying missionary activity with the Government that it issued an
order forbidding Company chaplains from using missionary chapels for their
services in case a connection with missionary work could be suspected.9 It
had become increasingly difficult for Indians to make such fine distinctions.
Christianity and Education
Macaulay’s Minute on Education had enraged John Stuart Mill who drafted
a despatch against it in 1836. Mill was concerned that over 8000 Calcutta
Muslims had signed a petition against the proposed educational changes
because they felt their religion was threatened. He reiterated the long-held
Company policy that ‘it is important that the people of India should have
the firmest reliance on the stability of our policy’ in those areas which relate
to their religion.10 The Court of Directors approved Mill’s draft. However,
the Whig, John Cam Hobhouse, the new President of the Board of Control,
refused to have the despatch sent to India as he regarded it as an attempt to
revive the Orientalist cause. Hobhouse was an important figure as he served
as President from 1835 to 1841 and again from 1846 to 1852.
It fell to Lord Auckland’s administration to implement Bentinck’s educa-
tion resolutions. Auckland believed that there had been much heat and exag-
geration in the discussion over education and that there was a distinct want
of conciliation in the implementation of the abolition of oriental instruc-
tion. Auckland largely blamed Macaulay, whom he felt had acted too much
alone and would ‘rather provoke than conciliate’.11 Despite his reservations,
Auckland told Hobhouse in 1837 that he did not want a complete change in
education policy. He accepted the argument that English education would
‘do more to reform the abominations [of Indian society] than anything else’.
The disagreement was over the timing and method of introducing English
education and how far Christianity could be included in it. Knowing the
demand from Indians for English, Auckland did not see the need to rock
the boat and thought it might be prudent to ‘conciliate’ Muslims through
the provision of a few scholarships at the madrasa. He believed that govern-
ment schools should be secular. However, as in earlier years, the Government
could not cope with the scale of the challenge. By 1837 missionaries were
providing most of the English education in Bengal, despite their use of the
Scriptures.12 Missionary schools also benefited because they were free and
generally of a higher standard than government schools, which charged fees.
Alexander Duff was not impressed with Auckland’s education policy, which
he publicly described as ‘remarkable for its concessions and compromises, for
its education without religion, its ethics without God’.13 Although Hobhouse
had refused to send J. S. Mill’s draft despatch against Bentinck’s education
resolution, by 1841 he was prepared to allow the Court to send another
education despatch, drafted by Mill, which was largely based on Auckland’s
minute of 1839 and which expressed similar sentiments.14 The despatch, with
its support of oriental instruction and approval of the policy of ‘engraftment’,
effectively reversed Macaulay’s Minute on education within four years in
order to conciliate Hindu and Muslim feelings.
Soon after Auckland’s replacement, Ellenborough, arrived in India in
1842, a false rumour circulated that he intended to introduce the Bible
into government schools. Ellenborough would not have had anything to do
with this. He, like Auckland, was extremely concerned about the ‘explosive
potentialities’ of religion. Mayhew states that he was ‘haunted by the fear of
arousing the Hindu world by any action capable of misinterpretation as a
Christian gesture’. The Dharma Sabha reminded the Government of its policy
of neutrality; saying that any attempt by Government to proselytise would

lead Hindus to feel their religion was in danger.15 There was good reason
for apprehension in Madras where Tweeddale, the Evangelical Governor,
was trying to change the educational system and introduce Christianity. He
favoured mission schools and early in 1845 transferred many powers from
the recently established University Board to a new Council of Education.
This Council set questions for the examinations for the ‘uncovenanted’ civil
service, which had as their theme the Christian religion, its superiority and
influence. In 1847 the Madras Council of Education suggested the introduc-
tion of the Bible as a regular textbook in all ‘national’ (government) schools.
Tweeddale’s ‘Bible Minute’ aggravated an already tense situation, which was
made even worse by John Anderson’s student conversions in his Scottish Free
Church mission. A public meeting of the Hindu community was called and a
memorial sent to the Court of Directors accusing it of ‘ingratitude, partiality
and injustice against its most loyal Native subjects’.16 As far as the petitioners
were concerned, the move was ‘indicative of a settled design to subvert the
Hindu religion and to substitute the Christian faith’.
Most Company officials looked to ‘useful knowledge’ as the best means of
improving the condition of the people. Mission schools became an important
weapon in eradicating the Khond practice of meriah (human) sacrifice and
female infanticide. Rescued meriah children were put into mission schools. It
was hoped that the spread of Christianity would help civilise the Khonds to
the point at which they would voluntarily end the practice. The Company
did not want to use force. This gradualist approach bore fruit and meriah
sacrifices were rare within twenty years.17 James Thomason, who was Lieu-
tenant-Governor of the North Western Provinces (NWP), 1843–1853, was
convinced that the expansion of knowledge was necessary before there could
be agrarian reform. He instituted a system of divisional and sub-divisional
schools and proposed a scheme in which the Government would supply a
limited number of central schools as a model for village communities to found
and fund their own schools. Henry Lawrence founded a school for the orphan
children of irregular liaisons in the cantonment. He gave Rs 86,400 towards
the first school at Sanawar in the Punjab.18 Many officials undeniably hoped
that education would lead to the eventual conversion of India. While most
Evangelical officials accepted the Company line that there should be no direct
proselytism, they wanted to see education infused with a Christian spirit. The
cooperation between the Government and missionaries in the provision of
education made it difficult for Indians to separate the two, to the extent that
James Thomason’s Director of Public Instruction was called ‘padre’ when he
entered the villages.19 Indians had no illusions about the Christian purposes
behind many of the educational schemes and were also suspicious of the
Government’s use of missionary printing presses.
An important figure was the CMS missionary, James Long, who was keen
to involve the Bengal government in his experiments with vernacular educa-

tion. Henry Woodrow, one of the government inspectors, was impressed
with the breadth of the vernacular education that Long provided and the
vocational element that helped fit the children for future employment. Many
officials visited Long’s schools because they were so successful. His schemes
also appealed to officials because they were cheap. His educational ideas
influenced Frederick Halliday and Charles Wood, who later became Presi-
dent of the Board of Control. Halliday drew the attention of the Council of
Education (which had superseded the General Committee of Public Instruc-
tion) to Long’s schools. In contravention of the Government’s policy towards
missionary schools, he asked Long to send him an application for a grant-in-
aid. Halliday presented the application to the Council with a recommenda-
tion for approval. The Council of Education, however objected on the ground
that Long was a missionary. Some members felt that ‘in initiating a system of
grants-in-aid, which it appeared would benefit missionary schools more than
others, the Government would be giving Christianity an unfair advantage
over other religions, and it was felt that the Government ought not to identify
itself with one religion in preference to another’ in case this raised an outcry.20
The Company’s charter of 1853 abolished the Council of Education and
appointed Halliday the first Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. A turning point
in the relationship between the Government and missionaries came the next
year when Sir Charles Wood, as President of the Board of Control, decided
that it was the business of Government to educate the mass of its subjects. His
chief consultants were the missionary Duff, plus H. Wilson and Trevelyan.
Wood’s eventual despatch 49 of 19 July 1854 stipulated that the education
provided by Government must be exclusively secular.21 The exclusion of all
references to Christianity in government schools was emphatically endorsed.
However, the despatch also stipulated that grants-in-aid could be given to
all schools, secular and religious, without reference to caste or creed. This
was meant to help mission schools without saying as much. All schools thus
aided were to submit to government inspection and were to charge a fee,
however small. Wood’s despatch also removed the restrictions against Bibles
being held in government school libraries and teachers were permitted to
explain Christian references to pupils outside of class. This was a significant
step forward for Evangelicals. Universities were established but there were to
be no degrees in subjects connected with religious beliefs. Approaches were
made to missionary institutions with a view to their affiliation. The CMS
Directors encouraged participation, as did Bishop Wilson. Long was the first
to receive a grant-in-aid. He also became a member of a number of education
committees and was appointed an inspector of government schools in 1856.
The BMS and LMS, on the other hand, were hostile at first. Bruised by their
continuing ill treatment by members of the Established Church and being
against the principle of a state church, they feared government interference in
their affairs and did not want government inspection of their schools. Some
missionaries also feared that giving grants-in-aid to all would make it seem
as if all religions were equally true. However, by the 1860s many missionary
schools were receiving the grants and mission schools accounted for nearly
half of all non-Indian educational institutions.22 The Indian response was to
set up their own schools in order to counteract missionary influence.
The Pilgrim Tax
The 1833 despatch ordering the cessation of the Government’s involve-

ment in Hindu institutions was permissive and largely ignored in India.23
Correspondence between Hobhouse, President of the Board of Control, with
George Eden demonstrates that Auckland would have liked to ignore the
question too.24 He was unable to do so because of Evangelical pressure in
Britain. In June 1836 the LMS Foreign Secretary was asked to ‘confer with
the Secretaries of other missionary societies on the propriety of bringing the
subject to the notice of HM government’.25 In order to provide ammunition
for its case, the LMS asked its missionaries to furnish a statement of the
nature and support given by Government to the ‘Idolatry of British India,
the manner in which it affects the operations of the missionaries, and the
instances of its injurious results’. Auckland was being put under pressure to
implement the Court’s orders and the question of the Government’s connec-
tions with Hinduism occupied much of his time. Auckland’s letters demon-
strate an increasing irritation with the subject. While Auckland believed that
there were zealots on both sides, he told Hobhouse and James Rivett Carnac,
Chairman of the Court of Directors, that the question was much exagger-
ated and grossly misrepresented. He felt that the Company’s obligation to
preserve order, provide acts of charity and protect endowments could not
be abandoned lightly. In the hope that financial considerations might have
an impact, Auckland pointed out to Hobhouse that the four lakhs of rupees
annually obtained from the tax would no longer be available for hospitals
and other charitable works.26 In sum, Auckland was extremely reluctant to
abolish the tax.
At this point Auckland does not seem to have received the news of trouble
that had erupted in Madras. A Company sepoy had been killed in May 1836
while attending a Hindu religious festival. The Commander-in-Chief of
Madras, R. W. O’Callaghan, objected to the regiment’s involvement and
issued a general order, sanctioned by the Madras government, that military
guards were only to be used to maintain order and on no account were to
be permitted to take part in processions or ceremonies.27 In August Daniel
Corrie, the first Bishop of Madras, presented a memorial to the Government
calling for full implementation of the Court’s order of 1833 ending such
involvement. He requested that the memorial be passed on to the Governor-

General. The memorial was signed by 201 prominent people, including 111
soldiers, forty-nine clerics, and thirty-one civilians, an impressive total by any
measure. It complained that their rights and privileges as Christians had been
infringed and Christianity had been dishonoured. The petitioners wanted to
see the ‘true principles of religious toleration . . . practically and universally
enforced’.28 Adam, the Governor, censured Bishop Corrie, as did Lord Auck-
land in a private letter. Auckland felt the Established Church was arrayed
with the missionaries against the Government and confessed that he felt great
difficulty in dealing with the situation. If he rejected the memorial, he would
arouse a storm from Evangelicals. If he took the side of the memorialists, he
would excite Indian mistrust.29 Auckland eventually declined to influence the
discretion of the local government but scolded Adam for his censure of Bishop
Corrie. He privately told Hobhouse that he thought Adam’s answer had not
been ‘remarkable for discretion and conciliation’. Auckland continued to be
of the view that withdrawal from involvement in temples and festivals must
be gradual and discreet in order not to alarm Hindus.30
The situation in Madras went from bad to worse. Sir Peregrine Maitland,
O’Callaghan’s Evangelical successor as Commander-in-Chief, sent a circular
order enforcing obedience to O’Callaghan’s general order. This infuriated
Adam who persuaded the Madras Council to order Maitland to cancel his
letter. Robert Grant, Governor of Bombay, added fuel to the fire when he had
O’Callaghan’s general order published in Bombay. Grant asked his Council
to define the limits of ‘perfect toleration in the exercise of their religion’. He
argued that Bombay did not necessarily have to defer to the judgement of the
Supreme Government and managed to get his Council to agree to publish
the general order and to discontinue the ‘Daftar Pooja’, a Hindu ceremony
in which public records were consecrated. Grant also wanted the matter of
attendance at the river adoration at Surat and Broach to be forwarded to
the Supreme Government for consideration. One member of his Council
objected strongly, fearing that this would effectively identify the Bombay
government with missionary labours. The Bombay proceedings were none-
theless forwarded to Lord Auckland for consideration. Auckland’s Council
advised Grant against making any changes to policy and custom. As with
Madras, it declined to issue any instructions on the matter. However, in a
private letter to Hobhouse, Auckland made his broadmindedness very clear.
He told him that as the:
day of these observances at Surat seems to be a popular holiday, in which joy
is natural and reasonable, and if something of superstition be added to it, this
will disappear, as intelligence and civilization advance, whilst the holiday, and
its Festivities will, as must be desired, survive. Something of Paganism may be
traced in our English feasts of May day and Harvest Home – something druid-
ical in the rites of Hallowe’en, more that is Catholic in the village mummeries
of Christmas. To time and the gradual growth of knowledge I would trust

much, and would deprecate in these matters all overstrained fastidiousness of
feeling, and a sternness of action which must tend to create alarm and to
alienate the people from the Government.31
Auckland was anxious that Robert Grant’s question about the limits
of toleration for Company officials should not be ‘incautiously agitated’,
believing that this might lead to extreme danger. He was greatly afraid that
‘a mistrust on the part of the Natives, in that toleration and protection on the
part of Government, from which I never will depart’ (Auckland’s emphasis) would
be excited if he encouraged ‘the agitators’. To support his argument, he cited
a letter that took sideswipes at the increasing numbers of Evangelicals in the
Company and Government. This stated:
I have always thought that danger might arise to our power from that spirit
of fanaticism which is abroad and which is likely to show itself in high places.
So long as it confines itself to the pious Missionary and to those unconnected
with the government and without power, it can do little or no harm – but when
Presidents of the Board of Control and Chairmen of the Court of Directors,
Governors, Councillors, and Secretaries are disposed either to persecute the
religions of others, or to make converts to their own, the thing really becomes
alarming, and many consider it lucky that we live amongst a passive and
tolerant people like the Hindoos.
The extent of Auckland’s frustration with the pressures exerted on him by

Evangelicals was demonstrated by his suggestion that Evangelicals should be
disqualified from serving in India as ‘they cannot expect to be allowed to act
the part of missionaries, and of servants to Government at the same time’.32
This is not a suggestion that could be expected to find favour in England.
Auckland forwarded the Bombay proceedings to the Court of Directors,
requesting its opinion on the matter. It seems odd, in view of Auckland’s
private letters to Hobhouse, that Auckland also authorized a Revenue despatch
to Cuttack at this time ordering the implementation of the Court orders abol-
ishing the pilgrim tax. Perhaps he felt that he had to take some action in view
of the furore aroused in England against the Company’s continuing involve-
ment with ‘idolatry’. By this time Hobhouse had become angered by events
in Madras and Bombay. He told Robert Grant that he was ‘very angry’ and
thought that Archdeacon Carr and some of his military officers were ‘crazy’
and reminded him of the danger of their actions in support of Christianity.
Hobhouse felt the ‘zealots’ were being encouraged by ‘a party in England’ and
hoped that Grant would discourage ‘these rash men’. He assured Grant that
the Board, Court and Cabinet were united in their opinion on these matters
and reminded Grant of the danger of innovation.33
The Court of Directors appeared to be taking heed of Evangelical
pressure and in February 1837 reminded the Government of India of its
instructions that no unnecessary delay in implementing its orders should

take place.34 However, the despatch also ordered that no protection hith-
erto given to Hindu festivals should be withdrawn. When Maitland heard
of this he abruptly resigned as Commander-in-Chief. Robert Nelson, an
Evangelical sub-Collector in Tanjore district, also resigned over the issue.
Maitland charged the Company with such public disregard of ‘the precepts
of our religion’ and ‘harsh dealing with its conscientious professors, that
it naturally leads the natives to view unfavourably the moral and religious
character of the Government’.35 Hobhouse had earlier considered recalling
Maitland, regarding him as a troublemaker. However, he stepped back from
this, telling Auckland in a revealing letter: ‘I own I am afraid of the violence
of your Saints and our Saints and I prefer attempting some compromise with
that fierce and foolish party.’36
Hobhouse was certainly under pressure. Maitland’s resignation caused a
sensation in England. He had become a ‘martyr’ to the cause and Evangeli-
cals redoubled their efforts to bring an end to the connection of the British
government with ‘idolatry’. In November memorials were sent to the Court of
Directors, the President of the Board of Control and Viscount Melbourne, the
Prime Minister, from various missionary societies demanding that patronage
of idolatry be ended.37 The following year a provincial committee was formed
‘for the express purpose of diffusing information relative to the connexion
of the East India Company’s government with the superstitious systems of
the natives, and with promoting the dissolution of the connexion’. Numerous
articles appeared in The Times.38 The Archbishop of Canterbury took up
the fight in the House of Lords, criticising the Company for its failure to
abolish the pilgrim tax. The Bishop of London and Charles Grant, now
Lord Glenelg, joined him. The crux of the argument was that the Compa-
ny’s involvement in idolatry lowered the British character in the eyes of the
natives and prevented the spread of Christianity. John Poynder, an Evan-
gelical proprietor, persuaded the Court of Proprietors to pass a resolution
pledging the Directors to adopt expedient measures ‘for the withdrawal of
the encouragement afforded by Great Britain to the idolatrous worship of
India, and also the relinquishment of the revenue hitherto derived from such
source’.39 Hobhouse was anxious to avoid a call for papers in Parliament. He
told Sir James Lushington, the Chairman, that this might be avoided if a
despatch were to be sent to India asking what action they had taken on the
earlier Court orders to abolish the pilgrim tax. Lushington, however, was not
prepared to be pushed and did not see ‘how this would be possible’.40
Hobhouse was becoming increasingly irritated by Auckland’s inaction,
which had led to the pressure on Hobhouse in England. Auckland still wanted
gradual, unobtrusive abolition. He told Hobhouse that ‘you might as well
abolish the gin tax to make men sober as the Pilgrim tax to convert Hindoos
to Christianity’. He was ashamed at the foolishness of the subject and
informed Hobhouse that ‘Hindoos fear abolition as a proof of the increasing

power of those would not tolerate them’.41 At this point, under great pressure
from the Evangelical lobby, Hobhouse knew that he could prevaricate no
longer. On 26 July 1838 he told Parliament that he would send a despatch
to India and ordered the Court to prepare a draft. In an attempt to put a
positive spin on its forced climbdown, the Court’s draft despatch expressed
the hope that ‘under proper explanations our withdrawal from all interfer-
ence with the religious observances of the natives of India will be regarded
as an additional proof of our respect for their feelings’. It went on to declare
the Company’s ‘sincere intention to maintain inviolate the great principle
of affording them the fullest protection in the free exercise of their religion,
which we deem not only essential to the security of our Indian possessions but
which has been sanctioned and guaranteed to them by the British Parliament
and the East India Company’.42 The Board returned the draft excising these
comments. The Court protested, but the Board overruled all objections and
peremptorily instructed it to send clear orders for the severance of all connec-
tion as quickly as possible. The majority of the Directors then disclaimed all
responsibility for the directions contained in the revised draft, despite the fact
that the despatch permitted considerable latitude to the local governments to
decide the manner in which the orders were to be implemented and the pace
at which changes were to be made. There seems little doubt that, without
the strength of the Evangelical lobby in England, the Company would have
continued its involvement with Hindu temples and festivals and the collection
of pilgrim taxes.
The despatch did the trick and Auckland backed down. He had more
than enough to think about with the Punjab and the Afghan war. However,
in one last throw, Auckland reminded Hobhouse that the Jagannath temple
was endowed, and pointed out that if money payment was to be withdrawn,
the land must be restored and good administration ensured. Furthermore,
he thought a general measure would be quite impossible for Madras where
Company involvement in Hindu festivals was far more widespread.43 Act X
of 1840 finally abolished the pilgrim tax in Bengal. Madras and Bombay
were left to make their own arrangements. Sir James Rivett Carnac, who
was now Governor of Bombay Presidency, refrained from making a general
legislative enactment but proceeded case by case. Hobhouse wrote to Carnac,
commending him for his actions and for his denigration of missionary zeal.
He told him, in a sentence that neatly encapsulates the Company’s way of
dealing with missionaries: ‘Never mind the missionaries. They are trouble-
some people I admit but serious animadversions adds to their importance and
unless you catch them at some outrageous interference with your authority,
leave them alone.’44 John Elphinstone at Madras was less inclined to submit.
He expressed the usual Company mantra when he reminded Hobhouse that
‘We retain our political power so long as we abstain (as a government) from
doing violence to the religious feelings of the vast population under our
rule.’45 He submitted a plan in June 1840 for terminating government inter-
ference with religious institutions but wanted to keep temple lands under the
supervision of the Board of Revenue. The Supreme Government censured
Elphinstone for this and the Directors expressed impatience with the partial
implementation of their orders.
Despite Evangelical pressure, the established donation to Jagannath temple
from Calcutta continued and did not finally end until 1858. It took another
five years before the last connections with Hindu temples ended.46 The aboli-
tion of the Company’s involvement with ‘idolatry’ was an Evangelical victory,
which perhaps had more significance for future events in India than the passing
of the ‘pious clause’ in 1813. It caused disquiet and resentment amongst
Hindus. It was not easy for the Company to find the right kind of people to
undertake temple responsibilities and to ensure they were being exercised in a
satisfactory manner. As many had forecast, the end of Company involvement
led to the abandonment of temples, neglect, mismanagement and corrup-
tion. More importantly, Christopher Bayly has pointed out that a significant
repercussion of the Company’s withdrawal from non-Christian religious insti-
tutions was the loss of an important source of information, which led to a
decline in affective knowledge of Indian society. The Company’s previous
‘tactile feeling for the popular mood’ was ebbing away.47
Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters
Auckland’s attitude towards the abolition of the pilgrim tax should not be
taken to mean that he was oblivious to the needs of European and mixed-
race Christians. Lord Auckland was prepared to help Roman Catholic priests
and missionaries for two reasons. First of all, he believed that it was sound
policy to provide for the large numbers of Irish Roman Catholics in the
Company’s European troops. Second, he was concerned about the debased
condition of the mixed-race Christians, who were very numerous in Bengal
and who were needed to fill junior administrative posts. As early as 1836
he wrote to Carnac, telling him that he thought the allowance for Roman
Catholic chaplains was not enough at Rs 50 a month. He felt that this amount
should be doubled.48 Five years later, Auckland wrote a long, secret Minute to
Hobhouse, returning to the subject. He was concerned that Roman Catho-
lics were not being properly provided for. He had sanctioned a grant of
Rs 1,243 to repair the Catholic church at Dinagepore, one of the main mili-
tary stations. He wanted the discretion to deal liberally and wisely with the
Roman Catholic priests. Roman Catholic chaplains were still only receiving
Rs 50 a month while Protestant chaplains were paid Rs 500. The disparity
of treatment between the Protestant hierarchy and the Roman Catholic was
also a source of ill feeling. Using arguments very similar to those used in the
eighteenth century, Auckland told Hobhouse that far too little was being done
to attach Roman Catholic priests and missionaries to the Government. He
therefore believed they should be ‘encouraged to look more to the military
and public authorities than at present’ by more liberal treatment.
Another consideration was the Supreme Government’s relationship with
the Roman Catholic Vicar Apostolic. A new Vicar Apostolic had just been
appointed but Auckland was not happy with the ‘obscure Frenchman’ chosen.
He expressed the view that the authorities at home should have some influ-
ence on the appointment and contribute financially in a small way so that the
appointee was not utterly dependent on Rome.49 The previous incumbent, an
Irishman approved by the Duke of Norfolk, had been more acceptable. While
Auckland felt that not enough was being done for the Company’s Roman
Catholic subjects, he was equally concerned about the great increase in the
cost of the ecclesiastical establishment. In 1837 he had written a confidential
letter to Hobhouse about this and other religious matters. By 1837 the cost
of the ecclesiastical establishment had risen to nearly 5 lakhs. Auckland felt
that there should be a limit to this expense. Echoing Bentinck’s sentiments, he
told Hobhouse that there ‘needs to be a limit to the sum taken from Hindus
and Muslims for this purpose’.50
However, as Britain acquired suzerainty over more territory and Anglican
Indian congregations began to increase, the ecclesiastical structure had to be
expanded and bishoprics sub-divided. Once there was a Christian congre-
gation the State had to find a chaplain and then build a church. This was
precisely the situation that Bishop Corrie had hoped would come about
in 1827.51 It had resulted in a great drain on Indian revenues. The debate
intensified over the proper relationship of colonial bishops to missionaries.
Auckland told Hobhouse that the zeal for making new proselytes was almost
inherent in the position of the Anglican church in Madras.52 Further tension
between the Anglican Church and the Government of India arose as more
bishops came to regard themselves as missionary bishops. In 1853 the Bishop
of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, tried to obtain parliamentary approval for
the creation of missionary bishops for native churches within the existing
dioceses. This was a serious challenge to the policy of religious neutrality as
the Anglican Church remained bound to the civil authorities. The Church
was also not happy with the situation and, in the words of Susan Harper,
indulged ‘in a number of subterfuges that enabled it to form endowed
dioceses outside the Company’s control’.53 Auckland also had to deal with
Church/Dissent rivalry. Anglican missionaries and chaplains continued to
hamper Dissenters. For instance, in 1836 an SPCK missionary was alleged
to have acted unscrupulously against the LMS and a petition was sent to the
Governor-General asking him to intervene. The Bishop was reminded of
the undertaking made by Archdeacon Corrie in 1823 not to interfere with
LMS stations.54 Religious issues took up a considerable amount of Auck-

land’s time.
While Auckland was cautious about Christian conversions, he allowed
missionaries to run orphanages in order to relieve the distress caused by
famine in the Bengal and North-Western Provinces. In the 1838 famine, 200
boys and fifty girls were entrusted to the care of the CMS at Agra.55 They
were eventually housed in a complex close to Akbar’s tomb at Sikandra. The
girls were housed in Mariam’s (probably Akbar’s chief wife) tomb opposite.
This was hardly a diplomatic move as Agra was a main centre of Muslim
culture and learning. In an attempt to provide employment for the orphans
the CMS set up a press, which was entrusted with government printing. As
a result of government patronage the press made considerable profits, which
not only financed the orphanage but other mission institutions in Agra. All
this was particularly shocking to the Muslim leadership in the city and was
denounced in pamphlets and sermons.56 In 1852 there were two prominent
Muslim conversions to Christianity in Agra. This was also the time when
the CMS missionary, Pfander, was engaging in his famous debates with the
Muslim ulama.57 An orphanage was also set up in Benares with the help of the
senior revenue official, R. M. Bird. Roman Catholic priests were as unhappy
as Hindus and Muslims with the almost total Protestant monopoly of running
orphanages. They considered missionary involvement in such institutions as
a covert way of making converts. Auckland would have taken the decision
to give the orphan children to the CMS as a pragmatic and cost-effective
means of dealing with a situation of acute distress. The orphanage at Agra
continued to be a source of resentment and was destroyed during the ravages
of the Great Uprising of 1857/8. Given how sensitive Lord Auckland was
to Indian religious feelings, it is surprising that he did not see just how inept
the place chosen for the orphanage was.
Lord Ellenborough (1841–1844) and the Gates of Somnath
Edward Law, Lord Ellenborough, Auckland’s successor as Governor-General

(appointed after his recall at the end of 1841), in an attempt to reassure Hindus
of the Government’s determination to protect the Hindu faith, decided to
restore the gates of the temple of Somnath (which had been removed by the
Mughuls in 1024) to their original position. His actions aroused a storm in
England and brought to the fore again questions about the relationship of
Christian Britain to its non-Christian subject peoples. Evangelicals accused
Ellenborough of insulting Christianity in order to pay honour to an idol.
A heated debate on the question ensued in Parliament. Macaulay made an
impassioned speech urging Ellenborough’s recall. Macaulay feared Muslim
reaction because the gates had been removed from a mosque where they had
been placed by the Mughals. He pointed out that the importance of Muslims
was ‘out of proportion to their number: for they are a united, a zealous, an
ambitious, a warlike class’. He cited the Vellore mutiny and the incident of
the pig in the mosque at Cuddapah to prove how careful Governors needed
to be.58 Macaulay considered Ellenborough’s actions very imprudent. Never-
theless, he had no time for Hinduism and believed the Company had been
right to abolish sati, thagi and infanticide. He agreed with Grant that the
Company’s involvement in Hindu festivals and the collection of taxes had to
end and charged Ellenborough with disobedience to the Board’s strictures on
involvement with idolatry. In sum, Macaulay maintained that Ellenborough
had made a laughing stock of himself. A motion of censure of Ellenborough’s
actions was made but in the end not passed in either House. Most speakers did
not regard Ellenborough’s actions as an attack on Christianity.59 Nevertheless,
he was soon recalled from India by the Court of Directors.
Hindus and Christians
The previous chapter demonstrated the extent to which Indian Christians

and converts experienced persecution and hardships. Converts were deprived
not only of their property but also often of their wives and children. They
were excluded from village wells and refused essential services such as that of
barber and midwife and often suffered violence. Missionaries generally felt
that it was their Christian duty to stand up for injustices, real and perceived, to
their flocks. Motivations for conversion are very complex and there is not the
space to discuss this here. However, it is clear that many lower-caste Indians
regarded a change of religious identity as a means of improving their lot. The
mass conversions of Shanars in Travancore after Mead had been appointed a
judge and once missionaries had achieved a measure of success in the breast-
cloth controversy, is a case in point. Indians converted on their own terms
and adapted Christianity to suit their own needs. Converts had expectations
from both missionaries and the British government after conversion. Many
refused to contribute their shares to village festivals, such as beating drums,
making sacrifices or removing carcasses or otherwise performing public
service. Converts often demanded higher wages, protested against taxes and
proved much more difficult to control. In areas where rules of touch and
distance pollution were particularly severe, as in Travancore, converts increas-
ingly challenged the status quo. The situation was aggravated by missionary
insistence that outcaste converts gained the status of Syrian Christians on
their conversion. This was something the higher castes refused to admit. The
breast-cloth controversy in Travancore and Tinnevelly was the emotive focus
of this jockeying for position within the caste system. In many places disputes
were brought to Company officials.
Not surprisingly, Hindus throughout India resisted these assaults. As

Oddie states, there was a growing sense of ‘resentment, humiliation and
outrage engendered in Hindus’ by some of the more outspoken missionary
attacks on Hinduism. Missionary sermons were getting more aggressive in
their denunciations.60 According to Mason, Edmonds, an LMS missionary,
issued a circular to government officials and ‘educated natives’ on behalf of
the missionaries, maintaining that the time had come for all men to embrace
the same religion. Such was the furore from Indians who feared that the
Government intended forcibly to convert them that the Lieutenant-Governor
had to issue a proclamation denying any such intention. In another incident,
Tucker, a civil servant, aroused fury from both Muslims and Hindus when he
set up columns, at his own expense, inscribed with the Ten Commandments
in Hindi and Urdu at the entrances to Fatehpur city.61
By the late 1840s anti-Christian meetings were taking place in both
Calcutta and Madras.62 Persecution of converts had greatly increased because
of Hindu fears that Christianity was making too much headway amongst
them. Opposition reached fever pitch if high-caste conversions were made.
When a minor was converted in Nagpur in 1848, a deputation of 15–20,000
waited on the Raja with a petition insisting on the boy’s recovery from the
custody of the missionaries.63 The mission school was often regarded as
the root of the problem. Alexander Duff in Calcutta, Anderson in Madras
and Wilson in Bombay seem to have been particularly successful in making
converts amongst their students. Missionaries were often accused of coercion
and cases were brought to court. Judgements were usually based on the age
and the ability of a child to exercise discretion. Conflict also occurred when
the economic balance in the area was affected. The case of the indigo workers
in the Krishnagar and Nadia areas of Bengal in the wake of the 1838 famine
illustrates the difficulty for both missionaries and Government in divorcing
religious and economic issues. The inhabitants of fifty to sixty villages offered
themselves for baptism. The landlords refused to allow their Christian ryots
to read Christian books or to attend services. When a convert was murdered,
the case was brought to the local judge, who refused to punish the offenders.
Similarly, a local magistrate found against the Christians who wanted to
attend Christian services.64 At the request of ryots, both Hindu and Christian,
who were being oppressed by the planters, the missionaries reluctantly took
up their cause. Although this was not a religious issue as far as the Company
was concerned, missionaries believed that the indigo question was hindering
the progress of Christianity because of the extreme poverty into which the
ryots had fallen and because of the bad example given to Indians by the
behaviour of European planters. The missionaries petitioned the Governor-
General to do something to relieve the ryots’ distress and agitated the question
in the press in India and Britain and in Parliament. The issue eventually led to
the arrest and imprisonment of the respected CMS missionary, James Long,
who was discussed earlier, and who campaigned fearlessly on behalf of the
ryots.65 Long’s championship of the ryots made him a hero amongst the poor
of Bengal and his statue stands in Calcutta to this day.
Lord Tweeddale’s administration in Madras (1842–1848) seemed to
confirm Hindu fears that the Company had abandoned its policy of religious
neutrality. Up to this point Madras Governors had been extremely careful
to ensure that they could not be accused of actively supporting missionaries
in their public capacities. Collectors had been ordered not to interfere in
disputes among native Christians unless they caused a breach of the peace.66
Nevertheless, forced by the home government to abandon previous marks of
respect at Hindu festivals, other events conspired to convince many Hindus
that the British government had decided that Christianity would prevail.
The situation in Tinnevelly continued to be tense. Complaints and counter
complaints were sent to Sir Henry Montgomery, the magistrate, who found
that it was all he could do to calm the situation.67 In 1845 there was an explo-
sion of violence after more than 7,000 conversions in Tinnevelly. The Sacred
Ash Society and the Four Vedas Society, which had been formed to encourage
Hindus to be true to their religion and to stand firm against Christianity,
orchestrated this. A mob of several thousand attacked houses and prayer
school halls. Hundreds of buildings were destroyed and looted, women were
raped and men beaten. They had to flee to the Collector for protection and
government forces had to be sent in to bring the situation under control. The
local magistrate jailed more that 100 Hindus, who appealed to the session
court in Madras. Many of the accused were acquitted. The second judge of
the court blamed the riots on the missionaries and the ‘improper support’
they had received from local officers. Tweeddale, egged on by the mission-
aries, intervened with the court’s decision and Lewin, the judge concerned,
was dismissed.68 While the alarm over the Tinnevelly situation was going on,
Tweeddale was trying to change the educational system. A petition bearing
12,000 signatures was sent to Government protesting against the violation of
Hindu rights and privileges. The response of the Court of Directors was to
recall Tweeddale. Once he had gone, the Madras government was concerned
about the way in which Christians were aggressively asserting their rights and
breaking caste usages in Travancore and instituted an enquiry. The resulting
Minute declared that the Government did not want sudden departures from
past conduct and that changes in custom should be approached gradually.
The Governor-in-Council also thought that missionaries acting as patrons
of their converts and advocating their cause was objectionable. The CMS
appealed to the Court of Directors, who supported the removal of the prohi-
bition and ordered tolerance.69
The Court of Directors was seriously rattled by Tweeddale’s actions. It sent
a stern despatch to India, which reiterated the Company’s long-held policy
and made the point that it was very difficult for Indians to divorce an official’s
private acts from his public ones. The despatch said:
You are aware that we have uniformly maintained the principle of abstaining
from all interference with the religion of the natives of India. It is obviously
essential to the due observance of the principle that it should be acted upon by
our servants, civil and military. The Government is known throughout India
by its officers, with whom it is identified in the eyes of the native inhabitants,
and our servants should, therefore, be aware that, while invested with public
authority, their acts cannot be regarded as those of private individuals. We are,
however, led by circumstances of recent occurrence to conclude that a different
view of this subject is taken in India and, we, therefore, deem it necessary to
call your immediate and particular attention to the absolute necessity of main-
taining this most important principle in its fullest extent.70
The Beginning of the End: James Ramsay, Marquis of Dalhousie (1848–1856)
By the late 1840s Indian feelings of distrust led to anti-Christian meetings

that brought together many disparate groups. As one Indian put it, the British
‘have already conquered our bodies and are in a fair way to conquering our
minds also’.71 British science and technology added to the feeling that the
British were making a radical assault on Indian civilisation, religion and
learning. Many British officials did not recognise how disturbing progress
could seem to orthodox Hindus and Muslims. So eager were the British for
social and technological improvement that they became intolerant as they
pushed for change. By this time the British Parliament was very much an impe-
rial Parliament that insisted on India serving its imperial interests. Reflecting
this change of mood, a Governor-General of a very different stamp to his
predecessors arrived in India, James Ramsay, Lord Dalhousie. He was to be
Governor-General for most of the remaining time of the Company’s raj.
Young and energetic, at thirty-six years old, he had little patience with the
gradualist policies of his predecessors and was keen to modernise India as
quickly as possible. Rather than being conciliatory, Dalhousie had a hard,
uncompromising edge. He had also inherited a better economic situation
than had prevailed for most of the previous twenty years and surpluses were
beginning to be made again.
Dalhousie was the first Governor-General to take a contrary line to tradi-
tional Company policy as far as religion was concerned. He deemed that
it was ‘both his Christian duty and wise policy to show India we were not
ashamed of being Christian, nor afraid to protect them’.72 He had the contin-
uing practice of infanticide publicly notified as murder in all parts of India.
He swept aside all objections to giving Christian instruction to the children
of native Christians in the Company’s troops and encouraged his provincial
Governors to aid missionary education liberally. James Thomason had estab-

lished a government vernacular school in each revenue division of some of
his districts. Dalhousie resolved to extend this system and proclaimed the
importance of female education. This aroused considerable fears amongst
Hindus and Muslims, who did not want see their daughters unveiled or
educated in the same schools as boys. Dalhousie wanted to aid CMS work
amongst the tribals and the Supreme Council sanctioned a grant to the Welsh
mission in the Khasi hills, adding that ‘the Governor had no objection to the
use of Missionary books in the schools thus assisted’.73 Lord Ellenborough,
once again at the Board of Control, believed that the proposal to aid the CMS
work amongst the tribals would violate the Company’s policy of neutrality
and rejected it. Dalhousie’s response to this was: ‘We carry the principle of
neutrality too far. Even from the political point of view we err in ignoring so
completely as we do the agency of ministers of our true faith in extending
education among the people.’74 Government schools were regarded by many
Indians as instruments of proselytism and it was observed that the Christian
Scriptures were appearing as classbooks. Dalhousie’s actions were causing
increasing apprehension amongst Indian elites. By far the most opposition,
however, was expressed to his Lex Loci Act of 1850.
The Caste Disabilities Removal Act of 1850 (Lex Loci) extended provisions
giving converts the right to inherit ancestral property. Missionaries had been
campaigning for this for years and had been partially successful when Lord
Bentinck passed a similar law in 1832. This, however, applied to Bengal only.
It was such an important issue for missionaries because loss of inheritance
rights was impeding the success of conversions. Few Indians were going to
convert if they lost their property as a result. Indians, unsurprisingly, regarded
the law as intimating that the Company was intending the conversion of
India. A draft act had been published in 1845 and immediately attracted
Hindu attention. There is no doubt that something needed to be done for
Christian converts. As things stood, Hindus made life impossible for them.
However, the law ignored the fact that the Hindu family is a religious as
well as a social entity and important sacred duties are connected with the
inheritance of property. It also undermined caste regulations and over-rode
the authority of the caste councils. A memorial from ‘the Hindu inhabitants
of Madras’ was sent to the Governor-General opposing the proposals. The
petitioners feared that the law gave ‘strong cause and suspicion that such an
innovation is only a prelude to others, [and] that security in person, property
and religion, hitherto ensured to native subjects, is in danger of being taken
from them’. In Bengal two petitions were organised, one from the inhabit-
ants of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa and another on behalf of the Dharma Sabha.
These stated that should the Government pass the act, it would be breaching
its policy of non-interference with Hindu religious customs and would also
appear to be placing ‘a Government premium on conversion’.75 The draft
act was published again in 1849 and demonstrated that the Government was
not prepared to listen to Hindu opinion. The press attacked the proposals
and petitions were sent from 14,000 Hindus against what they regarded as
a breach of faith. The Madras memorial was particularly trenchant and
warned that the law ‘will deserve what it will assuredly attain, the hatred
and detestation of the oppressed’. There were more meetings and petitions
once the Act was passed. This time the Court of Directors, however, was in
agreement with Lord Dalhousie.
The Act of 1850 restored rights of inheritance to those whose rights had
been forfeited as a result of passing from one religious community to another
and established the principle that a man’s religion should not operate in such
a way as to deprive him of his civil rights. It did not in fact go much further
than Bentinck’s 1832 Act. In passing it, Dalhousie argued that he was acting
in accordance with the policy of toleration. Dalhousie agreed with Bentinck
that property was a civil matter that should be regulated by the State. The
main beneficiaries were Christian converts. Resentment did not die down and
the Dharma Sabha set up a five-year opposition, accusing the Government of
having abandoned its policy of neutrality by showing partiality to their own
religion and having begun openly to assist the missionaries in their work.76
Protests were also sent to the House of Commons without avail. The Select
Committee of 1853, which was preparing for the renewal of the Compa-
ny’s charter, paid special attention to the evidence of missionaries. Before
he left India, Dalhousie drafted the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act, which
was another measure the missionary lobby was keen to see passed. This was
carried into effect by Canning in 1856 and stated that the marriage of Hindu
widows by any recognised or legal ceremony was to be accepted as regular
and the children of such marriages should be accorded all the privileges of
family and inheritance. This struck at the root of Hindu family structure and
was greatly resented. It was felt that the law had not been requested by Hindus
and was forced upon them. Finally, the General Service Enlistment Act was
passed in 1856, which stipulated that sepoys had to be available for service
overseas and travel in ships if necessary. Sepoys believed that this would
pollute them and lead to the loss of caste. They regarded this as a precursor
to being forced to become Christian and were violently against the measure.
They had also been told that they would lose their overseas allowance for Sind
and the Punjab. There was a general feeling that the Company was tampering
with the Hindu religious system and growing suspicions that the Government
intended to force Indians to become Christian.
Although these are not religious issues, Dalhousie initiated other measures
that caused resentment and great unease. The doctrine of lapse, whereby
kingdoms without a direct male heir lapsed to the Company on the death of
the ruler caused deep resentment amongst Indian rulers, which was reinforced
when Dalhousie decided that the perpetual pensions granted to certain princes
should cease. Nana Sahib, the adopted son of the last Peshwa who was exiled
to the Cawnpore area, was one of those affected. The lapsed territory came
under the complete control of the British and with it, its revenues. Dalhousie
also interfered in other ways with the land tenure, which resulted in economic
distress for many thousands. He annexed Sattara, the Punjab, Nagpur and
Jhansi and proposed the annexation of other states. In 1849 Dalhousie had
proposed that Shah Bahadur Zafar, the titular Mughal emperor, now styled
king of Delhi, and his family should be removed from Delhi. This was not
carried out but Zafar had also been warned that he would be the last of his
dynasty. Dalhousie’s annexation of Oudh in 1856, a Muslim state which had
been loyal to the Company for years and was the chief recruiting ground for
the Bengal army, was a great shock to Indian princes. The Company’s troops
marched in, ransacked the treasury and seized the jewels and furniture of the
royal family. This blatant disregard for treaties helped to unite Hindu and
Muslim princes in a sense of grievance against the British. The thousands
of sepoys who came from Oudh, where they generally held land, also lost
prestige and perquisites. There was thus an increasing sense of unease and a
loss of confidence in British faith and honour from both Hindus and Muslims.
Brahmins in particular sensed the danger to their ascendancy by British
ideas of progress. They were well aware that education in Western science,
medicine and technology rocked the foundations of Hinduism and were
alarmed at the proposals for female education. When legislative interference
in religious customs was added to this equation, Brahmins could envisage
the whole structure of Hinduism toppling down. Lex Loci, the Hindu Widow
Remarriage Act, and the General Service Enlistment Act were all measures
that affected the practice of Hinduism. Bentinck had started the process but
Dalhousie’s governor-generalship appeared finally to break the Company’s
‘compact’ with its Indian subjects. Indians were not being left free to worship
as they wished. Dalhousie’s rush to modernise, desire to fill the Company’s
coffers, and to ensure security set up more problems than they seemed to solve.
Arrogance and contempt seemed to have replaced the previous symbiotic
relationship between Britons and Indians. The stage was set for the Great
Uprising of 1857/8.
The Great Uprising of 1857/8
After the Vellore mutiny, Sir Thomas Munro had commented that: ‘However
strange it may appear to Europeans, I know that the general opinion of the
most intelligent natives in this part of the country is that it was intended to
make sepoys Christian.’77 On 29 March 1857 Mangal Pande of the 34th
Native Infantry stationed at Barrackpore called upon his fellow sepoys to
rise up to protect their religion and caste after they were ordered to use
the new rifles and cartridges, allegedly greased with pig and beef fat. This
was anathema to the ritually sensitive high-caste sepoys of the Bengal army
as these were polluting substances that would make them lose caste. Pande
shot two officers, was court-martialled and hanged and the regiment was
disbanded in disgrace. Unrest began to spread and erupted in Meerut after
the 3rd Light Infantry, who were mainly Muslims, were ordered to use the
new cartridges. They refused. Eighty-five sepoys were sentenced to ten years
penal servitude, shackled and led away. That evening placards appeared in
the bazaar urging all Muslims to rise up and slaughter the Christians.78 The
next day, the 10 May, the Uprising began. The Meerut revolt sparked off a
series of uprisings, military and civil. The mutineers marched to Delhi and
sought the sanction of the titular Mughul Emperor, Zafar. The fears that
had pervaded military minds that the horrors of the Vellore mutiny could
be repeated had come to pass. The Uprising was a searing experience for
both Indians and British. Much ink has been spilt trying to assess the reasons
behind the outbreak.79 I do not, therefore, intend to go into the course or
causes of the Uprising in any detail. However, some discussion in necessary
in order to tease out the extent to which the Company’s religious policy might
have been a factor.
The sepoys maintained that they had mutinied because of fears for their
religions. Sir John Lawrence, who had been assistant magistrate of Delhi
in 1830 and had been part of the Board administering the Punjab after its
conquest, however, denied that religion had anything to do with the matter
and blamed instead inefficiency and lack of discipline in the Bengal army
and Britain’s over-reliance on sepoys rather than European troops. He was
clear that the Uprising was purely a military revolt.80 There are arguments
to support this interpretation. The Meerut sepoys did not revolt until the
sepoys who had refused to use the new cartridges had been shackled and the
regiment disbanded. The offending cartridges had first been introduced two
years beforehand. Sepoys had other grievances, which included their loss of
perquisites and honour caused by the annexation of Oudh and the General
Service Enlistment Act, which was yet another attack on caste. They had also
lost the foreign service allowance for the Punjab and Sind. The eminent histo-
rian, Majumdar, made a study of the Uprising in which he concluded that the
sepoys, once the revolt had got underway, were more interested in personal
gain than anything else. He argues that, far from enlisting the sympathy and
support of the people at large, they were intent on plundering them and
burning their villages. Thus Indians and Europeans alike fell prey to the
sepoys as they rampaged on their way to Delhi. Many sepoys returned to their
homes after they had secured plunder and did not stay to fight the cause of
religion. Once in Delhi the sepoys refused to fight unless their salaries were
paid.81 Given this, it is difficult to argue that religious grievances were at the
heart of the various sepoy insurrections, although they were important. On
the other hand, Lawrence, as an Evangelical Christian, had a vested interest

in arguing that religion had no part in the sepoy mutinies. He did not want
Christianity blamed for the debacle.
Sir John Kaye, historian of the East India Company, did not think
the Uprising was primarily a sepoy mutiny but was due to brahmanical fears
that Hinduism was under threat from Christianity and other innovations
introduced by the British.82 Kaye believed, therefore, that brahmins had taken
the lead in instigating the soldiers and general populace to revolt. Brahmins
certainly had good reason to fear that Hinduism was being undermined by
Western science, education and religion. Prophecies had been circulating for
some years maintaining that Hinduism and caste was about to disappear and
all religions would be one. Various laws that had been passed since Bentinck’s
abolition of sati in 1829 were seen as a direct attack on Hindu laws of inherit-
ance and religious practice. The Company also seemed to be making efforts to
break caste by forcing low caste and high caste boys to be educated in the same
rooms, bringing in female education and forcing prisoners to eat together
in gaol. The General Service Enlistment Act, with its requirement to serve
overseas, has already been mentioned. There is, however, no evidence apart
from the rumours of chapattis and lotuses circulating prior to the Uprising
of any concerted conspiracy on the part of Brahmins, who in any case, were
a very disparate group. Vast Hindu areas did not revolt but remained loyal to
the British. Public meetings were held in many parts of India condemning the
‘Mutiny’. Others argued that the sepoys mutinied not because their caste was
being flouted but because it was being pandered to. Interestingly, the Madras
army, which did not allow distinctions of caste, did not join the insurrection.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a judicial official in Bareilly district, which
was one of the areas of unrest, wrote a pamphlet that he hoped the British
would read, outlining what he considered to be the reasons for the outbreak.83
He believed that there were many grievances that rankled in the hearts of
the people, of which the primary was the British refusal to grant high office
to Indians, which led to the Government’s ignorance of the condition and
feelings of the people, who in their turn misunderstood its intentions. Sir
Syed Ahmed also thought that fears for religion had a big part to play in the
Uprising. He said that there was no doubt that all Indians felt a firm convic-
tion that the English Government was bent on interfering with their religions
and age-old customs and intended to force Christianity upon them. He wrote
that there was a common belief that the Government appointed missionaries
and paid for them and aided them in every way. He pointed out that many
Company servants talked to their subordinates about Christianity. Another
source of grievance was the printing and circulating of missionary tracts
abusive of Hinduism and Islam. Syed Ahmed states that Indians believed that
missionary schools were started by order of the Government. The connec-
tion of Government with missionaries seemed to be confirmed when Indians
observed that Company servants of high position visited the schools and
encouraged Indians to attend them. Syed Ahmed also castigated the exami-
nations that used books that taught the tenets of the Christian religion and
gave prizes to answers that accorded with Christian beliefs.84 Syed Ahmed did
not accept the argument that Indians were eager to attend mission schools.
He stated that the children entered the schools in order to obtain govern-
ment employment and therefore they put up with the fact that they were
Christian schools. Finally, he mentioned the proposals for female education,
which were causing considerable unrest as Indians believed that girls would
be forced to attend missionary schools and sit unveiled – as in fact happened
in some places. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s article focussed on the alienation of
the people as a whole from the British as a result of its policies. He blamed
the lack of communication between governors and governed and the growing
distance between them. This was also the thrust of the proclamation issued
by the rebels at Azamgargh in August 1857 that gives five heads for their
rebellion. The first four include zamindars, merchants, public servants and
artisans, all of whom the proclamation alleged had lost out as a result of
British rule. The fifth section maintained that pandits and fakirs considered
the British enemies of both Hindus and Muslims and that the Uprising was
a holy war of religion against the English.85
Both Syed Ahmed Khan and the Azamgargh Proclamation in effect main-
tain that the Government had alienated or alarmed almost every influential
class in the country. Disraeli, in a long speech in Parliament agreed and
argued that this had happened over the past ten years: in other words, during
Dalhousie’s governor-generalship.86 Disraeli gave three reasons for the aliena-
tion. The first was the forcible destruction of native authority caused by abol-
ishing the law of adoption and abrogating treaties. In addition, Dalhousie’s
tampering with pensions reduced certain princely families to beggary and was
a supreme humiliation. Nana Sahib and the Rani of Jhansi were quick to take
part in the Uprising in order to avenge their personal grievances. The second
reason for the Uprising in Disraeli’s mind was the disturbance of the settle-
ment of property by the resumption of tax-free lands and the law of adoption,
which applied to all Indians, not just the princes. Disraeli placed tampering
with religion in third place. Disraeli did not, however, blame missions. He
pointed out that missions were not a new feature in India and he believed
Hindus and Muslims were not averse to theological discussion. Disraeli main-
tained that the problem was not missions but the union of missionary enter-
prise with the political power of Government, which Indians regarded with
the utmost jealousy. He believed that the Government had recently given
grounds for suspicions that Indian religions were under threat because it had
‘constantly been nibbling away at the religious system’ of the natives and had
allowed the Scriptures to appear in the national schools. The proposals for
female education were also unwise. In addition, two pieces of legislation had
given outrage: the inheritance law and the Hindu widow remarriage legisla-
tion. Disraeli felt that by 1854 or 1855 the Company should have sensed the
disquietude and general discontent and not pressed on with the annexation
of Oudh. As a result of the various grievances, Disraeli believed that Indians
had only been waiting for an occasion or pretext to rebel against their rulers.87
Many officials at the time believed that the Uprising had been the result
of a Muslim conspiracy. William Dalrymple’s recent study of Delhi and the
Uprising gives some weight to this. Dalrymple has perused thousands of
rebel documents, which refer again and again to the Uprising being a war of
religion. The documents demonstrate that Muslim leaders regarded the rebel-
lion as a jihad and were active in spreading the rebel cause. Dalrymple argues
that fears for religion were central to the resistance to the British in the Delhi
area and united Hindus and Muslims against the British. Rebels expressed
particular fears of the way in which missionaries had made rapid inroads
and that Christianity and Christian laws were being imposed on them. The
sepoys who mutinied at Meerut made their way to Delhi and murdered any
Christians they came across. When they reached Bahadur Shah Zafar on
11 May 1857 they told him: ‘We have joined hands to protect our religion
and our faith.’ Churches and chapels came under attack during the uprising.
Skinner’s church in Delhi was destroyed. Agra, which had been the centre
of the Jesuit Roman Catholic mission to the Great Mughal and in which the
CMS was now very active, was a particular target. Professor Hubbard of the
CMS’s St John’s College was murdered and the orphanage, press and Chris-
tian village utterly destroyed. Similar events happened at Allahabad where
the American Board of Foreign Missions had established an orphanage and
printing press. The American mission station at Farrukhabad was destroyed
and desecrated and eight missionaries killed when they tried to flee. It may not
be a coincidence that the Colonel of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry, which
had to be disbanded because of the insurrection of Mangal Pande, was the
enthusiastic Evangelical, Colonel Stephen Wheler. Wheler had unashamedly
tried to convert his sepoys and a rumour that the sepoys of the regiment
feared that this had reached the General. However, the insurgents seemed
to have attacked indiscriminately anything European and it is not altogether
clear how much of the death and destruction just outlined was due to the
fact that they were Christian and how much that they were connected with
the hated British rulers. One should also note that only one in seven of the
sepoys were Muslim.
Zafar’s proclamation gave religious reasons for the revolt. It stated that
‘the English are the people who overthrow all religions, have been circu-
lating books through priests and have brought over a number of preachers
to spread their own tenets’. The proclamation alleged that the British had
told the Indian people that they wished them to become Christians and to
facilitate this, they had provided unclean fat for the sepoys’ cartridges and
ground down animal bones, mixing them with flour to sell in the bazaar. It
went on the declare that ‘the English will kill everyone in the country and
utterly overthrow our religions’. Zafar urged Hindus and Muslims to unite
against the British. How far Zafar believed all this is difficult to say. He was
a puppet and very unhappy with the role he was forced to play by the rebels.
He was in the hands of those determined to take advantage of the apparent
collapse of British military power for a variety of reasons, of which fear for
their religion was only a part. Britons could not have recaptured Delhi and
put down the Uprising without the help of the many sepoys who remained
loyal and outnumbered Europeans two to one.
In any case, sepoys formed only a small proportion of those who rebelled in
1857/8. There was deep unrest in the countryside because of the Company’s
attacks on property and the sepoy insurrections quickly spread. Many of the
people who joined in were solely interested in the opportunities for plunder.
Eric Stokes, who has made detailed studies of conditions in the countryside
during this period, maintains that the rebellion was essentially a series of
rural revolts, which had their impetus in economic distress and questions
of taxation and rights and interests over the soil, which took advantage of
the sepoy unrest to settle scores.88 Mukherjee’s study focuses on conditions
in recently annexed Oudh.89 He regards the rebellion as a movement deter-
mined to shore up the rights of Indian kingship and to restore the legitimacy
of the Mughal Emperor, who had been threatened that the reign of his house
would end with his death. Religious reasons were given to whip up support for
these causes but were not the essential reason. Other interpretations revolve
around pan-Indian causes: that the rebels were united in a wish to get rid of
foreign domination and to protect their religions and therefore Hindus and
Muslims worked together in order to try to defeat the British. Members of
Zafar’s family and the Muslims of the Oudh royal family certainly tried to
take advantage of the situation to further their own ends. While there may
have been some conspiracy there is no evidence of coordinated leadership
or unified aims. Such interpretations, which started with V. D. Savarkar in
1909, see the rebellion as India’s first war of independence.90 There is no
doubt that there was widespread hostility to British rule. Social disruption and
official insensitivity had led to increasing tension between rulers and ruled.
However, such interpretations are difficult to reconcile with the fact that the
Bombay and Madras armies on the whole remained loyal. The Uprising took
place within a fairly confined area of India and much of the discontent can
be placed at the door of individual grievances. The south remained calm.
Evangelicals used the example of the south, where Christianity had been
established for centuries, as proof that what was needed was more rather than
less Christianity. However, previous chapters have demonstrated that there
had been considerable religious unrest in the south because of conversions,
Tweeddale’s Bible Minute and the breast-cloth controversy in Travancore and
Tinnevelly. British involvement in Hindu religious festivals was far greater in

the south and therefore one would have expected the impact of the Compa-
ny’s departure from them to have caused more unrest than occurred in the
north. However, the south, which had at least as many religious grievances
as the north, did not rise against the British.
Any discussion of possible causes of the Uprising is hampered by the fact
that it was not one uprising but many, each of which had discrete causes.
Religious language was used in all the insurrections and it would be wrong
to deny that many Indians had come to believe that the British intended to
convert them by various means. Brahmins in particular sensed the danger to
their ascendancy by British ideas of progress and the challenge of various
pieces of legislation. While the rhetoric was religious, religious reasons for
rebelling were not necessarily paramount. Geoffrey Oddie has rightly stated
that at the heart of the matter was the concept of trust.91 Now that Britain
had achieved military and political supremacy over most of the subcontinent,
she seemed to be reneging on her former pledges and had the power to do so.
Indian religion was being interfered with; treaties were being ignored; prom-
ised pensions had been abrogated; land tenure was disrupted; and territories
had been annexed. These were all indications that India and her peoples were
being treated with contempt. The effect of all this was cumulative. The call
of religion in danger is a great rallying cry and the common man will leap
to its defence. Hindus and Muslims joined together against the British but it
was a very shaky alliance. We should therefore be careful before describing
the Uprising as primarily a war of religion, despite the rhetoric. How far
Indians really believed there was a concerted plot on the part of Govern-
ment to convert them will probably never be known. In India Christians,
with their dislike of the caste system, posed a threat not only to religion but
to the whole social structure. Whatever the precise reasons for the uprisings
were, the Company paid the ultimate price for the debacle and its rule was
about to come to an end.
Notes
1 Trevelyan to Bentinck, 9 April 1834, Nottingham University Library, Portland

Collection, BP/PwJf/2104.
2 Reeve to LMS, 30 December 1833, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, South India (Cana-
rese), Box 3, Folder 4, Jacket A.
3 D. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in Early Nineteenth
Century India, 1819–1835 (London, and New York, 1995), p. 244.
4 A. Mayhew, Christianity and the Government of India: An Historical Narrative (London,
1929), pp. 123–4.
5 S. Neill, The History of Christianity in India, 1707–1858 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 421 and
182–4.

7 S. Neill, Christianity in India, fn. 34, p. 537.
8 J. Cox, Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818–1940 (Stanford,
CA, 2002), p. 33.
9 Mayhew, Christianity and Government, p. 156.
10 Mill’s draft despatch can be found in BL, IOR, H. Misc. 723, pp. 9–112.
11 Auckland to Carnac, 17 June 1836, and to Hobhouse, 20 June 1836, Broughton
Correspondence, vol. 28, BL Add. MSS, 36473, pp. 66 and 74.
12 M. A. Laird, Missionaries and Education in Bengal, 1793–1833 (London, 1972), p. 265.
13 Cited in Mayhew, Christianity and Government, p. 114.
14 Minute on ‘Native Education’, 24 November 1839, BL, IOR, Board Collection
77638, F/4/1846, pp. 5–75. The despatch is Public letter to Bengal, No. 1 of 20
January 1841, BL, IOR, E/4/764.
15 Mayhew, Christianity and Government, pp. 120 and 147.
16 ‘Complaints of Natives on the Subject of Religion’, Board Collection 109,457, F/4/
2213, pp. 90–2.
17 N. R. Patnaik, The History and Culture of the Khond Tribes (New Delhi, 1992).
18 S. Neill, Christianity in India, pp. 180–2.
19 C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India,
1780–1870 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 245.
20 G. A. Oddie, Missionaries, Rebellion, and Proto-Nationalism James Long of Bengal 1814–1871
(Richmond, 1999), Chapter 4, pp. 31–2.
21 The text of Wood’s Education despatch can be found in R. J. Moore, Sir Charles Wood’s
Indian Policy, 1853–66 (Manchester, 1966), pp. 108–23.
22 D. Savage, ‘Evangelical Educational Policy in Britain and India, 1857–60’, Journal of
Imperial and Commonwealth History, 22 (September 1994), 432–61.
23 Revenue Despatch 587 to Bengal, 20 February 1833, E/4/736.
24 See the Broughton Correspondence, Vol. 18, IOR, BL Add. MSS, 36473 and 36474.
25 LMS Resolution, 6 June 1836, SOAS, CWMA, LMS MSS, India and Ultra Ganges
Book 2.
26 Auckland to Carnac, 28 May 1836 and to Hobhouse, 20 June 1836, Broughton
Correspondence, 18, BL, Add. MSS, 36473, ff. 51–5 and pp. 76–7.
27 Madras General Order, 11 November 1836, contained in BL, IOR, Board Collection
64968, F/4/1618, pp. 16–21.
28 ‘Memorial Praying for Equal Religious Toleration to All Subjects of the State’, cited
in Cassels, Pilgrim Tax, p. 112. Much of this discussion is indebted to the work of
Nancy Cassels.
29 Auckland to Hobhouse, 9 April 1837, BL, IOR, Broughton Papers, MSS Eur. F 213,
vol. 6, p. 153.
30 Auckland to Hobhouse, 17 November 1836, Broughton Correspondence, 18, BL
Add. MSS 36473, p. 103.
31 Bengal Political Department Minute by the Governor-General, 1 April 1837, Board’s
Collections for Revenue Despatch 475, No. 64968, BL, IOR, F/4/1618, pp. 81–92.
32 Confidential letter from Auckland to Hobhouse, 9 April 1837, Broughton Corre-
spondence, XVIII, BL Add. MSS 37473, pp. 126–7.
33 Hobhouse to Grant, 18 October 1837, BL, IOR, Broughton Papers, MSS, Eur F213,
vol. 6, pp. 197–200.
34 Cassels, Pilgrim Tax, p. 122.
36 Hobhouse to Auckland, 30 August 1837, Broughton Papers, BL, IOR, Broughton

Papers, MSS Eur. F 213, vol. 6, p. 121.
37 17 November 1837, SOAS, CWMA, LMS Committee Minutes, Book 2.
38 G.A. Oddie, Hinduism and Christianity in South India (London, 1991), p. 57.
39 Cassels, Pilgrim Tax, pp. 121–2.
41 Auckland to Hobhouse, 23 August 1838, Broughton Papers, vol. 18, BL Add. MSS,
36473, p. 317.
42 Cassels, Pilgrim Tax, pp. 133–5.
43 Auckland to Hobhouse, 1 April 1839, Broughton Correspondence 18, BL, Add. MSS,
36473, pp. 446–7.
44 Hobhouse to Carnac, August 1840, Broughton Papers, BL, IOR, MSS Eur. F 213,
vol. 9, p. 402.
45 Elphinstone to Hobhouse, 17 November 1839, Broughton Papers, BL, IOR, MSS
Eur. F 213, vol. 12, p. 63.
46 For a detailed discussion of the twists and turns of the Company’s continuing involve-
ment, see P. Mukherjee, Pilgrim Tax and Temple Scandals: A Critical Study of the Important
Jagannath Temple Records during British Rule, ed. N. G. Cassels (Bangkok, 2000).
47 Bayly, Empire and Information, pp. 165–6.
48 Auckland to Hobhouse, 20 June 1836, Broughton Correspondence, 18, BL, Add.
MSS 36473, p. 78.
49 Rough Draft of a Secret Minute of the Governor-General in the Military Depart-
ment, 1841, Broughton Correspondence, 19, BL Add. MSS, 36474, pp. 567–73.
50 Rough Draft of a Secret Minute o f the Governor-General in the Military Depart-
ment, 1841, Broughton Correspondence, 19, BL Add. MSS, 36474, pp. 567–73.
52 Auckland to Hobhouse, 16 September 1837, BL, IOR MSS Eur. F /213, vol. 6, p.
180.
53 S. B. Harper, In the Shadow of the Mahatma, Bishop V. S. Azariah and the Travails of Chris-
tianity in British India (Richmond, 2000), pp. 111–13.
54 Piffard to the LMS, 28 April 1836, SOAS, CWMA, LMS Committee Minutes, Book
2, 21 November 1836 and 18 September 1837.
56 A. A. Powell, Muslims and Missionaries in pre-Mutiny India (Richmond, 1993), pp. 59–60.
57 For a discussion about the orphanages, see M. E. Gibbs, The Anglican Church in India
(Delhi, 1972), pp. 126–30.
58 See above, Chapter Four and p. 00. Romila Thapar discusses this in Somanatha: The
Many Voices of History (London, 2005).
59 PD, 9 March 1843, vol. 47, cols 598–702.
60 G. A. Oddie, ‘Constructing Hinduism’, in Christians and Missionaries in India: Cross
Cultural Communication since 1500, ed. R. E. Frykenberg (Grand Rapids, MI, Cambridge
and London, 2003), p. 167.
61 P. Mason, A Matter of Honour: An Account of the Indian Army, Its Officers and Men (London,
1986), p. 258.
62 Oddie, ‘Constructing Hinduism’, p. 167.
63 Oddie, ‘Constructing Hinduism’, p. 168.
64 M. M. Ali, ‘The Bengali Reaction to Christian Missionary Activities 1828–1857’,
unpublished PhD (London, 1963), pp. 241–6.
65 See above, pp. 210–11.
66 See for instance, Court to Madras Foreign Department Letter No. 1, 21 January 1835,
E.4/945.
67 BL, IOR, Board Collection 86094, F/4/1964, pp. 1–31.
68 Oddie, ‘Constructing Hinduism: The Impact of the Protestant Missionary Move-
ment on Hindu Self-Understanding’, in Christians and Missionaries in India: Cross-Cultural
Communication since 1500, ed. R. E. Frykenberg (Grand Rapids, MI, Cambridge and
London, 2003), p. 170.
69 Cited in J. W. Gladstone, Protestant Christianity and People’s Movements in Kerala 1850–1936
(Trivandrum, 1954), p. 141.
70 J. W. Kaye, Christianity in India (London, 1859), p. 449.
71 Bayly, Empire and Information, p. 244.
72 Cited in Mayhew, Christianity and Government (London, 1929), p. 115.
74 Mayhew, Christianity and Government, pp. 164–7.
75 Oddie, ‘Constructing Hinduism’, pp. 171–2.
77 R. Llewellyn-Jones, The Great Uprising in India 1857–58: Untold Stories Indian and British
(Woodbridge, 2007), p. 30.
78 W. Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of Delhi, 1857 (London, 2006), p. 141.
79 In addition to Llewellyn-Jones and Dalrymple, see for instance, E. Stokes, The Peasant
Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857, ed. C. A. Bayly (Oxford, 1986), A. T. Embree, ed.,
India in 1857: The Revolt against Foreign Rule (Delhi, 1987), T. Metcalf, The Aftermath of
Revolt: India 1857–1870 (Princeton, NJ, 1964), R. Mukherjee, Awadh in Revolt, 1857–
1858. A Study of Popular Resistance (Delhi, 1984).
80 Sir John Lawrence, ‘A Military Revolt’, in India in 1857, ed. Embree, pp. 29–35. I
am grateful to Embree for bringing together excerpts from so many interpretations
of the causes of the Uprising.
81 R. C. Majumdar, ‘The Absence of Nationalism’, in India in 1857, ed. Embree, pp.
163–75.
82 Sir John Kaye, A History of the Sepoy War in India, 1857–1858 (London, 1864).
83 Sir Syd Ahmed Khan, ‘The Rulers Were Ignorant of the People’s Feelings’, in India
in 1857, ed. Embree, pp. 47–56.
84 This had been one of the bones of contention in Madras. See above, p. 222.
85 ‘The Azamgargh Proclamation: An Indian Explanation’, in India in 1857, ed. Embree,
pp. 1–7.
86 B. Disraeli, ‘Military Mutiny or National Revolt’, in India in 1857, ed. Embree, pp.
9–21.
87 Disraeli’s speech to Parliament, 27 July 1857, Embree, pp. 9–21.
88 E. Stokes, The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial
India (Cambridge, 1978).
89 Mukherjee, Awadh in Revolt, pp. 83–93.
90 The Indian War of Independence (London, 1909), cited in India in 1857, ed. Embree, pp.
83–93.
91 G. A. Oddie, ‘Constructing Hinduism’, p. 169.
CONCLUSION AND EPILOGUE:
STRANGERS IN THE LAND
Before the Vellore mutiny occurred, William Bentinck, Governor

of Madras, had concluded that the British were ‘strangers in the land’.1 This
was an opinion he still held some twenty years later when he arrived in Bengal
as Governor-General. He believed the people of India had not benefited
from British rule and in 1829 wrote that Britain could expect no co-opera-
tion from Indians in times of emergency.2 Numerous Company servants had
expressed similar views over the years. Despite a century of rule, and all the
Company’s efforts to conciliate Indian religious feelings, the Great Uprising
made clear that the British were not only regarded as aliens in the Indian
landscape but that Indians believed it had broken its ‘compact’ with them. In
the breast-beating that occurred in Britain after the Uprising was put down,
many indeed thought that the Company had given too much support to
Christianity. Evangelicals, on the other hand argued that not enough support
had been given.
The Company tried to cling on to its power. John Stuart Mill, who wrote
the petition to Parliament requesting the continuance of Company rule,
pointed out that:
In abstaining as they have done from all interference with any of the religious
practices of the people of India, except such as are abhorrent to humanity, they
have acted not only from their own conviction of what is just and expedient,
but in accordance with the avowed intentions and express enactments of the
legislature, framed ‘in order that regard should be had to the civil and religious
usages of the Natives.’
The petition went on to argue that the success of this policy had been proven
by the fact that the Uprising had been very limited in extent. Mill argued
that this would not have been the case if ‘any real ground had been given for
the persuasion that the British Government intended to identify itself with
proselytism’. It may be that there is some truth in this statement. However, by
this time no one believed in the Company’s avowed policy of neutrality. The
Company had tried to steer a middle way between keeping to its ‘compact’
with the Indian people to allow them freedom of worship on the one hand and
appeasing the religious public in Britain, on the other. It ended up pleasing no
one. Its rule came to an end but the debate over how far Christianity should
be furthered by the British government continued.3
Evangelicals were determined to ensure that the Crown recognised its
Christian obligations. Queen Victoria’s proclamation, however, was essen-
tially a repetition of the Company ‘compact’ with the Indian people. She
disclaimed ‘the right and desire to impose our convictions on any of our
subjects’. Moreover, she strictly charged and enjoined all those in authority
‘to abstain from all interference with the religious belief or worship of any of
our subjects on pain of our highest displeasure’. No one was to be excluded
from public office on grounds of religion. Finally, she stated that in framing
and administering the law, due regard was to be paid to the ancient rights,
usages, and customs of India.4
Any connection between Christianity and the State continued to be seen
as a serious liability as far as India was concerned. Derby’s Conservative
Government, which took office in February 1858, declared a ‘strict neutrality
in matters of religion’. Palmerston, Derby’s successor, was more inclined to
the Evangelical view: that it was both Britain’s duty and in her interests to
promote the diffusion of Christianity throughout India because ‘every adult
Christian would be an additional bond of union and additional source of
strength to the Empire’.5 However, Wood, his Secretary of State, held firm to
the age-old policy. While Wood did not want to alienate the powerful Evan-
gelical lobby, he was not prepared to back down in the face of the realities of
India. Evangelicals were bitterly disappointed and could only clutch at Victo-
ria’s firm acknowledgement of ‘the truth of Christianity’. Their arguments
that the Uprising had happened because India had not become Christian
enough, and that this was the fault of the Company and the Government,
had not been accepted. Evangelicals went on the attack and pointed to the
atrocities committed by Indians on Europeans as proof of their barbarity and
the necessity of Christianity for India’s regeneration. They were not prepared
to accept the Government’s policy of religious neutrality and continued to
maintain that Britain must govern India on the basis of Christian morality.6
Evangelicals decided to try and salvage what they could from the situa-
tion. In a re-run of 1813 they called on the religious public to try and force
the Government to impose a more Christian education on the Indian people
and to permit the use of the Bible in government-funded schools. As Henry
Venn of the CMS, the campaign’s leader, put it: ‘We are not trustees for
the people of India but trustees for that Providence which gave India to us.’7
The parliamentary friends of missions formed an ‘Indian Association’ which
met at the home of the Earl of Shaftesbury. Over 2000 petitions were sent
to Parliament from the ‘religious public’. They were not able to repeat the
success of 1813. Neither political party was prepared to back the cause and
the campaign collapsed. In 1860 Wood, sounding remarkably like Warren
Hastings a century earlier, argued:
The mistake we fell into, under the influence of the most benevolent feelings,
and according to our notions of what was right and just was that of introducing
a system foreign to the habits and wishes of the people. Henceforth we ought
to adopt and improve what we find in existence and avail ourselves as far as
possible of the existing institutions of the country.8
Charles Trevelyan, now Governor of Madras, realised how wrong he had

been in 1836 to think that Christianity would soon prevail in India. He
advised Wood that
Christianity will now be on its trial. The Government gives equally to all, according
to the results produced; and it remains to be seen whether Christianity has
sufficient life and power to gain the day. It will be a shame, if, with all our
advantages of superior civilization, it does not do so.9
Christianity did not gain the day. Nor was it ever likely to. In 1858 there
were only 360 Protestant missionaries working amongst 180 million Indians.10
Mission schools became a rapidly decreasing portion of the educational
whole. The connection of Christianity with empire and the antipathy of most
missionaries and clergymen to caste made it unacceptable to most Indians.
Ironically, Evangelical attempts to bind Indians to British rule by making
them Christian only served to alienate them from their own society.
The rhetoric maintained that the Company operated a policy of religious
neutrality, non-interference, toleration and freedom of worship. These terms
were used almost interchangeably and in a very loose fashion. The reality
was that the Company never operated a policy of non-interference. From the
beginning to the end of its rule it was determined to exercise control over what
happened in its territories. Thus, it decided which Roman Catholic priests
and missionaries, and later Protestant missionaries, were to work in British
India and extracted bonds and oaths of loyalty from them. It refused to allow
the Anglican Bishop full jurisdiction over the Company chaplains. It decided
where churches and chapels were to be built. For most of its rule, it exerted
control to keep Christianity within bounds. Neither was the Company reli-
giously neutral. It did not stand aloof. By attending key Hindu and Muslims
festivals and collecting pilgrim taxes, it was privileging Indian religions. There
was much truth in Evangelical complaints that the Company did not do as
much for Christianity and that Company involvement with ‘idolatry’ pulled
the rug from under missionary attempts to convert India. There is no doubt
that most converts to Christianity suffered great deprivation and harassment
as a result of conversion and something needed to be done to protect them.
Company officials were not always impartial when complaints of ill treatment
were brought to it and were more inclined to support Hindus than Christians.
The coming of the Episcopate in 1814 put paid to any pretence of religious
neutrality as far as Christianity was concerned because the Bishop was an
officer of the State. This situation was forced on the Company by Parliament.
Both Warren Hastings and William Bentinck foresaw that the appointment of
a bishop would make it more difficult for the Company to keep to its policy
of neutrality. From the time of Heber, India’s Anglican bishops had regarded
themselves as missionary bishops. They put the Company under pressure to
look after the needs of Christian converts. The Company also found itself
using missionaries as chaplains because it could not fill the posts otherwise
and because they were cheaper. It was, therefore, difficult for Indians to sepa-
rate missionaries and clergy. By the 1830s the missionary motive behind
episcopal expansion had become very evident. It was also naïve of individual
officials to think that Indians would separate their private actions from their
actions as government officials.
There is far more evidence that the Company operated a policy of reli-
gious toleration. It respected the right of the individual to uphold his religious
opinions and forms of worship. However, from Bentinck’s time, the Company
began to interfere with the practice of Hinduism. By abolishing sati and inter-
fering with Hindu laws of inheritance, the trust that had previously existed
that Indians would be able to worship as they pleased began to break down.
The abolition of Company involvement in Hindu festivals was regarded as
‘proof of the power of those who would not tolerate them’.11 Indians were
also well aware that one of the motives behind the Government’s involvement
in education was to lead them towards Christianity. Despite the Company’s
rules that the Bible was not to be used in government schools, individual
officials allowed the Scriptures to be used. Comments made in the aftermath
of the Great Uprising demonstrate that the use of Christian texts in govern-
ment schools had caused a great deal of Indian resentment.
Behind all decisions lurked the spectre of cost and questions of authority
and control. Because of its vast distance from Britain, the locus of power lay
in India, giving the Governor-General and the Governors of Madras and
Bombay great scope to determine events. The way in which the Company
resisted ending its involvement in Hindu religious festivals shows just how
little control the Board of Control had if Company officials decided to ignore
its edicts. As far as religious and social customs were concerned, education
was preferred as a gradual and uncontentious means of eradicating moral
evils rather than using force or legislative edict. Most officials advised against
the legislative abolition of sati. The practice of meriah killings was gradually
ended through education and persuasion rather than by legislative fiat. The
Evangelical administrations of Colin Macaulay and John Munro in Travan-
core and Tweeddale in Madras demonstrated that Indian resistance to undue
efforts to convert them was swift and often violent.
The preceding chapters have demonstrated that until the last twenty years
of the Company’s raj there was a remarkable degree of consistency both in
rhetoric and action at the higher echelons of the Company’s management at
least. The Company’s attitude towards all religions was pragmatic, shaped
by the problems of controlling a vast population with scarce resources. It
had to adopt a policy of conciliation and integration. Perceptive officials and
Indians realised, particularly because of the caste system, that the advent
of missionaries would institute a process of social change that would alter
the basis on which the existing social system rested. They feared the conse-
quences. However, the Company also felt it could protect India from the worst
excesses of ardent Evangelicalism. In the years before 1813, it employed a
typically British ‘fudge’ by not granting licences to Evangelical missionaries
yet giving the nod that they would not be sent home once they arrived in
India. The ‘pious clause’, by formalising the situation, had the opposite effect
to that intended. Life became more difficult for Protestant missionaries as the
Company exercised its control and tried harder to disassociate itself from
missions and missionaries. Hobhouse at the Board of Control expressed the
view of most Governors that missionaries were troublesome but because of
the power of the Saints at home, it was best to leave them alone unless they
committed some outrageous misdemeanour.12 The tables began to turn in the
1830s when the number of Evangelical officials seemed to increase dramati-
cally, reflecting the strength of Evangelicalism in Britain. Evangelical officials
were able to subvert the Company’s intentions, knowing that they had the
support of the religious public in Britain and Charles Grant at the Board
of Control. Bentinck’s abolition of sati, the Bengal law granting inheritance
rights to converts, and Grant’s abolition of the Company’s connection with
idolatry, were the beginnings of a substantial shift in attitude towards the
way in which India should be governed. It would be fair to say that most
officials regarded the changes to the inheritance laws, Hindu widow remar-
riage and the proposals for female education as civil, not religious matters
which did not break the Company’s ‘compact’. This points up how wide the
gap between rulers and ruled had become, which was the thrust of Sir Syed
Ahmed Khan’s explanation for the Great Uprising.13 He pointed out the lack
of communication and friendship between governors and governed and the
growing distance between them. The specific circumstances of India shaped
the Company’s religious policy but there was also a continuous interplay
between the metropole and periphery as developments in Britain had their
impact on Indian policy. In the face of the challenge from Evangelicals,
Hindus and Muslims became militant. The strength of resistance can be
accounted for not just because Christianity seemed to be making headway
but also because it was hitting at the foundations of Indian social structures
and ways of life. Because religion and society are so intertwined in India it
is difficult to determine precisely what pressures were motivating resistance.
Despite its ‘compact’ with the Indian people to allow them the free exer-
cise of their religions, the Company was not anti-Christian. Few officials
were against an Anglican ecclesiastical establishment. However, they were
not prepared to force Christianity upon the Indian people, even if they felt
that they would be better subjects if they became Christian. Officials were
particularly nervous of the effect of attempts to convert sepoys, on whom
they relied for India’s security. The debate was not so much pro- or anti-
missionary but a very modern debate about how Christianity could legiti-
mately be spread without causing upset. As Henry Dundas had said during
the 1793 debates for the Company’s charter, the question was not ‘whether
the government wished well to the establishment of Christianity in India but
whether such an object could best be attained by the means the Evangeli-
cals were suggesting’.14 Very few officials were against dissemination of the
Bible and many officials supported the Bible Society, including Warren Hast-
ings and Lord Liverpool. They approved and supported missionary schools,
provided the Scriptures were not used and encouraged missionary charitable
work, which was often supported by government funds. SPCK and later SPG
missionaries were supported because they were patronised by the Church
of England and were regarded as non-fanatical and prudent. This attitude
contrasted with the way in which the Company treated Church Evangelical
and Dissenting missionaries, who it thought, with some justification, oper-
ated with ‘indiscreet zeal’. Most Company officials were Anglicans with little
regard for Dissenters. Officials treated Roman Catholics well, both because
they had to because of the treaty with Portugal and because they needed
to provide religious services for their Roman Catholic soldiers. They also
wanted to attach their non-British Catholics to British rule and needed them
to provide clerks for the administration. As Catholic priests and missionaries
were very rarely British, the Company believed that its support would not be
seen as government support of conversion. High Church SPCK missionaries
were similarly treated with respect and generosity. With the growth of militant
Evangelicalism from the 1790s the Company had a difficult line to steer. Like
Odysseus, it had to choose what would do the least damage. Odysseus opted
to pass by Scylla and lose only a few sailors rather than risk his entire ship to
Charibdis. Until Dalhousie’s administration the Company chose to arouse the
ire of Evangelicals rather than risk being caught in the whirlpool of Indian
resistance. Goodwill began to break down in the 1830s and Indian resistance
escalated. Auckland, Ellenborough, Hardinge and Hobhouse tried to abide
by the Company ‘compact’ and kept ardent Evangelicalism in check as much
as they could. Dalhousie’s administration, however, had no time for this. By
1857 Evangelicals appeared to have won the day. By 1859 it was clear that
while they might have won a few battles, Indian resistance had ensured that
they had not won the war.
Notes to Conclusion 243
Notes
1 J. Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck:The Making of a Liberal Imperialist 1774–1839 (Sussex,

1994), p. 182.
2 Minute, 30 May 1829, NUL, Portland MSS, BP/Jwf/2903.
3 Petition of the East India Company to Parliament, Parliamentary Debates, ser. 3, 148 (3
December 1857–22 February 1858), Appendix.
4 S. Neill, A History of Christianity in India, 1707–1857 (Cambridge, 1985). p. 429.
5 A. Mayhew, Christianity and Government in India: An Historical Narrative (London, 1829),
p. 194.
6 See, for instance, WMMS memorial to Lord Derby, 16 May 1859, Correspondence
with Government Departments 1806–1905, John Rylands Library, WMMSA, Box
48.
7 D. Savage, ‘Evangelical Educational Policy in Britain and India, 1857–60’, Journal of
Imperial and Commonwealth History, 22 (September 1994), 432–61.
8 P. Burroughs, ‘Imperial Institutions and the Government of Empire’, in The Oxford
History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century, ed. A. Porter, 5 vols (Oxford and
New York, 1999), 3, pp. 174–5.
9 Savage, ‘Educational Policy’, fn. 102.
10 Neill, A History of Christianity, p. 361.
11 Auckland to Hobhouse, 23 August 1838, Broughton Correspondence, 18, p. 317.
12 Hobhouse to Carnac, August 1840, Broughton Papers, BL, IOR, Eur. MS F213, vol.
9, p. 462.
13 See A. T. Embree, ed., India in 1857 (Delhi, 1987).
14 24 May 1793, The Senator, 7, 858–9.
Appendix 1
PRESIDENTS OF THE BOARD OF CONTROL

1784–1858
5 Sep 1784 Henry Dundas (Viscount Melville, 1802)

25 Apr 1801 Viscount Lewisham (Earl of Dartmouth,
6 Jul 1802 Viscount Castlereagh (Secretary for War, 1808)
11 Feb 1806 The Earl of Minto
15 Jul 1806 Thomas Grenville
30 Sep 1806 George Tierney
4 Apr 1807 Robert Saunders Dundas (Viscount Melville, 1811)
11 Jul 1809 Earl of Harrowby
7 Nov 1809 Robert Dundas
4 Apr 1812 Earl of Buckinghamshire (Governor of Madras as Lord
Hobart, 1794–1798)
4 June 1816 George Canning
12 Jan 1821 Charles Bathurst
5 Feb 1822 Charles Watkins Williams Wynn
4 Feb 1828 Viscount Melville (Robert Dundas)
7 Sep 1828 Lord Ellenborough
22 Nov 1830 Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg from 1835)
15 Dec 1834 Lord Ellenborough
23 Apr 1835 Sir John Cam Hobhouse
30 Aug 1841 Lord Ellenborough
23 Oct 1841 The Lord Fitzgerald and Vesey
17 May 1843 The Earl of Ripon
8 Jul 1846 Sir John Hobhouse
5 Feb 1852 Fox Maule
28 Feb 1852 John Herries
30 Dec 1852 Sir Charles Wood
3 March 1855 Robert Smith
6 Mar 1858 The Earl of Ellenborough
5 June 1858 Lord Stanley (became Secretary of State for India,
2 August)
Appendix 2
GOVERNORS-GENERAL 1786–1858
1786–1793 Earl Cornwalllis

1793–1798 Sir John Shore (Lord Teignmouth, 1798)
1798–1805 Marquess Wellesley
1805 Earl Cornwallis
1805–1807 Sir George Barlow (Governor of Madras, Feb 1808–
May 1813)
1807–1813 Lord Minto
1813–1823 Lord Moira (Marquess of Hastings, 1817)
1823 John Adam
1823–1828 Lord Amherst
1828–1835 Lord William Bentinck (Governor of Madras, 1807–1813)
1835–1836 Sir Charles Metcalfe (March–March)
1836–1842 Lord Auckland
1842–1844 Lord Ellenborough
1844 William Bird (June–July)
1844–1848 Sir Henry Hardinge
1848–1856 Earl of Dalhousie
1856–1858 Viscount Canning
GOVERNORS OF MADRAS 1803–1858
1803–1807 Sir William Bentinck

1807–1813 Sir George Barlow
1814–1820 Sir Hugh Elliot
1820–1827 Sir Thomas Munro
1827–1832 Stephen Rumbold Lushington
1832–1837 Sir Frederick Adam
1837–1842 Sir John Elphinstone (Bombay, 1853–1859)
1842–1848 Marquess of Tweeddale
1848–1854 Sir Henry Pottinger
1854–1859 George Harris
Appendix 2 247
GOVERNORS OF BOMBAY 1795–1858
1795–1811 Jonathan Duncan

1812–1819 Sir Evan Nepean
1819–1827 Mountstuart Elphinstone
1827–1830 John Malcolm
1834–1838 Robert Grant
1839–1841 James Rivett Carnac
1841–1842 George Anderson
1842–1846 George Arthur
1846–1847 Lestock Reid
1847–1848 Sir George Clerk
1848–1853 Lord Falkland
1853–1860 Sir John Elphinstone (created Baron in 1859)
Appendix 3
AIDE MEMOIRE TO NAMES
Some of the names are rather confusing. This is a short aide-memoire for
those names that might pose difficulties.
William Carey, snr (1761–1834), first Baptist missionary to India

William Carey, jnr (1787–1852), his son, also a missionary in Bengal
Charles Grant, snr (1746–1823), Chairman of the Company for many

years, MP
Charles Grant, jnr (1778–1866), Chairman, 1830–1834. Lord Glenelg,
1835, MP
Sir Robert Grant (1779–1838), Charles’s second son, Governor of Bombay,
1834–1838
Warren Hastings (1732–1818), Governor-General of Bengal, 1774–1785

Francis Rawden Hastings (1754–1826), 1st Marquess of Hastings, second
Earl of Moira, Governor-General, 1813–1822
Zachary Macaulay (1768–1838), abolitionist and Governor of Sierra

Leone
Colin Macaulay (1799–1853), his nephew, first Resident at Travancore,
1800–1813
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), Zachary’s son; commis-
sioner of the Board of Control, 1832–3, then law member on the Supreme
Council, 1834–8, president of the GCPI, MP, 1st Baron Macaulay (1857)
Sir Thomas Munro (1761–1827), Governor of Madras, 1819–1827

Colonel John Munro, Resident of Travancore, 1813–1819
James Monro, Collector of Palamcottah in the 1820s
Beilby Porteus (1731–1809), Bishop of London, 1787–1808

Revd Willliam Porteous (1735–1812), Church of Scotland Minister, Scot-
tish Divine, prolific correspondent with Henry Dundas
Daniel Wilson (1777–1858), Bishop of Calcutta, 1834–1858
Appendix 3 249
Horace Hayman Wilson (1786–1860), assistant East India surgeon, then

assay master at Calcutta Mint; secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,
1811–1833, member of the General Committee of Public Instruction,
1823–1832, professor of Sanskrit at Oxford , librarian at East India House,
1836–1860.
Isaac Wilson (d. 1828), CMS missionary in south and north India
Appendix 4
‘THE PIOUS CLAUSE’: EAST INDIA COMPANY

CHARTER 53 G.III, c.155
Section 33 (Resolution 13)

And Whereas it is the Duty of this country, to promote the interests and
happiness of the native inhabitants of the British dominions in India, and that
such measures ought to be adopted as may tend to the introduction among
them of useful knowledge, and of religious and moral improvement. That in
the furtherance of the above objects, sufficient facilities shall be afforded by
law, to persons desirous of going to, and remaining in India, for the purpose
of accomplishing those benevolent designs.
Provided always, that so long as the authority of the local Governments

respecting the intercourse of Europeans with the interior of the country, be
preserved and that the principles of the British Government, on which the
natives of India have hitherto relied for the free exercise of their religion, be
inviolably maintained:
And whereas it is expedient to make provision for persons desirous of going

to and remaining in India for the above purposes … that where and as often
as any application shall be made to the said Board of Commissioners for the
Affairs of India, within one month of receipt thereof …
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INDEX
Addington, Henry, Viscount Sidmouth Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) 41, 114
111, 113, 116, 117 B&FBS 72, 81, 92, 105, 119
Acland Sir Thomas 145 Brown and Buchanan 54, 57, 58, 101,
Adam, Sir Frederick 193, 206, 213 102, 105
Adam, John 152 criticism of 43, 80, 82, 120, 131, 143
Afghan War 216 education 59, 160, 162, 163, 196, 211
Agra 101, 163, 208 Hindu and Muslim opposition 59,
and CMS 219, 230 61–2, 77, 90–91, 161, 162
Ajmer 160 Persian Pamphlet Affair 90–98
Akbar, Emperor 219 restrictions on 56, 59, 72, 73, 91–5,
Allahabad 169, 230 101, 105
Allan, Thomas 142 sati and infanticide 60–61, 184
Alleppey 164 suspects Anglican/Church Evangelical
America 19, 28, 31, 103, 159, 200 motives 48, 80, 131
American Board of Foreign Missions 230 Vellore 72, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79
American missionaries 103, 104, 159, 167, see also individual bishops, governors-
168 general, Fort William College and
Amherst, William Pitt, Earl Amherst 163, under licences; Serampore; Serampore
176, 184, 190 College
Anderson, Revd John 210, 221 Baptists
Anglican Church see Church of England Charter renewal 1813 111–12, 121,
Anne, Queen 10 130–47
Anglicist 164, 195 political radicalism of 57, 101
Arcot 20 192, 193 Baptist Union 113
Arminian Magazine 120 Bareilly 228
Assam 207 Baring, Sir Francis 75, 84
Asiatic Society 59 Barlow, Sir George 62, 73, 92
Astell, William 187, 194 Baptists 59, 61, 72, 91, 94
Atholl, Duke of 45 Buchanan’s Memoir 73
Auchmuty, Sir Samuel 102 Conversions dangerous 70, 73
Auckland, Lord Madras, governor of 100, 101, 102
see under Eden, George missionaries 61, 72, 100, 102
Azad, Muhammad 1 Minto 92
Azamgarh Declaration 229 Pamphlet War 83, 85–86
Vellore 70–81
Babington, Thomas 124, 135 Barnes, Revd George, Archdeacon 168
Bailey, Benjamin, CMS 152, 173 Barrow, Dr 85
Ballhatchet, Kenneth 24 Barrackpore 226
Bandel 53 Bayley, William Butterworth 161, 162
Banks, Sir Joseph 46 Bayly, Christopher 217
Bangalore 70, 166, 192 Bebbington, David 25
sepoy converts expelled 192 Beddome, Benjamin 52
262 Index
Beerbohm 15 religious establishments, opinion of 65,

Belgaum 193 185, 186, 187
Bellary 70, 100, 167, 192, 193 Sati, abolition of (Bengal Regulation XII
Benares 63, 101, 219 (1829) 183–5, 197
Benevolent Institution 105, 163 slavery, refusal to abolish 197
Bengal 19, 20, 22, 140, 192, 224 Vellore 70–81, 197, 200
Bengal army 1 see also bishops; ecclesiastical
ban on Christian converts 192, 193, establishment; Macaulay, Trevelyan
208 Berhampore 101, 104, 155
Baptists 91, 101 Best, Geoffrey 47
caste, fears for 226–7 Bible Society see British and Foreign Bible
Uprising 208, 226–232 Society
see also sepoys Bible and Christian literature, use of in
Bengal Presidency (Fort William) government schools 159, 160, 161, 162,
chaplains, jurisdiction over 154, 185–9 170, 176, 195, 209, 211, 224, 229, 240,
education 159, 160–4, 169, 194–8, 209, 242
224 Bihar 19, 28, 224
expels missionaries 102, 103 Bird, Robert Merttins 207, 219
inheritance rights 184, 193 Bishops, Anglican 7, 48, 154, 215
missionaries, restrictions on 56, 59, 72, attitude to evangelisation 21, 35
73, 91–5, 100, 101, 102–3, 104, 105, B&FBS, SPCK and SPG, connection
162, 163 with 42, 117, 118–20, 146
missionaries, use of as chaplains 170, Charter renewal 1813 123, 146–7
188–9, 208, 240 Church Evangelicals 123
missionary presses, use of 160, 219 see also Bishop of Calcutta and individual
pilgrim tax and management of temples bishops
and festivals 62, 98, 99, 190, 197, Bishop’s College 156, 162
214, 216 Bishops of Calcutta
public employment of Christians (Bengal Anglican missionaries, control over
Regulation III (1832) 193–4, 197–8, 135, 156, 186
201 as missionaries 218, 240
Roman Catholics 10 Bentinck 165–9, 240
see also bishops; ecclesiastical chaplains, jurisdiction over 147, 154,
establishment; individual governors- 185–9
general; licences; sepoys; Uprising Eden 218–19
Bengal Regulation III, 1793 (Company Hastings, Frances Rawden 154–7
Compact) 15, 40, 41 SPCK and SPG, head of in India
Bentinck, Lord William 183–202 155–6, 186
bishops 185–9, 240 see also individual bishops
chaplains 185–9, 201, 240 Blackburn, Capt 63
Christianity, attitude towards 65, 186–9 Blacquiere, Willliam 91
church/state relations 186, 188, 201, Board of Control 21, 153, 240
237 Buchanan’s Memoir 95
education 194–8 chaplains, jurisdiction over 154
inheritance rights, public employment disagreement with Court’s despatches
and protection for converts 65, 193, 96–7, 154, 191–2, 194, 197, 209
197–8, 201, 224–5, 240 education 197
Madras, governor of 63–67, 70–81, licences 98, 99, 104, 126, 132, 135,
186 144, 151–2
military 187–8 pilgrim tax and management of temples
missionaries, use of as chaplains 184, and festivals 190, 191, 215–6
188–9, 240 political influence, lack of 75, 152, 240
pilgrim tax 189, 190–91, 197 Vellore, reaction to 75, 78
Index 263
Bogue, David (LMS) and Haldane Mission Vellore 72, 75

44–46 Brunsden, Daniel, BMS 56
The Peculiar Advantages of Bengal as a Field Brunton, Alexander 195
for Missions 45 Buchanan, Revd Dr Claudius 47, 55, 103
Böhme, Anton 10 Baptists 54, 57, 59, 60, 61, 102, 105
Bombay 8, 19, 100 charter, 1813 121, 124, 126
Bombay army 193, 231 Christian Researches in Asia 121, 189
Bombay Presidency 63, 167–9 LMS 55
allowances to missionaries 63, 157 Memoir of the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical
auxiliary Bible Society, foundation of Establishment 47, 73, 82, 84, 95, 121,
167–8 124
education 168 pilgrim tax 121
LMS missionaries 63, 100, 168 prize essays and sermons 73, 85, 91
pilgrim tax and management of temples sati 61
213, 214, 216–17 Vellore 72, 77
restrictions on missionaries 100, 167–8 see also B&FBS
Roman Catholics 8, 9, 24, 41, 62, 157 Buckingham, James Silk 199
sati, abolition of 185 Buckinghamshire, Lord see Hobart, Robert
see also individual governors Burder, George, LMS 78, 135, 142
Bonaparte, Napoleon 74 Burls, William, BMS 80
Bradley I 146 Burke, Edmund 20, 22
Brahmins 2, 65, 169, 208, 228, 232 Butterworth, Joseph MP 114, 122, 126,
ask for British protection 62 152
Baptists 61, 62, 91, 93 Buxton, Thomas Fowell 184, 185
education 162, 226
fear British ascendancy 226 Calcutta 10, 13, 22, 27, 162, 197
opposition to missionary activity 62, Baptists 58, 95
169 LMS 55, 58
see also Uprising Moravians 27–28
Breast-cloth controversy 173–4, 220, Roman Catholics 10
231–2 Calcutta Female Education Society 163
Breithaupt, Revd C. 12 Calcutta School Book Society (CSBS) 160
British and Foreign Bible Society (B&FBS) Calcutta School Society (CSS) 160, 162
(also known as the Bible Society) 43, 118, Caledon, Lord 114
146, 242 Campbell, William, LMS 192
attracts high-ranking members 43, 118, Campbell, Sir Archibald 23–4
119 Canning, Charles John, Viscount
auxiliaries and corresponding societies (‘Clemency’) 184, 225
102, 119, 167 Canterbury, Archbishop of 7, 10, 28, 35,
Baptists 72, 81, 92, 105–6, 119 37, 39, 40, 154, 215
bishops, relations with 42, 118, 119, Buchanan’s Memoir and ecclesiastical
146 establishment 84
Evangelicals, including Brown and Grant’s Mission Proposal 28
Buchanan, prominent in 43, 82, 118 1813 charter 113, 116, 124, 135
Pamphlet War against 43, 81–86, 119 Capuchin 9, 23, 24, 62
British Propaganda 105 Caranjah 167
Broach 213 Carey, Eustace, BMS 151
Brown, Christopher and Moral Capital 19 Carey, Jabez, BMS 162
Brown, Revd David 54, 57, 60, Carey, William, BMS 4, 42, 49, 52–4, 62,
Baptists 101, 102, 105 170
B&FBS 102–3, 105 Calcutta School Book Society 160
Grant’s mission proposal 28–29 Fort William College 57, 94
LMS 55, 105 governors-general 90–106, 160–2
264 Index
Persian Pamphlet 90, 91, 93, 94 chaplains acting as missionaries 40, 71,
political radicalism of 57, 170 103, 156, 157, 169, 170, 186, 188,
reports on infanticide and sati 60–61 197, 200–1, 208
Vellore 72, 73 education 29, 159
see also Baptist Missionary Society government 11, 28, 47, 201
Carey, William, jnr 59 missionaries, acting as chaplains 188,
Carmelite 9, 12, 24, 41 189, 197, 208, 240
see also Bombay; Madras; Roman patronized by Grant and Parry 40, 47,
Catholics 77, 118
Carnac, Sir James Rivett 212, 216, 217 sepoy conversions 71, 169–70, 208
Carnatic 76, 77, 152 Charter, 1698, Christian and educational
Casamaijor, J. M. 192 terms of 7, 8
Carr, Archdeacon Thomas, 214 Charter, 1793 8, 37–42, 118, 135, 242
Caste 36, 93, 156, 193, 198, 220–3, 227, Charter, 1813 3, 15, 110–27, 130–47, 159
228 Charter, 1833 198–201, 207
Christian demands for abolition 93, Charter, 1853 211
156, 171, 189, 232, 239 Chater, John, BMS 72
General Service Enlistment Act 225 China 159
conversions 172, 220, 221 Chinsurah 55, 61, 102, 159, 161, 162, 164,
Lex Loci 224, 225 188
sepoys 70, 226–7, 228 Chittoor 167
in Travancore 171–5, 189, 222 Christianity necessary for Britain and India
Caste Disabilities Removal Act, 1850 (Lex 19, 20, 30, 173, 174–6, 221, 238
Loci) 224–5 Christianity, role of in Great
Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Uprising 226–232, 237
Viscount 115–16 Christian Observer 82, 120, 124
B&FBS 118 Christians, public employment of 165,
Coke’s mission proposal 66 172, 193, 200–201
charter, 1813 117, 132, 136, 139, 140, Christians, persecution of 62, 77, 192–4,
142, 146 220–223
political importance of Dissent 116 in Tinnevelly 64, 72, 77, 220
Cawnpore 55, 226 in Travancore 173–6, 193, 220, 222
Ceylon 114, 152, 188 Chunar 188
Chamberlain, John (BMS) 101, 104, 155, Church/Dissent cooperation 26
169, 170 In B&FBS 118, 146
Chambers, William 28 Charter renewal, 1813 119, 126, 135–6
Chandernagore 62 Church/Dissent Rivalry 10, 25–27, 30, 31,
Chaplains, Company 7, 8, 11, 13 42–4, 63, 211
Bishops, jurisdiction over 154, 187, in B&FBS 82, 118
199, 239 in Bengal 41, 85, 104–6, 115, 117,
Dissenters 101, 104, 105–6, 115, 117, 154–7, 169–70, 218
123, 155, 169–70, 193, 207, 218 in the colonies 10, 113–17
governors 64, 94, 154, 156, 185–9, 240, in England 82, 118, 123, 124
154, 201 in Madras 193
patronized by Grant and Parry 35, 47, in Travancore 174–5
77, 118 Church and King riots 22, 27
Presbyterian 146, 147, 151 Church Evangelicals 4, 25–27, 31, 46, 47,
proposals for increase in 7, 8, 37, 39, 119, 207–8
40, 41, 64, 106, 117 Anglican hierarchy 46, 82, 118, 123,
Roman Catholic 7, 11, 157, 178, 217 137
Chaplains, Evangelical 29, 40, 41, 47, 62, Dissent, links with 10, 25–7, 80–1, 85,
103, 111 104–6, 136, 151, 176, 218
B&FBS 81, 105–6 Haldane Mission 44–9
Index 265
loyalty to Church of England 46–7, 63, high caste 220, 221

80, 82, 106, 124, 136–7 inheritance rights and Lex Loci 193,
Church of England 4, 10, 121, 187, 242 197, 201, 224, 241
Dissent 22, 25–7, 46, 47, 85, 151, 218 missionaries, relations with 220–3
Evangelicals 25–27, 82, 124, 136–7 Cornwallis, Charles Earl, Marquis 20, 23,
High Church 26, 27, 84, 119, 155, 24, 30, 60, 61
242 Bengal Regulation III (Company
see also Chaplains, Company and ‘Compact’) 41
Evangelical Grant 28–31, 34, 35–6
Church Missionary Society 122, 156, 189 Hinduism 24, 27, 40
Bengal government 160, 224 Indianisation of Government 30
bishops 123, 155, 186, 188 missionaries 23, 85
charter, 1813 47, 82, 111–12, 117–20, sepoys 23, 40–41
121, 122, 123, 126, 130, 131 (draft Corrie, Daniel 155, 186, 185
clause) Dissenters 155, 218
Evangelical Officials 121, 161, 207–8, ecclesiastical establishment 218
224 missionary activity, view of 156
Great Uprising 219, 230 native Christians 186
Indigo, support of ryots 221–2 pilgrim tax and management of Hindu
Licences 55, 151–2 temples and festivals 186, 189,
Madras government 165–6 212–13
press 219, 230 Council of Education, Bengal 211
restrictions on 208 Council of Education, Madras 210
Travancore and Tinnevelly 170–5 Cowie, John 55
Clapham Sect, also known as the ‘Saints’ Cradock, Sir John 71
25, 84, 111, 122, 181, 215, 241 Cran, George, LMS 64
Charter 1813 111, 133, 134, 146, 147 Crawfurd, Revd George 188
Clarke, Sir Alured 56 Crow, William, LMS 174
Clark, Robert, CMS 208 Cuddalore 12, 72
Clive, Robert, Baron 13, 19, 141 Cuddapah 192, 220
Cockburn, M. D. 166 Cunninghame of Lainshaw 125
Coke, Revd Thomas 28, 66, 99 Cuttack 62, 169, 189, 190, 214
Coimbatore 166 Cutwa 58
Colebrooke, Henry Thomas 103
Committee of the Three Denominations Dacca 59, 77, 170
114, 120 Dacre, Joseph 167
Committee for Promoting the Introduction Dalrymple, William, Uprising a war of
of Christianity into India 136 religion 230
Commons, House of 21, 22, 42, 132, 133, Dalzell, James 191
134, 138, 140, 143, 225 Delhi 163, 169, 226, 227, 230, 231
Gates of Somnath 219–20 Denmark and Danes 10, 15, 12, 13, 27,
pilgrim tax left to Directors 191 49, 53, 57, 91, 94, 98
‘Pious Clause’, 1793 37, 40 Deoghar 15
‘Pious Clause’ 1813 122 Demerara, Guinea 115
Sati 184, 191 Derby, Earl of 238
‘Compact’, the Company 15, 40, 41, 73, Desgranges, Augustus, LMS 64
98, 148, 192, 226, 237, 238, 241, 242 Devasagayam, John, CMS 175
Conventicle Act 123 Dharma Sabha 185, 209, 224, 225
Converts, Indian Christian 61, 62, 72, 77, Dinagepore 72, 217
80, 143, 156, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172–6, Directors, Court of 19, 48
184, 189, 192, 201, 208, 214, 219, 239, allowances to priests and missionaries
240 11, 12, 14, 63, 157, 159, 217,
Company to provide clergy for 186 242
266 Index
Board of Control, disagreements with political radicalism of 42, 45–48, 56,

66, 75, 94, 96, 97, 99, 191–2, 192, 57, 58, 112, 115
193, 194, 198, 209, 216 political importance of 83, 116, 117,
committee structure 74–6, 96 118, 119, 145, 146, 147
connivance at missionary presence 55, toleration for 42, 47, 73, 81, 112–17,
56, 66–7, 86, 99–100, 166 118, 199
demands oaths of allegiance and bonds threats of public action 44, 48, 131
9, 152 Dissenters, Scottish 111, 112, 137
despatches on missionaries 65, 76, Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield
84–5, 96–7, 153, 158–9, 167, 229, 230
188–9 Doctrine of Lapse 225
education 156, 159, 163, 209 Donaldson, John, LMS 168
Evangelical officials, censure of 223 Douglas, Sir Frederick 140
Haldane 44–46, 55 Dowdeswell, George 190
licences 13, 23, 24, 27, 28, 52, 56, Duff, Alexander 43, 195, 209, 211, 22
58, 63, 66, 99, 102, 110, 138, 147, Duncan, Jonathan 63
151–2, 153, 159 Dundas, Henry, 1st Viscount Melville 20,
missionaries, usefulness of 8, 13, 14, 21, 29, 40, 48
15, 170 attitude to Indians 23, 36, 38
protection for converts 64, 65, 77, Grant 28, 36, 38, 43, 52
174–7, 193, 222 Cornwallis 22, 35
pilgrim tax and management of Hindu Haldane Mission 44–8
temples and festivals 4, 15, 189–92, Pious Clause 1793 38, 39, 40
194, 197, 199, 215, 216, 217, 220, Dundas, Robert, 2nd Viscount Melville
240 affirms Minto’s stance on missionaries
Protestant missions 11, 12, 17, 48, 63, 96–8
117, 171–4, 176 Baptist publications, disapproves of 79
Roman Catholics 8, 9, 10, 13, 24, 39, Buchanan’s Memoir 95
41, 157 letter to Barlow on missionaries 83,
split 1812/13 126–7, 145 95, 98
Tweeddale’s Bible Minute 210 licences 98, 104
Vellore 75, 76, 78, 79 Pamphlet War 81–6
see also under Board of Control, pilgrim tax 98–9, 189
chaplains; ecclesiastical Vellore 74–8
establishment; individual Dutch and the Dutch East India Company
governors and missions 7, 55, 159
Dissent 4, 22, 49, 211 Dyer, John 99
against Company’s monopoly 22
Anglican motives suspected 123–5, East India Company (EIC) 37
132, 139 castigated for neglect of Christianity 7,
antipathy to 10, 24–27, 42, 43, 46, 56, 28
71, 82, 114, 115, 143 charter renewals, see under Charter
attitudes to Hinduism 15, 25, 27, 46, Church/State relations 9, 166–7, 170,
56, 71, 115 188, 201, 214, 218, 238
chaplains 105–6, 170, 188–9, 207 concern in Britain about its rule 18–21,
charter 1833 199 216, 237
civil disabilities in other colonies education 7, 179
73, 112–13, 114–15 French, suspicions of 9, 19, 22, 23
Church Evangelicals and 110–27, licencing, power of 23, 166, 201, 241
130–48, 207 misconduct of its servants 19, 21
conversion, attitude towards 71, 140 Parliamentary supervision of 8, 19
French Revolution 22, 42–48 reaction to Christian terms of the charter
Haldane Mission 44–49 8, 140
Index 267
requests continuance of rule 237–8 Elphinstone, John 216–17, 152

see also under Board of Control and Elphinstone Mountstuart 168
Directors Elphinstone, William 152
Ecclesiastical establishment 37, 41, 94, minute on Missionaries 73–4
111, 120, 125, 131, 134, 139, 144, 145, Embree, Ainslie 40
154, 198–99, 201, 241 Empire of Opinion 130, 140, 152
Cost of 186, 187, 199, 217, 218 Enlightenment 14, 20
Proposals for increase 47, 73, 106, 186, Episcopate, Colonial 117
218 Episcopate, Indian 47, 132, 144, 147, 154,
Eden, George, Lord Auckland 206, 242 189, 239–40
Anglican Church 213, 218–19 see also Bishop of Calcutta
Christianity and missionaries 212–17, Established Church see Church of England
219 Evangelicalism 25–7, 64, 160, 183, 202,
Church/Dissent rivalry 218 207, 208, 241, 242
Education 208–12 Evangelical Magazine 120
Evangelical officials 213, 214 Evangelical officials 54, 99, 161, 166–7,
pilgrim tax 212–17 171–6, 189, 190, 206–12, 213, 214, 223,
Roman Catholics 217–19 241
Edinburgh Review 43, 82 Evangelicals 15, 16, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25–27,
see also Smith, Sydney 83
Edmonstone, Neil 91, 92, 101, 102 Anglican Church 26, 31, 47, 49, 81,
Edmonds (LMS) 221 105
Education belief in importance of Christianity
as silent means of evangelisaton 29, for the nation and the security of
133–4, 141, 156, 159, 162, 168, 184, India 19, 30, 238
194, 195, 196, 201, 206, 210, 240 defence of missionaries 1807–8 76–81
Company to provide for 7, 159 distortions of the truth 65, 76, 77, 81,
government subsidies 12, 159, 163–4, 94, 133, 188
210, 211 opposition to Company connection with
Education, female 163, 226, 229, 241 Hinduism 16, 63, 165, 189, 192,
Education, Oriental 57, 164, 196, 197, 209 198, 213, 214
Edwardes, Sir Herbert 207–8 publicity 79, 120–22
Ellenborough, see Law, Edward strength of 83, 84, 85, 116, 145, 207
Eliot, Edward 43 threats of public action 44, 45, 76, 77,
Elliot, Gilbert, Baron and first Earl of Minto 82, 96
90–106 see also under Chaplains; Church
Baptists 90–106 Evangelicals; Charters; Dissent
Barlow 92 Ewing, Greville 44, 45
Buchanan 91–2, 94
caste 93 Famine, Bengal 20, 219, 221
expulsions and licences 102, 103, 140 Farrukhabad 230
missionaries 93, 95, 99, 101, 104, 106, Fatehpur 221
140, 153, 158 Fisher, Revd Henry 169
Pamphlet War 81 Forbes, Charles MP 134, 144, 184
Parry censures his actions 78, 92, 93, Forbes, Gordon 159, 160
94 Forsyth, Nathaniel 42, 55, 58, 102, 159
Persian Pamphlet 90–98 Fort William College 47, 59, 73, 81, 94,
pilgrim tax and management of temples 134
and festivals 63, 190 Fountain, John 54, 57
Roman Catholics 157 Four Vedas Society 222
Vellore 74, 78, 79, 91, 92, 94 Fox, Charles James 20, 38
Elliot, Hugh 164–6, 190 France and the French 9, 14, 19, 35, 38,
Engraftment 209 42
268 Index
Suspected of fomenting sedition 9, 14, Coke, Thomas 28, 66

17, 19, 23, 24, 56, 68, 73, 74 on colonization 103–4
Francis, Philip 8, 27, 37 Dissent 48–49
Frederick IV, King of Denmark 10 Dundas 28, 36, 38, 43, 52
Free exercise of religion 8, 96, 148, 184, Evangelical chaplains, patronage of 35,
216, 241 40, 47, 118
French Revolution 31, 35, 47 Fuller 48–9, 78
and Dissent 22, 42, 45, 56, 57, 113 Haldane Mission 44–46
French Wars 56, 117 licences 49, 66, 103, 110, 153
Friend of India 190 manipulation of the Company 48,
Friends of the People in Scotland 45 74–76, 96, 153
Frykenberg, Robert Eric 165 missionary societies 3, 78, 99, 103
Fuller, Andrew 48, 49, 95, 104 Observation on the State of Society among the
Apology for Christian Missions 88 Asiatic Subjects in Great Britain 36,
Carey 54, 59, 61, 67 43–4, 48, 49, 141
Charter 1813 111, 114, 116, 124, 131, Pamphlet War 81–86
132, 136, 145 Persian Pamphlet 90, 95–8
Church of England 48, 81, 85, 124, pilgrim tax and protection for converts
126 98–9
Grant’s Observations 48–9 pro-missionary draft dispatch (1808)
licences 55, 58, 104, 151 96–98
Pamphlet War 80–85 proposal for a mission in Bengal and
Persian Pamphlet 97 Behar 28–31, 34–42, 43, 52, 82, 94
radical missionaries 57 Vellore 70, 74–81
Vellore 72, 78, 79, 80 Wellesley 60
Wilberforce 8, 124 Grant Charles, the Younger, Baron Glenelg
see also Baptist Missionary Society; Grant; 241
Wilberforce Charter Renewal, 1833 198–202
Church of England 187
Gambier, Sir Edward 99, 126, 131, 152, increase in bishops 198
189 pilgrim tax and management of temples
Ganjam 164 and festivals 191–2, 194, 98, 215
Gaya 15 Syrian Christians, special favours for
General Committee of Public Instruction 194
63, 164, 195 Grant, Robert 207, 213, 214
General Service Enlistment Act, 1856 225, Grant, William, BMS 56
226, 227, 228 Grants-in-Aid to Schools 211, 212
George III, King 35, 78, 115 Greenwood, William 152, 188
George, Prince of Denmark 10 Grenville, Sir Thomas 73
Gericke, C. W. SPCK 77 Grenville, William Wyndham, Baron 133,
Glasse, Dr 7 144
Gisborne, Revd Thomas 26, 124 Grey, Charles, 1st Earl 113, 144, 198, 199
Goa, Archbishop of 24, 41, 157 Grigg, Jacob 114
Goldingham, John 207 Gujerat 100, 157, 168
Gordon, John 100 Gumalti 29, 31, 52
Gospel Messenger 79 Guntur 207
Governor-General 19 Gutteridge 114
importance in India 29
see also under individuals Haldane, Robert 34, 44, 112, 137, 138
Grant, Charles, the Elder 19, 25, 27, 28, Mission Proposal 44–48, 55
31, 35–6, 52, 60, 187 Hall, Robert 121
Baptist publications 95–6, 97 Halliday, Frederick 211
condition of Indians 29, 30, 36 Hands, John 100, 105
Index 269
Happiness 3, 15, 20, 21, 34, 36, 37, 60, laws of inheritance and Lex Loci 184,
136, 138 201, 224, 225, 230, 240
Hardcastle, Joseph, LMS 122 pilgrim tax 98–9, 190–192, 193, 216,
Hardinge, General Sir Henry 207, 242 217, 240
Hardwar 169 paying for an Anglican establishment
Hare, David 163 65, 186, 218
Harington, John 161, 162, 190 Hindu Widow Remarriage Act 225, 226,
Harper, Susan 218 230, 241
Harrison, Edward 12 Hobart, Robert, Earl of Buckinghamshire
Hastings, Francis Rawden, 1st marquis and 111, 116, 127, 158
2nd earl of Moira 158–64, 176 Baptists 130–31
B&FBS 118 Lord Moira 158
Bishops 154–57 1813 Charter renewal 111, 115,
education 159–164, 176 130–47
missionaries 153, 158, 159, 160, 169, Hobhouse, Sir John Cam 242
176 ecclesiastical establishment, cost of 218
sati 184 education 197, 209
Hastings, Lady 160 Evangelical Officials 214
Hastings, Warren 15, 19, 20, 21, 27, 39 missionaries 216, 241
B&FBS 118 pilgrim tax 212–17
Charter Renewal, 1813 133, 134, 144 Roman Catholics 217–18
Episcopal establishment and India 96, Holt Mackenzie 164
144, 240 Howell 192
Hindus and Muslims 15, 39, 133 Holzberg, Ignatius 55
Indianisation of British Rule 15, 21, Hubbard, Professor 230
80, 166, 206 Humanitarian concern for India 36, 111,
misgovernment 20, 21, 82 136, 139, 146, 184–5
missionaries 21–22, 96, 240 Human Sacrifice Abolition Society 184
Vellore, leads opposition to missionaries Hussey, Richard 38
75, 83, 96 Hyde East, Sir Edward 184
see also Scott Waring and Toone Hyderabad 70
Haweis, Thomas 46
Hay, John, Marquis Tweeddale 207 ‘Idolatry’ 4, 15, 138, 189, 191, 192, 198,
Bible Minute 210, 231 212, 214, 215, 217, 220, 239, 241
education 210, 222 India Act, 1784 (Pitt’s Act) 21
tension in Tinnevelly 222–3, 240 India Bishops and Courts Act 1823 156
Heber, Reginald, Bishop of Calcutta 156, Indian Association 238
168, 190, 240 Indianisation of British rule 15, 21, 22, 80,
Hill, George 42–3 152, 183, 196, 239
Hill, Micaiah and Mrs, BMS 162 Indigo 31, 53, 56, 61, 221–2
Hindu College (Vidyalaya) 163, 195 Infanticide 3, 60, 61, 82, 140, 184, 210,
Hinduism 38 220, 223
British opinions of 2, 3, 8, 9, 29, 30, Inglis, Sir Hugh 84, 126–7, 134, 145
36, 38–39,133, 140, 141, 142, 143, Inheritance rights 172, 184, 193, 194, 197,
152 201, 224, 225, 240, 241
education and government subsidies Innes, William 44, 45
160, 163, 210, 222, 224, 226 Irish soldiers 8, 157, 217
evolution of the term ix, 17 Irvine, Captain Francis 161
fears for caste rights 71, 72, 73, 171–4, Islam 1, 2, 16, 90, 193, 197, 228
189, 222 see also Muslims
fears of compulsory conversion 70, 71,
72, 73, 95, 166, 167, 210, 216, 222, Jacobi, Revd Christopher, SPCK 103
230 Jagannath 16, 62, 98–9, 121, 190, 216, 217
270 Index
Jamaica 73, 114–15 Lex Loci see Caste Disabilities Removal Act;
James II, King 74 see also inheritance rights
Jenkinson, Robert Banks, 2nd Baron Leonard, Owen, BMS 170
Hawkesbury and Earl of Liverpool Lewis, Revd George 11
B&FBS 118, 119, 242 Licenses 23, 24, 28, 40, 66, 80, 99, 104,
Charter Renewal, 1813 110–27, 130–48 200, 241
Dissent, political importance of 116, Baptists 42, 49, 52, 53, 55–8, 102–3,
117, 119 130, 151–2, 153
licences 126, 130, 132 Charter 1813 126, 130–47
toleration for Dissenters 113–17, 119 Charter 1833 200–201, 207
Society for the Conversion of the LMS 99–100, 102
Negroes 126 Moravians 27–28
Jessore 58 Roman Catholics 8
Jhansi 226, 229 SPCK 12, 41, 42, 55, 103, 176
Jones, Sir William 22, 32 see also under Directors and individual
Johns, W 102, 103, 159 missionary societies
Lincoln, Bishop of 21
Kathiawar 207 Liverpool, Lord, see Jenkinson, Robert Banks
Kaye, Sir John 228–9 Livius, George 27, 28
Keating, Christopher 15 Llandaff, Bishop of 21, 28, 186
Keene, W, MP 144 London, Bishop of 7, 10, 31, 35, 39, 40,
Kerr, Richard, Revd Dr 47, 63, 103, 105, 215
106 London Missionary Society 41, 42, 46, 77,
Khan, Sir Syed Ahmed 228, 229, 241 101, 104, 124, 189, 193, 218
Khasi Hills 224 Allowances from the Company 64, 159,
Khonds 210 162
Kiernander, John 13 B&FBS 118
Kindersley, N. W. 175 Baptists 105
Klein, Revd M. 12 Bengal 55, 58, 104, 158, 159, 160, 162
Knox, Alexander 116 Bombay 63–7, 167–9
Konkan 157 as chaplains 71, 155, 218, 219
Krefting, Jacob 91, 94 charter renewal 1813 112, 122, 126
Krishnagar 221 135, 138
Church/Dissent rivalry 105, 155, 174,
Lakshmi Bai, Rani of Travancore 171–2 218
Lamb, Henry, ViscountMelbourne 215 Dissenting campaign for toleration
Lauderdale, Earl 112–15
see Maitland, James education 159, 160, 162, 194, 211
Law, Edward, Lord Ellenborough instructions on behaviour 104
Education 209, 224, 242 Madras 63–67, 100, 102, 105, 164–7,
Hindus, fears of offending 209 170, 171–4, 192, 206–7
President of Board of Control 198, pilgrim tax 189, 212
200, 224 political radicalism 46, 170
Parliamentary censure of 220 restrictions on 100, 102, 114, 165–6,
Somnath, Gates of 219–220 170
Lawrence, Brig Sir Henry 207, 210 in Travancore 171–4
Lawrence, Sir John 207, 227–8 Vellore 77, 78
Laws of Inheritance, Hindu and Muslim Long, James, CMS 4
193 vernacular education 210–11
see also inheritance rights grants-in-aid 194, 211
Lawson, BMS 102, 103, 159 indigo 221–2
Lee, William LMS 100, 164, 165 Lords, House of 21, 39, 116, 133, 134,
Lewin, Malcolm 222 145, 215
Index 271
Pious Clause, 1793 38–9 Protestant missionaries 11, 63–7,

Pious Clause, 1813 140, 143–4 164–7
Loveless, William, LMS 100 restrictions on missionaries 24, 102,
Lucknow 62, 188 164–5, 167, 172, 192–3, 207
Ludford, Captain 59 Roman Catholicism 9, 22, 23–4
Lumsden, J. 92 sati, abolished 185
Lushington, Sir James 215 Travancore 172, 173
Lushington, Stephen 37 see also individual governors and
Lushington, Stephen Rumbold 192–3 missionary societies
Lutheran 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 42, 175 Maitland, James, 8th Earl of Lauderdale
see also Royal Danish Mission 144
Maitland, Sir Peregrine 213–15
Macaulay, Colonel Colin 171–4, 240 Majumdar 227
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Baron 196, Malcolm, Sir John 151, 152, 160, 161,
198, 199, 200, 206, 208, 240 167, 168–9, 183, 186
Bentinck’s and Auckland’s opinion of Malda 28, 53
198, 209 Mangles, Ross Donnelly 207
Gates of Somnath 219–20 Marathas 16, 20, 71, 74, 100, 196
Minute on Education 196–7, 200, Marriott, Saville 167
209 Marsh, Charles MP 134, 142, 143, 144
Macaulay, Zachary 124, 136 Marshman, Joshua, BMS 56, 62, 72, 95,
Macdonald, C. E. 192 145, 168
McDouall, Colonel Sutherland 172, 173, Hints Relative to Native Schools 160
174 and Company Officials 101, 103–5,
Mackenzie, Holt 164 168, 186
Mackeson, Colonel Frederick 208 licences 103
Madrasa 163, 209 translations 104, 159
Madras 11, 12, 100 Vellore 72
Madras, army 231, 212 Martyn, Revd Henry, chaplain 105, 156
Expulsion of converts 169, 193 Mason, Philip 221
Uprising 228 May, Robert 102, 104, 159, 160, 162, 163
Vellore 70, 71, 73, 77 Mayhew, Arthur 209
see also Sepoys Mead, Charles, LMS 170, 172, 173, 220
Madras Presidency (Ft St George) Meath, Bishop of 106
allowances to missionaries 64 Meerut 227, 230
Anglican bishops and clergy support Meriah 210, 240
evangelism 164–7 Metcalfe, Sir Charles 152, 169, 188, 197,
army 231 200–201
Christian petition about rights and Metcalfe, Sir William 84
privileges 213 Methodism 22, 25, 32
Church of England 218 and America 31, 47
education 210 attitudes towards 22, 25–27, 30, 31, 73,
erection of churches and disputes over 83, 105
ownership 165–6 Charter renewal, 1813 111–27,
Evangelical officials 166–7 131–46
Hindu Raj? 16, 164–7 Church of England 25, 47, 123
Hindu opposition 213, 221, 222 Lord Liverpool 119
inheritance laws and public employment mission plan for India 28–31, 66–7
165, 190, 193, 224–5 political radicalism 42, 48, 112
licences 102, 152, 164 Middleton, Thomas Fanshawe,
pilgrim tax and management of Hindu Bishop of Calcutta 154–7
temples and festivals 165, 190, 212, Company chaplains, jurisdiction
216 over 154
272 Index
Control over missionaries 156, 186 Mukherjee, R, importance of Oudh 231

Hindus and Muslims 155, 186 Muslims 1, 4, 16
missionaries 155, 156, 186 Agra and CMS 219
Military, relations with chaplains and Anglican estabishment, paying for 187,
missionaries 101, 104–5, 155, 169–70, 218
187, 192, 193, 208 British attitude towards 2, 16, 74, 91,
see also under sepoys 152
Mill, John Stuart 163, 196, 197, 209 British fears of 61, 63, 73, 91, 101,
Petition to Parliament for continuance of 103, 201, 220
Company rule 237 Converts to Christianity 11, 192, 194,
Representative Government 196 219, 221
Missionaries, Protestant 4, 8, 10, 11, 16, 24 and Great Uprising 226, 227, 229,
as a bulwark against ‘Popery’ the French 230–32
11, 14, 24, 74 Government scholarships 209
blamed for murder of sub-Collector at missionaries 91, 101, 192
Cuddapah 192 Opposition to Christianity 17, 61, 63,
considered a danger to India 38, 71, 152, 192, 201, 202, 208, 220–3
73, 90, 91 petition against Macaulay’s education
episcopal control over, 156, 186 minute 208
expulsion of 83, 100, 102, 103, Persian Pamphlet 90–98
Uprising, blamed for 228–9 schools and orphanages, missionary:
useful to the Company 12, 13, 14, 63, reaction to 160, 219, 224
71, 86, 9, 170–4 sepoys 188, 226
Missionary Magazine 120 Somnath, Gates of 219–20
Missionary Publicity 120–21 Vellore 21, 71
Missionary Register 120, 121 Mutiny, Indian see Great Uprising
Missionary Society see London Missionary Mysore 20, 70, 71, 100, 166, 192, 193
Society
Monopoly of Trade 3, 20, 21, 22, 110, Nabob 18
125, 126, 139, 144, 145, 147, 199 Nadia 221
Monro, James 175, 176, 190 Nagpur 207, 221, 226
Montgomery, Sir Henry 134, 140, 222 Nana Sahib 226, 229
More, Hannah 118, 122 Neill, Stephen 189
Moore, John, Archbishop of Canterbury Nellore 192, 193
35, 39 Nelson, Robert 215
Moore, P., MP 144 Nepal 158
Moore, William, BMS 59, 72 Nepean, Sir Evan 154, 167–8, 176
Moravian mission proposal 27–28 Neutrality, religious 14, 15, 16, 62, 172,
Morison, Col C. B. 173–4 185, 206, 210, 218, 222, 224, 225, 237,
Mudnabati 56 238, 239, 240
Mughal Emperor and Mughals 1, 9, 15, see also non-interference and religion, free
19, 71, 219, 226, 230, 231 exercise of
Muhammad, Prophet 90, 91 New Dissent 22, 25–27
Mundy, George, LMS 162, 164 Newell, Colonel David 174
Munro, Col John 171–2, 174, 240 Nicholson, Brigadier John 207
Christian judges 172 Non-Interference 2, 15, 21, 23, 36, 60, 86,
invites CMS in 171 152, 224, 237, 239
Munro, Sir Thomas 143, 152, 163, 166–7, Norfolk, Duke of, and appointment of vicar
183 apostolic 218; see also Eden
Need to keep the Church under control Norton, Revd Thomas, CMS 152, 172,
166 173
restrictions on missionaries 166, 167, North Western Provinces 210, 219
170 Norwich, Dean of 7
Index 273
O’Callaghan, R. W. 212 Pellatt, Apsley 139

Ochterlony, Sir David 160 Perceval, Sir Spencer 96, 97, 111, 116,
Oddie, Geoffrey 221, 232 126, 145
Old Dissent 22, 25–7 Periodical Accounts 77, 82, 120
Opposition to missionaries, Indian 12, 165, Permanent Settlement, 1793 30, 36
166, 185, 221–3, 192–4, 195, 201, 202 Persian Pamphlet Affair 79, 90–98, 141
Baptists 61, 73, 77 Peshawar 207
fears of forcible conversion 71, 72, 73, Petitions 117
221, 226 Caste 189, 222
to Roman Catholics 62 1813 Charter
to schools 161, 162, 195 Pious Clause 3, 134, 136–9, 143,
to tracts 59, 71, 77, 90–98 145
in Tinnevelly 65, 72, 189, 220 Monopoly, ending of 139
in Travancore 172–4, 189, 220, 222 Christians in Madras against violation of
Vellore 70–81 their rights and privileges 189, 213
Oriental 57, 196, 197 for a Christian policy in India
Orientalist 164, 196, 209 1858 238
Orissa 16, 19, 62, 224 Haldane Mission 46
Orphanages, CMS 219, 230 Hindus against conversions 221
see also under CMS Hindu rights, Madras violation of 222
Oudh 160, 226, 227, 230, 231 Indigo, to improve condition of ryots
Owen, Rev John, SPCK & B&FBS 79, 118 221
Outports 111 against Lex Loci 222–5
Muslims against Macaulay’s Minute
Padroado 9, 23–24, 41, 157 208
Paine, Thomas 43 Orders-in-Council 113
Palamcottah 70, 190 peace 113
Palm 114 pilgrim tax 198, 213
Palmerston, Lord see Temple, Henry see also under indigo
Pamphlet War 81–86, 119 sati 184
Pande, Mangal 226–7, 228, 230 toleration for Dissenters 113, 116, 117,
Parliament 3, 7, 8, 19, 21, 23, 34, 48, 86 119, 126
1793 renewal 37–40 Pfander, Karl (CMS) 219
Charter 1813 110–25, 139–47, 167 Philips, Sir C. 146
Charter 1833 198–202 Pietism 25
Gates of Somnath 219–220 Pilgrim Tax 15, 16, 62–3, 98–9, 121,
Parry, Edward 47, 52, 70–85, 90–99 189–92, 197–9, 212–17
appointment of chaplains 4, 187 see also Peggs, J and under individual
EIC monopoly 125 governors and presidents of the
manipulation of EIC 75–6 Board of Control and missionary
Pamphlet War 84 societies
Persian Pamphlet 90–8 Pious Clause
pilgrim tax 98–9 1793 3, 7, 37–43, 52, 66
pro-missionary draft despatch, 1808 1813 3, 7, 15, 130–48, 158, 167, 176,
96–8 190, 217, 241
Vellore 70–81 Pitt, William, the Elder, Earl of Chatham
Parsons, Rev J. D. 104 18
Patna 28, 62 Pitt, William, the Younger 20, 21, 30, 34,
Peacock, BMS 101 36, 38, 144
Peers, Douglas 152 Plassey, the battle of 19
Peggs, James 184, 190 Plutschau, Heinrich 11
India’s Cries to British Humanity 184, 190 Pondicherry 23, 24
Pearson, John, LMS 161 Porteous, Revd Dr William 45
274 Index
Porteus, Beilby 31, 35, 39, 42, 118, 124–5 chaplains 217, 157
see also London, bishop of disputes over church ownership 157,
Portugal/Portuguese 8, 9, 11, 14, 24, 41, 171–4
53, 140, 242 EIC 8, 11, 12, 62, 157, 239
Pott, Archdeacon 124, 125 Madras and Travancore 23–4, 171–4
Pratt, Josiah 121 requests for government protection 62
Poynder, John 215 toleration 117, 199
Prendergast, M. J. 130, 134 Rosselli, John 20, 197
Prideaux, Humphrey 7, 10 Roy, Rammohun 184
Pritchett, Edward, LMS 102, 164 Royal Danish Mission 10, 11, 12, 13, 77
Privy Council 21, 114 see also Lutheran, Tranquebar and
Proprietors, Court of 19, 37, 78, 79 SPCK
Pamphlet War 82–3, 84 Ryland, John, BMS 59, 66, 124
Pious Clause 37 Ryots (indigo), and missionaries 221–2
Pilgrim Tax 215
Propaganda Fide 9, 24, 41, 157 Sabat 105
Protestant Society for the Protection of Sacred Ash Society 222
Religious Liberty (PSPRL) 111, 112, Sadr Nizam Adalat 61
113, 120, 126, 131, 132, 135–6, 137–9 Saffery, John 58
Protestant Dissenting Deputies 111–12, St David’s, Bishop of 39
113, 114, 117,137, 138 St John’s College 230
Punjab 101, 207, 208, 210, 216, 225 St John’s Church, Calcutta 22
Annexation of 226, 227 Salsette 24, 157
Puri 62 St Thomé, bishop of 23
Saharanpur 95
Quilon 70 Saints, the see Capham Sect
Salem 166
Raikes, Thomas 30–31 Samru, Begum 169
Rajputana 160, 162, 163 Sanawar 210
Ramsay, James, Marquis of Dalhousie Sandys, Colonel 66
223–6, 229, 242 Sanskrit Colleges 163
CMS 224 Sardhana 169, 176
Doctrine of Lapse 225 Sati 3, 60, 61, 82, 121, 140, 176, 187, 189,
education 224 197, 201, 220, 240, 241
Lex Loci 224–5 Abolition of 183–5
neutrality 224–5 Sattara 226
support of Christianity 223–4 Savarkar, V. D. 231
Ravenshaw, J. G. 166 Schmid, B. 175
Regulating Act 1773 19 Schools, government 170, 194–8, 209, 210,
Reeve, William, LMS 206–7 211, 224, 238, 240
Religion, free exercise of 8 see also Wood, education despatch 211
for Indians 60, 61, 65, 96, 140, 148, Schools, missionary 1, 59, 159, 167,
184, 216 194–8, 207, 209, 210, 211, 224, 228, 239
for Roman Catholics 8 government inspection of 211
Rhenius. Revd Charles, CMS 175–6 government/missionary cooperation
Ricketts, Charles 103, 104, 130 11, 12, 13, 14, 66, 156, 159, 160,
Richardson 189 161, 163, 174, 194
Ringeltaube, William 55, 72, 171 to end Meriah sacrifices 210
Robinson, A., MP 144, 152 see also grants-in-aid
Robinson, William, BMS 72, 103 Schulze, Benjamin 12
Roman Catholicism 2, 8, 10, 41, 157, 230, Schwartz, Christian 17, fn 26
242 Scotland, Church of 42, 43, 111, 125–6,
Auckland 217–19 137–8, 144, 147, 151, 195, 199
Index 275
attitude towards missions 42, 44 Sikes, Revd Thomas 43

Scott, David 43 Sikhs 208
Scottish Free Church Mission 210 Simeon, Charles 29, 35
Scottish Society for the Promotion of Sind 225, 227
Christian Knowledge 46, 137 Slave Trade and Abolition 22, 34, 78, 84,
Scriptures, translation and circulation of 110, 120, 122, 124, 130, 190
60, 61, 71, 72, 77, 81, 82, 83, 85, 94, Smith, Revd Sidney 43, 82, 120
101, 102, 119, 133, 134, 141, 159, 165, Smith, William MP 132
169 Smith, William, BMS 169
Select Committees 1772, 1781, 1812 19, Somnath, Gates of 219–220
20, 111 Society for the Promotion of Christian
Select Committee, 1853 and missionary Knowledge (SPCK) 10, 13, 21, 24, 31
input 225 allowances from the Company 11, 12,
Sepoys 1, 2, 4, 41, 152, 192 64, 242
British fears of disaffection from 23, Anglican Church and bishops,
41, 54, 71, 91, 212, 242 relationship with 12, 79, 117, 125,
conversions, response to 169, 184, 188, 155, 181, 186
208, 241 B&FBS 119
fears of forcible conversion 70, 72, 225, Bishop’s College 156
226 Calcutta Diocesan Committee 155, 161
Great Uprising 1, 226–232 as chaplains 71, 186, 218
Oudh, annexation of 226 Charter renewal 1813 111, 117, 119,
pilgrim tax and Company involvement in 121, 124–5
Hindu festivals 212 East India Committee 124–5
see also Bengal army; Madras army EIC, relationship with 11, 13, 14, 40,
Serampore 27, 28, 56, 57, 61, 73, 162 41, 42, 55, 63, 64, 65, 66, 71, 103,
Baptist press 57, 59, 75, 81, 90, 91, 94, 242
95, 101, 102, 105, 119–120, 160 Evangelical officials 161
British occupation of 94, 98 Grant’s mission proposal 31
fears of sedition with France 23–4 petition for protection 12, 14, 48, 65
Moravians 27–28 Royal Danish Mission, links with 10,
Serampore College 160, 195 11, 12, 13, 14
Seringapatam 100 SPG 21, 117, 155
Shanars (Nadars) 64, 173–5, 220 Vellore, an outstation 77
see also Tinnevelly and Travancore see also bishops; licences
Shaftesbury, Earl of 238 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
Shaw, Benjamin MP 137 (SPG) 10, 21, 117, 166, 168, 186
Shepherd BMS 151 Dissent 10, 117, 155, 156
Sherer, J. W. 161 requests increase in ecclesiastical
Shah Alam II, emperor 19 establishment 187
Shore, Sir John, Lord Teignmouth 36, 54 supported by government 242
Baptists 54 Society for the Reformation of Manners
B&FBS 43, 74, 81, 118 118
Charter renewal 1813 133 South Africa 114, 115
Coke’s mission proposal 66 Sparrow, Lady Olivia 64
Considerations 82 Stephen, Sir James 132
missionaries 66, 67, 82 Stevenson, Revd William 12, 28
Pamphlet War 81–66 Stewart, Lt James 161
sepoys 54 Stokes, Eric 231
Vellore 78–82 Strange, Sir Thomas 63
Sidmouth, Lord see Addington Sullivan, John 166, 190
Sierra Leone 114, 124 Supreme Court 19
Sikandra 219 Surat 9, 63, 168, 213
276 Index
Sutcliff, John 57, 114 Townley, Henry 189

Sutton, Sir Thomas 142 Tracts, missionary 43, 71, 78, 80, 115,
Syrian Christians 157, 171–3 165, 167, 170, 188, 191, 193, 228
CMS and 170, 172 Baptist 59, 90–98, 101, 162
Hinduism 170 Trade 2, 3, 14, 21, 22, 54, 55, 110, 111,
Jacobites 157, 170, 171, 172 120–26, 132, 139, 199
special favours for 194 Tranquebar 10, 11, 12
Latin Rite 157, 171 see also under Lutheran and Royal Danish
Syms 103 Mission
Transactions of the LMS 82
Tanjore 63, 64, 191, 215 Travancore 152, 157, 170, 171–6, 189,
Taylor, BMS 72 194, 220, 222, 231
Taylor, Revd Dr John 63, 65, 100 Trevelyan, Sir Charles 195, 198, 206, 211,
Temple, Henry John, 3rd Viscount 239
Palmerston 238 Tucker, Robert 221
Test and Corporation Acts 22, 26, 42, 85, Turner, John Mathias, Bishop of Calcutta
117, 124 185–7, 200
Thagi 220 Tweeddale see Hay, John
Thomas, John, BMS 31, 42, 49, 52, 53, Twining, Thomas 81–85
54, 104
Thomason, James 207, 208, 210, 224 Udny, George 28, 53, 54, 58, 60, 63, 72,
Thomason, Revd Thomas 102, 154, 155, 74, 97, 102
156, 158 Grant’s mission proposal 28
proposal for schools 159 objection to collection of the pilgrim
CSBS 160 tax 63
Thompson, Thomas, MP 124, 137 Ulama 219
Thompson, John, LMS 102–3 Universities 211
Thompson, Revd Marmaduke 100, 102, Uprising, The Great 1, 219, 226–232, 237,
105, 156, 164, 166 240, 241
Thornton, Henry 122–3, 132, 135
Thornton, Robert 82, 126, 145, 151 Vanderheyden, David, MP 134
Thornton, Samuel 38 Vanderkemp 114
Thurlow, Thomas, Bishop of Lincoln 21 Vansittart, Nicholas 118, 151
Tierney, George, MP 90, 144 Vaughan, Revd Edward 105
Times, The 215 Vellore Mutiny 64, 67, 70–87, 90, 91, 93,
Tinnevelly 226, 230 94, 98, 140, 142, 143, 226, 227, 231, 238
breast cloth riots 215–17, 220, 231–2 Venn, Henry 238
caste 189, 221 Vicar Apostolic 9, 157, 218
conversions 64, 65, 71–2, 175, 222 Victoria, Queen, proclamation on India
persecution of converts 65, 175–6, 189, 238
220, 222 Vidyalaya see Hindu College
SPCK request for protection 65 Vizagapatam 100, 102
Tipu Sultan 24, 70, 71 Vos Michael, LMS 114
Toleration Acts 14, 111, 112, 113
Toleration 3, 14, 15, 16, 22, 79, 81, 138, Wallahjabad 70
201, 213, 225, 239, 240 Walpole, Horace, Earl of Orford 18
towards Indian religions 3, 14, 15, 90, Walsh, John 42
185, 201, 213, 214, 239 Ward, Revd, James Bengal chaplain 105
for Dissenters 22, 73, 80, 81, 84, 111, Ward, Revd William, BMS 57, 90, 91, 97,
112–17, 124, 198 101, 170, 189
for missionaries 79, 80, 81, 123, 131, Account of the Writing, Religion and Manners
143, 198, 213, 240 of the Hindoos 189
Toone, Sweny 74–81, 134, 146 Waring, John Scott 59, 75, 80–86
Index 277
Waters, G. J. 192–3 Wilberforce, William, MP 25, 28, 34, 54

Watson, D. 159 Baptists 96, 134
Watson, Richard, Bishop of LLandaff 21 Charter renewal, 1793 37–42
Wellesley, Arthur, Duke of Wellington 153, Charter renewal, 1813 110–25, 130–47
176 Church of England 72, 120, 123
Wellesley, Richard, Earl of Mornington and Church of Scotland 125–6
Marquess Wellesley 16, 116, 140, 153 Coke’s mission proposal 66
attitude to Christianity and the Church Episcopate 117–20
of England 59–60 Grant 28, 34–43, 54, 96
Baptist press, Scriptures and translations Fuller 97
57, 59, 60, 119, 134, 162 Haldane 44–46
Charter renewal, 1813 133, 134, 135, Opinions of Hinduism 38, 122
141, 143 Practical View 47–8
fears of Jacobinism and the French 56, Sati 184
57 Shore 54
Ft William College 47, 57, 59, 60, 134 SPCK 125
Indian religions 60–61 Speech on the 1813 pious clause 141
infanticide, prohibition of 60–1 Wellesley 122, 133–4, 135
licences 55, 56 Wilks, Revd Mathew 139
Pamphlet War 83 Wilson, Horace Hayman 164, 211
pilgrim tax 16, 62 Wilson, Daniel, Bishop of Calcutta 187–9,
relations with missionaries 55, 56, 59, 198
79, 134 Wilson, John 221
Sati 61, 184 Wombwell, George, MP 2
Wilberforce 122, 133–4, 135 Wood, A. S. 47
Vellore 78–81 Wood, Sir Charles 211, 238, 239
Wesleyan Committee of Privileges 113, Woodrow, Henry 211
120 Wray, LMS 115
Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society Wynn, Charles 199
152, 193
West Indies 19, 22, 28, 114, 115 Yates, William 151
Wheler, Edward 27
Wheler, Stephen, Lt. Col. 208, 230 Zafar, Shah Bahadur 226, 227, 230, 231
Whigs 84, 92, 127, 131, 144, 209 Zamindars 174, 229
White, Joseph 21
Wilberforce, Samuel and missionary bishops
218
Worlds of the East India Company
The Richest East India Merchant: The Life and Business of

John Palmer of Calcutta, 1767–1836,
Anthony Webster
The Great Uprising in India, 1857–58: Untold Stories, Indian and British, Rosie
Llewellyn-Jones
The Twilight of the East India Company:
The Evolution of Anglo-Asian Commerce and Politics, 1790–1860,
Anthony Webster
Scottish Orientalists and India:
The Muir Brothers, Religion, Education and Empire,
Avril Powell
East India Company’s London Workers:
Management of the Warehouse Labourers, 1800–1858,
Margaret Makepeace
The East India Company’s Maritime Service, 1746–1834:
Masters of the Eastern Seas,
Jean Sutton

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Worlds of the East India Company Volume 7

The East India Company and Religion,

The editors welcome submissions from both established scholars and

Previously published titles

The boydell press

Conclusion and Epilogue: Strangers in the Land 237

Back of Ecton, October 2011

1 Full citations are given in the Bibliography.

1 A useful discussion can be found in G. A. Oddie, ‘Constructing Hinduism: The Impact

SPCK Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge

Yesterday the Christians were in the ascendant,

The East India Company’s worst fears came to gruesome fruition in

by non-­Christians as well as Christians in India to this day. So the story is

A century before this quotation, Humphrey Prideaux, who was to

territories and to take an oath of obedience to his Britannic Majesty. Despite

We shall see later that the Protestant missionaries wanting to work in

of the loss and recapture of Calcutta when the Governor-in-Council forbade

The Early Years of Protestant Missionary Interest

Earlier Catholic empires had imposed Catholicism on their conquered terri-

As further encouragement to the said missionaries to exert themselves in propa-

In this urgent necessity therefore they bethought themselves of soliciting the

The Company agreed to pay them 500 pagodas.

1 Dr Glasse’s Charge to Rev. Mr Paezold, 29 January 1793, An Abstract of the Annual

THE EAST INDIA COMPANY, BRITAIN

What is England now? – A sink of Indian wealth, filled by nabobs

There was much to criticise about Company rule. In 1769/70 millions of

up missionary stations in India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth

The Evangelical Army

As far as the Company’s relationship with Christianity was concerned, the

what Bebbington describes as ‘activism’, which gave a sense of urgency to the

A Missionary Proposal for Bengal

11 S. Neill, A History of Christianity in India, 1707–1858 (Cambridge, 1985), p. 113.

THE 1790s: A TIME OF CRISIS

We think we have an equal right with the missionary, sent from

Grant’s Mission Scheme

literally, millions on millions yet unborn!’4 Both Wilberforce’s parliamentary

of Grant was crucial in opening doors to him. Cornwallis wrote to Dundas a

1793 Renewal of the Company’s Charter

opposed it. Stephen Lushington, the Company Chairman, was strongly

great doubts indeed, as to what had been mentioned in another place, of

a refusal to help promote Christianity in India. They conveniently ignored the

disaffection in the native troops by upsetting their religious prejudices. Just as

Missions and Church/Dissent Rivalry

even for missionary purposes … the utmost discretion is necessary; and if

Despite this unfavourable atmosphere, in 1796/7 Grant and Wilberforce were

was presented as a paper to the Court of Directors. By 1797 Grant believed

The Haldane Mission Proposal

The connection in men’s minds between missionary activity and political

Haldane next threatened Dundas with applications from different societies in

a refusal would be attended with disagreeable consequences, as there is hardly

The Evangelical is essentially a Churchman. His passionate attachment to the

13 14 May 1793, Journals of the House of Commons, 48, 778.

41 T. Jones to W. Wilberforce, 14 September 1796, EUL, Laing MSS, II 500.

THE PILLAR OF FIRE MOVES FORWARD: THE

And must I part with all I have,

Europeans. The Presidency chaplains, Brown and Buchanan, certainly knew

A more worrying development, however, was the Court’s refusal of

purpose. Any unlicensed European therefore was likely to be sent back to

We do not apprehend the British Government at Calcutta to be hostile; but

his determination to set it on a ‘respectable footing’. His avowed aim was

converts, who lost everything on conversion: home, livelihood and essential

Bombay and Madras Presidencies

by non-Christians as well as Christians in India to this day. So the story is