9 - A Turbulent Frontier: The Company and Religion 1814–1828

Summary

The English government in this country should never, directly or indirectly interfere in propagating the Christian religion.

(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’. 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. 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’. 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’.