¹ Standard works on the London Missionary Society include: Morison, J., The Fathers and Founders of the London Missionary Society, London 1839Google Scholar ; Ellis, W.. The History of the Missionary Society, London 1844Google Scholar ; Home, C. S., The Story of the L.M.S., London 1895Google Scholar ; Lovett, R., The History ofthe London Missionary Society, London 1899Google Scholar.

² Cf. Ncill, S., Christian Missions, Baltimore 1964Google Scholar ; Moorhouse, G., The Missionaries, London 1973.Google Scholar For an excellent treatment of foreign missions and their impact on British churches, sec Piggin, S., ‘Sectarianism versus Ecumenism: the Impact on British Churches oldie Missionary Movement to India, c. 1800-1860’, this Journal, xxvii (1976), 387–402Google Scholar.

³ MS materials used in this paper come from the following sources: the Minutes and correspondence of the London Missionary Society now found in the archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London (hereafter cited as LMS); the Samuel Pearce Letters and the Andrew Fuller (typescript) Letters, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford (hereafter cited as Angus); the General Correspondence of the Church Missionary Society and the Venn MSS, Waterloo Road, London (hereafter cited as CMS); the Wilberforce MSS, Bodleian Library, Oxford (hereafter cited as Bodl.); the Pawson Letters, Methodist Church Archives, John Rylands Library (hereafter cited as MCA); and the Home Correspondence of the Methodist Missionary Society, also deposited at the school of Oriental and African Studies (hereafter cited as MMS). I would like to thank the late Ernest Payne, Stuart Piggin and, above all, John Walsh for reading this paper and making several valuable suggestions.

⁴ Cited in Sermons Preached in London at the Foundation of the Missionary Society, London 1795, 130.Google ScholarCf. Evangelical Magazine (hereafter cited as EM), iii (1795), 425fGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Interdenominational organisations prior to 1795 included the Books Society (1750), the Society for the Reformation of Manners (1757), the Naval and Military Bible Society (1778), the Sunday School Society (1785), and the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1787). A prominent place in the early ecumenical movement should also be given to the Evangelical Magazine. It was founded in 1793 and included among its contributors evangelicals from all camps of the Revival with the possible exception of the Wesleyans. The impact of this publication on subsequent pan-evangelical enterprises including the London Missionary Society has often been noted. See , Lovett, History of the LMS, 10Google Scholar ; Mineka, F. E., The Dissidence of Dissent, Chapel Hill 1944Google Scholar.

⁶ EM, i (1793), 164.Google Scholar

⁷ Cf. , Moorhouse, Missionaries, 37.Google Scholar

⁸ Cf. Carey, W., An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion the Heathens, Leicester 1792Google Scholar ; Payne, E. A., An Enquiry, London 1961.Google Scholar Ironically, several years later (1806), Carey proposed a ‘federation’ of missionaries to meet every ten years at the Cape of Good Hope. See Rouse, R., “William Carey's Pleasing Dream’, International Review of Missions, xxxviii (1949), 181 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Cited in Fletcher, I., ‘The Fundamental Principle of the London Missionary Society’, Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society (hereafter cited as TCHS), xix (1963), 224.Google Scholar

¹⁰ For Home's biography, see Hole, C., The Early History of the Church Missionary Society, London 1896, 632Google Scholar.

¹¹ Cf. Walls, A. F., ‘A Christian Experiment: The Sierra Leone Colony’. Studies in Church History, vi, Cambridge 1970, 107–29Google Scholar ; Groves, C. P., The Planting of Christianity in Africa, London 1948, i. 208Google Scholar.

¹² Home, M., Letters on Missions: Addressed to the Protestant Ministers of the British Churches, Bristol 1794, 60.Google Scholar

¹³ Ibid., 21 ; cf. Walsh, J. D., ‘Methodism at the End of the Eighteenth Century’, in Davies, R. and Rupp, G., A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, London 1965, 300fGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ For Eyre's biography, see EM, xi (1803), 225fFGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ That summer Eyré also asked Thomas Haweis, the Oxford-educated rector of All Saints, Aldwincle, to review Home's pamphlet. This review, which subsequently appeared in the November number of the EM, was eventually instrumental in bringing Home's thesis to the attention of a much larger evangelical constituency. See EM, ii (1794), 476f.Google Scholar ; Cf. Wood, A. S., Thomas Haweis, London 1957, 191fGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Cf. Bennett, J., A Memoir ofthe life of David Bogue, London 1827, 170Google Scholar ; , Lovett, History of the L.M.S., 5Google Scholar ; Goodall, N., A History of the London Missionary Society, London 1954, 2f.Google Scholar ; cf. , Wood, T. Haweis, 194.Google Scholar

¹⁷ For Bogue's biography, see Terpstra, C., ‘David Bogue 1750-1825: Pioneer and Missionary Educator’, Edinburgh University Ph.D. thesis 1959.Google Scholar

¹⁸ For an account of Bogue's visit to Bristol and John Ryland's chapel where he read Carey's letters, see , Ellis, History of the L.M.S., 16Google Scholar ; Northcott, W. C., Glorious Company, London 1945, 17.Google Scholar Ryland's involvement in this meeting has led at least two historians to assume that, as a Baptist, he was instrumental in founding the Society. But this is largely incorrect. See Godfrey, J. T. and Ward, J., The History of Friar Lane Baptist Church, Nottingham 1903, 218Google Scholar.

¹⁹ EM, ii (1794), 378f.Google Scholar C. Terpstra points out that when Bogue wrote his article he had in mind a society primarily for the Independents. See , Terpstra, ‘David Bogue’, 157fGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ Besides the men already mentioned, the ministers involved in planning the Society from January to September 1795 included William Francis Platt, Independent minister at Holywell Mount chapel; John Towers, Independent minister at the Barbican; Joel Abraham Knight, Connection minister at Spa Field's chapel; Thomas Williams, one-time Wesleyan but now an episcopally-ordained member of Lady Huntingdon's Connection; James Knight, son of Titus Knight and Independent minister at Collier's Rent, Southwark; Joseph Brooksbank, Independent minister at Haberdasher's Hall; George Townsend, former member of Lady Huntingdon's Connection but now pastor of the Independent chapel in Ramsgate; and Thomas Haweis, rector of Aldwincle in Northamptonshire but a frequent visitor to London. Prominent evangelicals like William Roby, Independent minister at Canon Street chapel in Manchester and Edward Williams, then minister at Carr's Lane, Birmingham, were two of the more enthusiastic provincial patrons. The inclusion of these men is based on attendance records (nine meetings or more) between 8 January and 8 September 1795; LMS Minutes.

²¹ Cf. Fletcher, I., ‘The Formative Years of the London Missionary Society’, unpublished MS in the LMS Archives, 1961.Google Scholar

²² It is sometimes assumed, for example, that the London Missionary Society was founded by evangelical Anglicans. Cf. Halevy, E., England in 1815, 2nd edn, London 1949, 446Google Scholar ; Armstrong, A., The Church of England, The Methodists and Society 1700-1850, London 1973. 143Google Scholar.

²³ In his sermon preached at the founding of the London Missionary Society, Samuel Greatheed asked the congregation: ‘Blessed be God for the numerous assembly present of those who preach, as well as those who hear the Gospel! Yet, where are many others?’ He went on to say: ‘Whether prejudice or prudence separates them, as yet, from our assemblies, I trust they will, upon mature reflection, either do us the pleasure to unite with us, or the honour to follow us, as far as we are followers of Christ.’ Sermons Preached in London at the Formation of the Missionary Society, London 1795, 64.Google Scholar At least one Baptist and an Anglican associated with the Clapham Sect were present at the founding meetings as observers. See Angus, Pearce Letters: S. Pearce to his wife, 20 September 1795; CMS, Venn MSS, C7, ace. 81: W. Sumner to Mr Elliot, 25 September 1795. It is not known whether a Wesleyan representative attended these meetings.

²⁴ Cf. Missionary Magazine (1797), 448Google Scholar , where the Scottish Presbyterian Georg e Cowi e (a director of the Missionary Society) told his countrymen that the Wesleyans would be excluded from the Society. See also Marshman, J. C., The Life and Times of Carey, Marshman and Ward, London 1859, i. 395Google Scholar where the same was said of the Baptists.

²⁵ LMS, Minutes, g May 1796 ; Cf. Goodall, N., The Fundamental Principle of the London Missionary Society, London 1945; I.Google Scholar, Fletcher, ‘The Fundamental Principle of the London Missionary Society’, TCHS, xix(1963), 225Google Scholar.

²⁶ LMS, Minutes, 11 May 1796. Dr Stuart Piggin has brought to my attention a rather confusing passage from the Minutes of the Committee of Examination for 7 August 1799 n i which a letter was read concerning an offer of service from a man and his wife who were ‘of Westleys (sic) sentiments in the doctrinal points of religion and in connection with the arminians (sic)’. The minute goes on to report ‘that as the Missionary Society was formed on Evangelical principles this man cannot be admitted among her missionaries’. Dr Piggin and others quite logically argue that evidence like this would seem to indicate that the Missionary Society discouraged Wesleyans from applying as missionary candidates even though, in his article, he does refer to three Wesleyans, prior to 1859, who served the Society in India. See Piggin, ‘Sectarianism’, 394. In the light of the history of the evangelical revival which, after all, was in part initiated by Wesley and his followers, it is hard to believe that these two applicants were turned away for the stated reasons, namely that they did not share the evangelical principles of the Society's directors. In fact most, if not all, Wesleyans were considered by themselves and by non-Wesleyans to be evangelical. Nor does it seem consistent with the LMS Minute just referred to, that they were rejected for their Arminian beliefs. One can only wonder whether there were extraneous circumstances that we are unaware of.

²⁷ Apparently, some of the London ministers wanted Bogue to be excluded from the meetings at which the Society was planned because they considered him to be ‘a high and overbearing man’. But they were eventually overruled. See , Fletcher, ‘The Fundamental Principle’, 225Google Scholar.

²⁸ The seminal importance of Home's Letters at these early meetings is made very clear by Matthew Wilks in a MS letter he wrote many years later to the historian James Bennett. Describing an encounter with John Eyre, possibly in May or early June 1794, Wilks writes: ‘One afternoon John Eyre called at my house, and after the usual salutation, said, “I have just come from Red Cross Street, where I entered into conversation [with] several of our Scotch brethren with whom I have been conversing on Home's publication on missions … The subject itself interested us, and the result was that we engaged to meet again … and to bring a friend with us“.’ Wilks then goes on to say that after this encounter with Eyre, a group of between seven and nine men began to meet fortnightly at the Castle and Falcon, and after several of these meetings, resolved to give their idea for a mission wider publicity and to contact other evangelicals in the country. According to Wilks, it was at this point in the deliberations–early in November 1794–that Bogue became involved. The letter, post-marked 22 August 1827, is in the possession of Irene Fletcher, Librarian Emeritus of the London Missionary Society who very kindly brought it to my attention.

²⁹ EM, ii(1794), 478.Google Scholar

³⁰ Townsend, J., Memoirs, London 1828, 55.Google Scholar

³¹ EM, iii (1795), 11f.Google Scholar

³² The following were written by Society directors between 1795 and 1800: Haweis, T., A Plea for Peace and Union among the Living Members of the Church of Christ, London 1796Google Scholar ; Greatheed, S., General Union Recommended to Real Christians, London 1798Google Scholar ; Eyre, J., Union and Friendly Intercourse Recommended, London 1798Google Scholar ; Hill, R., A Plea for Union, London 1800Google Scholar.

³³ For example, the Bedfordshire Union of Christians, founded in 1797. See Brown, J., The History of the Bedfordshire Union of Christians, London 1946.Google Scholar Cf. Ward, W. R., Religion and Society in England 1790-1850, London 1972, 48fGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ LMS, Home Correspondence (1.5.A): C. Sundius to the Swedish Brethren, April 1798.

³⁵ See Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1904, 215f. In his popular biography of Bunting, Jabez, Rigg, J. H. called Sundius one ‘of the few rich and cultivated [Wesleyan] Methodists… in London’.Google Scholar See Rigg, J. H., fabez Bunting, London 1906, 61Google Scholar.

³⁶ I can find no evidence that Baptist laymen or ministers were involved in the Missionary Society at the level of director. The B.M.S. was obviously their first concern. That the L.M.S. sought after Baptist patronage, however, is not in doubt.

³⁷ See above, n. 26.

³⁸ See Piggott, S. (ed.), An Authentic Narrative of Four Years Residence at Tongataboo, London 1815Google Scholar ; Orange, J., Narrative of the Late George Vason, Derby 1840Google Scholar ; , Godfrey, Friar Lane Baptist Church, 227, 233Google Scholar.

³⁹ See Campbell, J., Maritime Discovery and Christian Mission, London 1840, 280f.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ See LMS, Minutes, 30 March, 14, 21 September 1829.

⁴¹ Cf. Vickers, J. A., Thomas Coke: Apostle of Methodism, London 1969, 271ff.Google Scholar

⁴² Cf. Cnattingius, H., Bishops and Societies, London 1952, 43, 62fGoogle Scholar ; Pinnington, J., ‘Church Principles in the Early Years of the Church Missionary Society’, JTS, N.S., XX (1969), 523–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴³ Printed circular in LMS, Scrapbook (A.f.1): September 1795.

⁴⁴ LMS, Autograph Book: S. Greatheed to J. SutclifT, 3 November 1795. For an early attempt at co-operation in missions between the Baptists and Independents in Worcestershire in 1794, see Pearce, S., Missionary Correspondence, London 1814, 3f.Google Scholar After 1795, missionary prayer meetings involving L.M.S. directors and their Baptist colleagues were frequent. Cf. Rippon, J., The Baptist Annual Register, London 1801. 39Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Eyre, J., Union and Friendly Intercourse Recommended, London 1798, 5.Google ScholarRedford, Cf. G. and James, J. A. (eds), The Autobiography of the Rev. William Jay, London 1855, 173Google Scholar ; EM, vi (1798), 161.Google ScholarCf. Taylor, T., The Reconciler: or An Humble Attempt to … reconcile the experimental Calvinists with the experimental Arminians, Liverpool 1806, v–vi.Google Scholar In the preface to this book, Taylor, a Wesleyan minister, wrote: ‘I apprehend, the two parties I wish to be united, namely, who are called Arminians and Calvinists, are.the only two sects who are labouring to spread vital and practical godliness throughout the world … And these having all the world against them, it is highly necessary they should be united among themselves.’

⁴⁶ MCA, Pawson Papers: J. Pawson to J. Benson, 9 April 1798.

⁴⁷ CMS, General Correspondence (G.AC.3.1) f. 39: T. Haweis to T. Scott, 15 November 1800. Cf. Hennell, M., john Venn and the Clapham Sect, London 1958, 234Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Cited in Sidney, E., The Life of the Rev. Rowland Hill, London 1834, 177.Google Scholar Italics in text.

⁴⁹ EM, xxvi (1818), 265.Google Scholar Italics in text. Cf. LMS Minutes, 12 May 1812.

⁵⁰ Marshman, J. C., The Life and Times of Carey, Marshman, and Ward, London 1859, i. 395.Google Scholar In part this ill-feeling was precipitated in 1810 by Thomas Haweis in an EM article accusing the Baptists of enlarging their membership by stealing converts from other evangelical denominations. This led to an indignant walk-out by the Magazine's baptist contributors in 1812 and the subsequent refounding of the Baptist Magazine: EM, viii (1810), 505–6Google Scholar ; Baptist Magazine, vi (1814), iv. 209fGoogle Scholar ; Anderson, H., The Life and Letters of Christopher Anderson, Edinburgh 1854, 196-8Google Scholar ; Ivimey, J., A History of the English Baptists, London 1830, iv. 117ff.Google Scholar It also caused the Baptists to close their communion table to non-Baptists with great hardship to Baptist and non-Baptist missionaries in India. See Angus, Fuller Typescript Letters: A. Fuller to W. Ward, 17 November 1812 ; Potts, E. D., ‘A Note on the Serampore Trio’, The Baptist Quarterly, XX (1963-1964), 115fCrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Potts, E. D., British Baptist Missionaries in India, Cambridge 1967, 50Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Cf. Bodl. Wilberforce MSS, d. 17, f. 129; c. 3, fos. 39, 43: T. Coke to W. Wilberforce, March 1798; 26 March, 3 November 1798 ; Vickers, cf., Thomas Coke, 202–4.Google Scholar There was also a brief reoccurrence of the old Calvinistic controversy which served to harden relations between the Wesleyans and the Calvinistic evangelicals and which indirectly led to the founding of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society between 1813 and 1818. Cf. Hatton, W., A Reply to the Rev.fohn Cockin … to which is added, a supposed dialogue at sea, between twenty-eight missionaries of the Calvinian, and two of the Arminian persuasion, Leeds 1815Google Scholar ; , Lovett, History of the L.M.S., 48fF. Ironically, in 1783 Thomas Coke had proposed a missionary union that would unite all evangelicals. SeeGoogle ScholarTownsend, W. J. et al., A New History of Methodism, London 1909, ii. 288Google Scholar.

⁵² For the founding of the Church Missionary Society, see , Hole, Early History of the C.M.S.Google Scholar ; Stock, E., The History of the Church Missionary Society, London 1899.Google Scholar Some historians have mistakenly believed that the Church evangelicals withdrew in force from the London Missionary Society to form the C.M.S. Cf. Foster, C. I., An Errand of Mercy, Chapel Hill 1960, 66.Google Scholar Until the C.M.S. was established, most evangelical clergymen, especially those associated with the Clapham Sect, remained uninvolved in foreign missions except for occasional contributions to the S.P.G. and the various Methodist and nonconformist missions then in existence. Early Anglican directors of the London Missionary Society were, for the most part, ‘irregular’, Welsh or Irish. Besides (with years of service) John Eyre (1795-1802) and Thomas Haweis (1795–1819), they included George Campbell Brodbelt (1799-1800), incumbent of Loudwater in Buckinghamshire; David Jones (1797-1799), rector of Llangen in Wales; John Walker (1796-1802), Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and founder in 1804 of the Walkerites, an extreme Calvinistic sect; Melville Home (1797), rector of Olney; George West (1798-1801), rector of Stoke near Guildford; and William Winkworth (1798-1804) of London. Most of these men eventually withdrew from the Missionary Society to join their other evangelical Anglican colleagues in the C.M.S. once it was founded, but with the exception of Eyre (who died in 1803), Haweis, and Rowland Hill (who was ordained to first orders), none was a founding father.

⁵³ Cf. , Hole, Early History of the C.M.S., 156Google Scholar ; Holland, M. J., Life and Letters of Zachary Macaulay, London 1900, 241Google Scholar ; , Walls, A Christian Experiment, 112Google Scholar ; , Hennell. john Venn, 235Google Scholar ; Goode, W., A Memoir of the Late Rev. William Goode, 2nd edn, London 1828, 60Google Scholar ; Smyth, C. H. E., Simeon and Church Order, Cambridge 1940, 294Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Cf. LMS Minutes, 26 February 1798; LMS, Home Correspondence Extra (1.1.D): T. Coke to L.M.S., 26 February 1798 ; , Vickers, Thomas Coke, 301f.Google Scholar ; MMS, Home Correspondence, Box 1: T. Coke to R. Johnson, 15 November 1809, 1 January 1810.

⁵⁵ Missionary fundraising expeditions into the Methodist camp provided the Wesleyan leadership with a compelling reason formally to organise their missionary interests which they did in Leeds in 1813. Predictably, the Missionary Society expressed some concern at this development, much as Rowland Hill had expressed concern when the C.M.S. was established fourteen years earlier. See note 48. But when William Eccles, Independent minister at Old White chapel, Leeds, proclaimed from the floor of the founding meeting of what was to become the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society that ‘the missionary cause is but one cause, and that in which all denominations of Christians are united’; Jabez Bunting had to remind him that ‘the cause is one; but it is promoted by several distinct Societies, each of which has its distinct and separate fund’. Bunting was discreetly telling the Missionary Society to keep its hands off of Wesleyan money. Cited in Smith, G., History of Wesleyan Methodism, London 1863, ii. 549f.Google Scholar Italics are Bunting's. Cf. MMS, Home Correspondence Box 1: J. Alexander andj. Eddy to R. Smith, 22 June 1810; G. Banwell t o R. Smith, 1 December 1813; T. Coke to R. Smith, 29 October 1812 ; Findlay, G. G. and Holdsworth, W. W., The History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, London 1921, i. 37, 43f.Google Scholar For Missionary Society fundraising activities among other denominations, see: Angus, Fuller Letters: A. Fuller to W. Ward, 15 July 1812 ; , Hole, Early History of C.M.S., 233, 284, 307, 329, 409Google Scholar ; CMS, Home Correspondence: J. Pratt to H. Irwin, 9 March 1814 (Copy).

⁵⁶ See Peel, A., These Hundred Years: A History of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, London 1931, 12ff.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Ibid., 10, 58.

⁵⁸ See Robinson, W. G., A History of the Lancashire Congregational Union, Manchester 1955, 27Google Scholar ; Nightingale, B., The Story of the Lancashire Congregational Union, Manchester 1906, 24fGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁹ Cf. LMS, Minutes, 14 February 1814; 28 October, 25 November 1822.

⁶⁰ See LMS, Minutes, 24 Marc h 1823, wherein it is stated ‘That whilst it has been ever since the foundation of the Missionary Society, a principle regarde d as fundamental, that a difference of sentiment relating to ecclesiastical polity should not form an impediment to Christian ministerial cooperation in carrying on its labours, it has been in the opinion of the board, not less uniformly admitted [sic], that the missionaries employed in its service, should practice infant baptism.’ Only five years earlier, in 1818, the Society had recommended ‘That in conformity with the fundamental principles of the Society, the administration of the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's Supper be left entirely to the discretion of the missionaries.’ LMS, Minutes, 9 November 1818.

⁶¹ Cf. LMS, Minutes, 27 December 1824; LMS Committee of Examination, Minutes, 27 December 1824.

⁶² Mann, I., Twelve Letters on Ecclesiastical History and Nonconformity, London 1829, 478.Google Scholar

⁶³ EM, iv (1796), 385.Google Scholar See also EM, v (1797), 516Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ EM, v (1797), 257.Google ScholarCf. EM, iv (1796), 383Google Scholar ; vii (1799), 348.

⁶⁵ EM, vii (1799), 252.Google Scholar