Baptist Petition to Parliament
Submitted about 1813

A list of Church Members and joining dates

To the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament Assembled.

The Humble Petition of the undersigned being supporters and friends of the Baptist Mission in India resident in and near Rushden in the county of Northampton sheweth:

That In the year 1793 certain benevolent Persons who had formed themselves into a Society for propagating the Knowledge of Christianity among the Heathen nations regarding with deep concern the Millions of their fellow creatures and fellow Subjects in British India sunk by gross Superstition Ignorance and Vice into the lowest State of moral degradation were influenced to send and did send Christian Missionaries among them.

That your Petitioners acknowledge with gratitude the favourable light in which such missionaries have been and are held by the Government in India; notwithstanding which your Petitioners being themselves deeply sensible of the value of a legal toleration are anxiously solicitous that the Protection of the Law may extend to their Brethren in India, in such a measure as to the Wisdom of Parliament may see meet.

That your Petitioners humbly conceive that after a Probation of nearly 20 years, during which period their Missionaries are allowed to have conducted themselves with propriety, and in which the incalculable benefits, arising from their Labours, are Evident, that as British Subjects warmly attached to British interests, and they hereafter may be entitled to Legal protection from the British Government so long as they shall in all Civil concerns prove themselves obedient to that Government.

Your Petitioners do not wish for any exclusive privileges but are desirous that the same facilities and protection should be afforded to Christians of other Denominations as to themselves so that all Classes of Christians may thus be permitted to use their exertions to carry into Effect the following Resolution of the Honourable House of Commons passed in the year 1793: “That it is the peculiar and bounden Duty of the Legislative 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 of their religious and moral improvement’’.

Your Petitioners confiding in the Wisdom of your Lordships, therefore humbly pray that as the renewal of the Charter of the East India Company is now under consideration, a clause may be introduced in the new Charter, by which such Protection may be afforded to the Missionaries already in India, so that so long as they shall in all civil concerns be obedient to the Government they should be allowed to pursue the important work in which they are engaged without interruption, and by which clause the friends of this Society in this Kingdom may be  permitted to send out, in British Ships, other Missionaries to promote the same benevolent and important objects.
                                           

And your Petitioners shall ever pray &c &c
Edw Ward	Green Gascoyen	Thos Clark
Willm Bayes	Samuell Robinson	Joseph Clark
Wm Twelvetree	John Manning jun	John Manning sen
Wm Kerby	Thos Scarboray	Wm Presland
James Byfield	John Ward	Wm Colson sen
Saml Vorley	Thos Chapman	Jno Astell
Jos Knight	Bernard Ward	John Gross
Geo Gascoyen	Thos Hooper	Wm Gross
Eusby Scroxton	John Pentelow	Thos Randell
Francis Mee	John Arnsby	John Fisher
John Ludinton	John Burgis	John Page
Thomas Gross	Saml Knight	John Peacock
Joseph Parker	Thomas Smith
James Lamb	Wm Colson jun
Thomas Linnit	Wm Codgbrook
John Linnitt	Robert Eady
Wm Corby	John Barry	Thomas Chapman
Rt Lettice	Jno Colson	Tresham Chapman

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