SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO 1660 29 
rendered invalid by the Restoration, but through the 
efforts of Robert Boyle, friend of religion as of science, 
by an Order in Council of April 10, 1661, the company 
received from the King a new Charter of Incorporation, 
the actual Charter being dated February 7, 1661-2. 
The title given in the Charter was ¢ The Company for 
Propagation of the Gospel in New England and the 
Parts adjacent in America.” Clarendon headed the 
list of members, which included both churchmen and 
dissenters, and Robert Boyle was the first governor. 
The original funds of the Company were in after 
years supplemented by a bequest from Boyle and by a 
legacy in the middle of the eighteenth century, which 
was applicable to natives in the West Indies and other 
British colonies, as well as in North America. When, 
by the War of American Independence, the old North 
American colonies were severed from the British 
Crown, the Indians in Canada, and very especially the 
Six Nation Indians, became the principal beneficiaries 
of the Company, which still works actively for the 
welfare of the native races of the British Empire, 
having its London office in Bloomsbury Square.? 
Thus Puritanism and New England did, at any rate 
for a while, something substantial to redeem English 
Protestantism from the reproach of making no converts 
among the heathen. Yet the charge continued to be 
made with more or less truth, and an English writer 
of a pamphlet addressed to Walpole in 1731 asserted 
that © our priests, though I have been told some of 
! The above has been taken from A Sketch of the Origin and the Recent 
History of the New England Company (Spottiswoode & Co., 1884), by 
the Senior Member of the Company.