The following Sunday, William decided it was time to tell his congregation of his plans. After all, he told himself, if he did not tell them soon, someone else would, since news was getting around. It was with a heavy heart that William broke the news to his congregation. The next day he wrote in his journal, “Never did I see such sorrow manifested as reigned through our place of worship last Lord’s day.”
Over the next several weeks, though, the church came to accept the news. The members of the congregation had been praying for several years that God would send missionaries to the heathen, and now they understood that their church was being asked to make the first sacrifice. While they were losing a pastor they loved very much, they were gaining a missionary. Soon they began to get excited about the whole venture.
Dolly Carey, however, did not change her position at all. William’s two friends, John Sutcliff and Andrew Fuller, both walked to Leicester to beg her to reconsider, but she would not. Finally, William had to face the fact that he would be going to India without her. His new plan was to set up a mission base somewhere in the Bengal region, and when he had a nice house and garden, he would come back for his family. He thought this would take him three or four years to accomplish. He was hopeful that by then, Dolly would have adjusted to the idea of going to India. Still, the thought of leaving his family behind was an awful one for William. Finally, he persuaded Dolly to let him take eight-year-old Felix along. That way he would have at least one family member with him.
The next question was what to do with Dolly Carey, the other two boys, and the new baby during the years William would be away. Since William would no longer be the pastor of the church, Dolly would not be able to continue living in the church manse, and she had no way of supporting herself. The missionary society agreed to support her, and Dolly decided to move in with her sister Kitty, who lived in Piddington.
While it was generous of the society to offer to look after William’s family while he was gone, in reality it didn’t have the money to do it. The entire society had only eighty-eight pounds in the bank.
On top of supporting Dolly and the family, the society had to have money to pay for William, Felix, and the three members of the Thomas family to get to India and establish themselves. Altogether, the society needed over five hundred fifty pounds, a huge amount at that time. William felt the only way to raise that kind of money was to involve every Baptist church in England. But how could they do that?
Finally, it was decided that William, Dr. Thomas, and Andrew Fuller would spend several weeks on a speaking tour of the country trying to convince people of the need for missionaries. The men would sell copies of Enquiry and ask their audiences to pledge money to the cause. It was something that had never been done before, and no one was sure whether it would work. The truth was, sometimes it did and sometimes it didn’t. In Birmingham, the speakers received a warm welcome and the promise of two hundred pounds to help their cause.
In the town of Bath, it was a different story. The offering in Bath netted exactly one penny! Dr. Thomas couldn’t believe that the people of Bath were so uncaring about missions. At the end of the meeting, he stood to his feet and announced, “Thank you for coming to listen to us. Your financial contribution of one penny will be gratefully recorded in the mission society’s ledger, alongside the gifts of other towns.”
A murmur rolled through the crowd. The people were embarrassed. How could they allow other towns to know they had given only a penny to the new missionaries? Someone grabbed the offering basket and sent it around for a second offering. This time there was a much more generous twenty-pound pledged, and the one penny from Bath was never recorded in the ledger.
In London, none of the Baptist churches would support them. The ministers there held many meetings to discuss the issue, but in the end, they decided it was God’s job to reach the heathen, not theirs. Besides, there was a lot of work to be done in England, and it seemed ridiculous to them that someone would want to make such a dangerous journey just to share the gospel message.
Despite the setback in London, William Carey enjoyed his trip throughout England. On horseback and on foot, he and his companions traveled several hundred miles. Along the way, William saw for the first time things he’d only read or heard about. He stood on the seashore and looked out across the frigid North Sea. He had tried to imagine all his life what the sea must be like, and now he was seeing it. He went to London and crossed the River Thames and saw the Tower of London. The things he saw were more amazing than he’d imagined. But more than all these sights, William enjoyed the trip because it gave him the opportunity to share in person with thousands of people, both in large churches and in small cottages, his ideas about the need for missionaries.
At a meeting in Hull, William met a young man who greatly impressed him by the name of William Ward. After the meeting was over, William Ward stayed behind to talk to William Carey. He told how he was a printer who worked for the local newspaper. William’s mind whirled as he heard this. He thought of Dr. Thomas’s letter from the Brahmins about the need for translation work, and his eyes lit up. “If God blesses us, we will be needing someone like you in India to help us print the Scriptures. I hope you will consider joining us in three or four years,” he told William Ward.
The two men shook hands, and William Carey left for his next meeting, but the young printer never forgot the conversation. He and William Carey were destined to meet again.
After several weeks of traveling throughout England, the trio had raised enough money to pay for five passages to India, outfit the men, and keep Dolly Carey and the boys for one year. There was even some money left over to buy a trunkful of metal goods to sell when they arrived in India.
Dr. Thomas had convinced William and the rest of the committee that the money raised from the sale of the metal goods would be enough to keep them all for at least a year. However, during the time they had been out raising the money for their voyage, two important events had occurred. The first event had to do with France. The French had declared war on England and Holland again. This meant that the seas around Great Britain were filled with French pirate ships, or privateers, as they were called. With the permission of the French government, these ships waited to attack and prey on British ships leaving port. Many captains feared for their lives as they set out from English ports. It was a dangerous time to be flying the English flag on the open sea.
The second event was even more important because it meant that even if the ship carrying William and the Thomases got safely past the privateers and made it to India, when they got there they would not be welcome. In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I had given a group of wealthy businessmen a charter to establish a company that would be the exclusive English agency for trade with India. The company was called the East India Company, and it was soon the world leader in the export of calico, indigo dye, cotton, silk, spices, and tea. In 1793, a bill to extend the East India Company’s charter was before the British Parliament. However, a growing number of people in England believed that the British had an obligation to help civilize the native peoples in far-off lands. These people began asking Parliament to allow teachers and even missionaries to go to India to aid in the process.
Up to this point, as part of its charter, the East India Company had the authority to say who would be issued permits to enter India and who would not, and it issued permits only to merchants and government officials. And that was how the company wanted things to stay. The last thing it needed was teachers and missionaries meddling in Indian affairs. Who knew what might happen if the Indian people started hearing about such things as freedom and independence! It was in the best interests of the East India Company to keep the local people ignorant of such ideas. That way, the people would keep working hard and not ask questions. Thus, the powerful businessmen who ran the East India Company set about persuading Parliament not to listen to the arguments of those who wanted to “meddle” in Indian affairs, and instead pass a bill extending the company’s charter unchanged. That is precisely what Parliament did.
This was bad news for the first ever Baptist missionaries, who knew there was no way they would be granted a permit to enter India; and if they entered illegally, they could be fined and put in jail. The problem bothered William and Dr. Thomas for some time. What were they to do? Then Dr. Thomas came up with an idea. He had been a ship’s doctor aboard the Earl of Oxford, and he was still good friends with the ship’s captain. Dr. Thomas persuaded Captain White to take the group to India without a permit. Once they got there, they would have to find some way to stay.
William was not happy with the plan. Yet he had to admit that there seemed no other way around the East India Company’s rules. He decided to seek the advice of a man he’d heard a lot about, the Reverend John Newton. Newton had been the captain of a slave ship before becoming a Christian and was now a well-known minister.
William explained the situation to John Newton and asked what he should do if the authorities in India wouldn’t let him land without a permit. The Reverend Newton answered, “Then conclude that your God has nothing there for you to accomplish. But if He has, no power on earth can hinder you.”
William was very encouraged by these words. “No power on earth can hinder you,” he would repeat often to himself. If God wanted him to get to India, no power on earth was going to stop him!
On April 4, 1793, just three months after their first meeting, William Carey, his son Felix, and Dr. and Mrs. Thomas and their four-year-old daughter, Eliza, stood side by side on the deck of the Earl of Oxford as she sailed from London down the River Thames and out into the North Sea. At thirty-one years of age, William Carey was finally on his way to the mission field—or so he had every reason to believe!
Chapter 7
Bad News, Good News
“It’s a pity we cannot be on our way directly,” sighed Captain White. The Earl of Oxford had left the safety of the River Thames an hour before and was now sailing in the open waters of the North Sea. William and Dr. Thomas stood next to the captain on the aft deck. “With the French at war with us, it’s just too dangerous,” he continued. “I’ve seen their ships on the horizon, and I fear we would never make it out into the Atlantic Ocean.”
William nodded. He’d seen the sails of the French privateers on the horizon. The ships seemed to sit there daring British ships to come within their reach.
“We will be much better off sailing in a convoy. I’ve ordered the first mate to hug the coast until we get to the Isle of Wight. We’ll anchor off Portsmouth until there are enough other ships to run the gauntlet.”
“How long will that be?” Dr. Thomas nervously asked Captain White.
“It all depends on what other ships are already in port. I would hope it won’t be more than a day or two, a week at the most.”
“A week!” echoed Dr. Thomas.
William frowned. His companion seemed unusually worried about the loss of a few days.
When the ship arrived off the Isle of Wight, the news was not encouraging. A convoy had left the day before, and it could be a month or more before enough ships gathered to form another one.
Captain White suggested that the group would be much more comfortable in the town of Portsmouth. William went ashore and found a cheap boardinghouse where they could all stay while they waited for the other ships to gather. The group left most of their luggage on board, taking only a few clothes with them.
