The Christianising of North India began in 1758, the year after the battle of Plassey, when, as Governor, the conqueror, Clive, welcomed his old acquaintance, of the Cuddalore Mission, the Swede Kiernander, to Calcutta, and gave him a rent-free house for eight years. Even Burke was friendly with Clive, writing of him: 'Lord Clive once thought himself obliged to me for having done what I thought an act of justice towards him;'[20] and it is pleasant thus to be able in any way to link that name with the purely spiritual force which used the Plassey and the Mutiny wars, as it will direct all events, for making India Christ's. The first church, built in 1715 by the merchants and captains, had been destroyed by a hurricane; the second had been demolished by Suraj-ood-Dowlah, in the siege of Calcutta, two years before, and one of the two chaplains had perished in the Black Hole, while the other was driven away. For the next thirty years the few who went to the chaplains' church worshipped in a small bungalow in the old fort, where Kiernander opened his first school. By 1771-4 he had formed such a congregation of poor Christians--Portuguese, Roman Catholics, and Bengali converts--that he built and extended the famous Mission Church and School-house, at a cost of 12,000_l._, received from both his marriages. When, by becoming surety for another, the old man lost his all, and blindness added to his sorrows, he left an English congregation of 147 members, and a Native congregation of 119, half Portuguese or Eurasians, and half Bengali. Kiernander's Mission Church was the centre of the religious life of Calcutta and Bengal. Six years after its foundation there came to Calcutta, from Madras, Mr. William Chambers--who had been converted by Schwartz--and John Christian Obeck, who had been one of the catechists of the Apostle of South India. Chambers had not been a year in the capital when he found out Charles Grant, at that time overwhelmed by a domestic sorrow, and brought him to Christ. Grant soon after went to Maldah as Commercial Resident, where he had as his subordinates, George Udny, Ellerton, W. Brown, W. Grant, J. Henry, and Creighton. These men, with their families, Sir Robert Chambers, of the Supreme Court, Mrs. Anne Chambers who was with her sons, Mrs. Chapman, and others less known, formed the nucleus of a Christian community which first supported Thomas as a medical missionary, then welcomed Carey, and, with the assistance of two Governor-Generals, Sir John Shore and Lord Wellesley, changed the tone of Anglo-Indian society. Sir William Jones, too, in his brief career of six years, set an example of all the virtues. Henry Martyn had two predecessors as Evangelical chaplains and missionary philanthropists, the Yorkshire David Brown, and the Scottish Claudius Buchanan.