Prior to 1813 the Honourable East India Company, in whose hands was vested the government of British India, exercised a monopoly over Britain's trade to that territory. As a result, persons not connected with the Company were legally required to obtain a licence from its Board of Directors in London. The passage by the British Parliament in 1813 of an Act to extend the Charter of the Company for a further twenty years wrought many changes: in addition to depriving the Company of its trade monopoly, the Charter contained a clause declaring it to be the duty of Britain to ‘promote the interest and happiness’ of the people of India by taking ‘such measures … as may tend to the introduction … of useful knowledge, and of religious and moral improvement’ —among other ways, by granting licences to missionaries so that they could assist in the work ‘of accomplishing those benevolent designs’.