The first English foreign missionary society was the Corporation for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, created by act of Parliament in 1649 to give support to the work of John Eliot among the Indians. The first in the modern sense was the Baptist Missionary Society (1792), associated with the famous William Carey.
The first in London was the London Missionary Society (1795), which sent Robert Morrison to China, John Williams to the South Pacific, Robert and Mary Moffat and their celebrated son-in-law David Livingstone to Africa, and James Chalmers to New Guinea. Over one hundred Protestant missionary societies have been headquartered in London.