With the downfall of the Commonwealth the corporation became defunct; but through the influence of the saintly Richard Baxter, whose tender interest in the work of Eliot is witnessed by a touching passage in his writings, the charter was revived in 1662, with Robert Boyle for president and patron.

It was largely through his generosity that Eliot was enabled to publish his Indian Bible.

This society, "The New England Company," as it is called, is still extant--the oldest of Protestant missionary societies.[66:1] It is to that Dr.Thomas Bray who returned in 1700 to England from his thankless and discouraging work as commissary in Maryland of the Bishop of London, that the Church of England owes a large debt of gratitude for having taken away the reproach of her barrenness.

Already his zeal had laid the foundations on which was reared the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge.

In 1701 he had the satisfaction of attending the first meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which for nearly three quarters of a century, sometimes in the spirit of a narrow sectarianism, but not seldom in a more excellent way, devoted its main strength to missions in the American colonies.