The London Hibernian Society asked him to accompany Dr David Bogue, the Rev. Joseph Hughes, and Samuel Mills to Ireland in August 1807, to report on the state of Protestant religion in the country.
The chief movers in the enterprise were the Congregationalist, David Bogue of Gosport, and the Episcopalian, Thomas Haweis, rector of Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire.
It was the age of the new-born missionary enterprise, and Bogue's academy was in a very large measure the seed from which the London Missionary Society took its growth.
Bogue himself would have gone to India in 1796 but for the opposition of the East India Company.
He put himself under the tuition of David Bogue of Gosport and carried away deep impressions from his academy.
