ABSTRACT
Many of the East India Company's (EIC's) chaplains and personnel were to comment on religious sufferance in the Mughal Empire. Although at its core the EIC remained a commercial enterprise with profit maximisation as its main mission, the religious interests and concerns of its early leadership ensured that religious governance and a theologically diverse chaplaincy would play a part in the company's evolution. One of the most prolifically mentioned chaplains of the company, Patrick Copland, highlights the assortment of theological backgrounds that made up the early EIC chaplaincy. The letter books of the EIC report cases that demonstrate how the company was primarily concerned with either the conversion of English subjects or specifically its own personnel, reinforcing the idea that evangelism for much of the seventeenth century was an internal mission. Religious sufferance provided EIC leadership with the governmental apparatus to present itself as being the compassionate alternative to other traditional European parties in the area, particularly the Catholic Portuguese.
