ABSTRACT
William Argent, an evangelist who went to China under the arrangement between David Hill's Laymen's Mission and Thomas Champness's Joyful News Mission, was the first Methodist martyr in China. William Argent was based in Hankou on the Yangtze but not long after his arrival he was sent downriver to care for the sick Tollerton at the Mission House of Rest in the hills above Wuxue. In the course of the Cape Frontier Wars missionaries were often at risk and their work was seriously disrupted but no life was lost. However, shortly after the wars were brought to an end, James Thomas, who had ministered in South Africa since 1839, was murdered. George Maddison was also killed on the street. He went to South Africa in 1904 after two years in circuit in Nottingham and was posted to Johannesburg in 1905. The birth-pangs of Rhodesia at the end of the nineteenth century accounted for the death of two more African missionaries.
