The East India Company's accession to political and administrative responsibility in India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was greatly complicated by the simultaneous development of the evangelical movement in England with its missionary agents overseas. India was one of the first areas of British expansion to feel the pressure of evangelical influence upon the conduct of its government; South Africa was to experience it soon afterwards, and in both areas the younger Charles Grant (1778–1866) played an important part, through his tenure of the offices of President of the Board of Control and Colonial Secretary.