This was nine years after the commencement of the mission to the Nestorians at Oroomiah, eight years after the republication in England of the Researches of Messrs.

Smith and Dwight among the Nestorians, and a year after the publication there of Dr.Grant's work, entitled "The Nestorians, or the Lost Tribes." Nor was there ever a time when the attention of the English nation was more directed to Western Asia.
How much the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London actually knew of the American mission, before officially and strongly commending Mr.Badger to the confidence of the Nestorian Patriarch, is not known.

They make no reference whatever to that mission, and write as if they looked upon the field as entirely unoccupied, and open to a mission from the Church of England.
Mr.Badger spent the winter of 1842-43 in Mosul; and, early in the spring, before the mountain roads were open, and while Dr.Grant and Mr.Laurie were preparing at Mosul to visit Asheta, he hastened to the Patriarch, with letters and presents from the dignitaries of the Church of England.

The civil relations of the Patriarch to the Koords, the Persians, and the Turks were such at that time, as to make him extremely anxious for the intervention of some foreign power; and he had been frankly told, by the American missionaries, that they could assure him of no such intervention.

Coming with letters commendatory from the Primate of all England, the Lord Bishop of London, and the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, and with offers of schools, his power for good or evil must have been great.
It cannot be that the patrons of Mr.Badger anticipated the attitude he would assume with regard to the American mission.