of Islands, made up of explorers, flax traders, timber merchants, seamen, and ex-convicts who had served their sentences in Australia (as well as some who had escaped the Australian penal system). Marsden was concerned that they were corrupting the Māori way of life, and lobbied the Church Missionary Society to send a mission to New Zealand. In June 1813, Marsden wrote to the Secretary of the CMS seeking £500 per annum to form an Auxiliary CMS Society in New South Wales, with a view of assisting engaging in missionary work among the Māori people in New Zealand. At a meeting in the Colony of New South Wales, held at Sydney, on 20 December 1813, Marsden formed the New South Wales Society for affording Protection to the Natives of the South Sea Islands, and promoting their Civilization, for the protection of South Sea Islanders who may be brought to Port Jackson, and to defend their claims on the masters and owners of the vessels who mistreat those islanders. First trip to New Zealand Thomas Kendall and William Hall sailed on the Earl Spencer, departing on 31 May 1813 to the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, on a voyage of investigation, and returned to Sydney on 10 October. In 1814, he purchased a brig, the Active, for £1,400, mostly with his own money as the Church Missionary Society refused to provide funds for a ship. Lay missionaries Thomas Kendall, John King and William Hall were chosen for the New Zealand mission and departed on the Active from Sydney on 14 November 1814. The missionaries, Kendall, King and Hall, together with free settler Thomas Hansen, arrived in Rangihoua Bay on 22 December 1814. With them were the first horses in New Zealand, a stallion and two mares, brought from Australia by Marsden. Marsden met Māori rangatira (chiefs) from the Ngāpuhi iwi (tribe), who controlled the region around the Bay of Islands, including the chief Ruatara who had lived with him in Australia, and a junior war leader, Hongi Hika, who had helped pioneer the introduction of the musket to Māori warfare in the previous decade. Hongi Hika returned with them to Australia on 22 August. The first known Christian sermon on land in New Zealand was preached by Marsden at Oihi Bay (a small cove in the north-east of Rangihoua Bay) on Christmas Day, 1814. The service from the Church of England Book