The first official British response to sati was in 1680 when the Governor of Madras Streynsham Master intervened and prohibited the burning of a Hindu widow in Madras Presidency and attempts to limit or ban the practice had been made by individual British officers but without the backing of the British East India Company as it followed a policy of non interfence in Hindu religious affairs and there was no legislation or ban against Sati. The first formal British ban was imposed in 1798, in the city of Calcutta only. The practice continued in surrounding regions. In the beginning of the 19th century, the evangelical church in Britain, and its members in India, started campaigns against "sati". The British activism should be considered in the light that British women abolitionists of the time were concerned with promoting the Christian education of the “heathen” women as their distinctive contribution to the foreign missionary enterprise. Leaders of these campaigns included William Carey and William Wilberforce. These movements put pressure on the company to ban the act. William Carey, and the other missionaries at Serampore conducted in 1803–04 a census on cases of "sati" for a region within a 30-mile radius of Calcutta, finding more than 300 such cases there. The missionaries also approached Hindu theologians, who opined that the practice was encouraged, rather than enjoined by the Hindu scriptures.