ICS is a voluntary Evangelical society, a full member of the Partnership for World Mission, and therefore a recognized agency of the Church of England for overseas work through the medium of the English language.
At the Bible Society annual meeting in Margate in 1821 he heard the Prime Minister (Lord Liverpool) declare that 'Britons had a special duty to perform arising out of their extensive colonies', and he challenged them to exert themselves.
He summoned a meeting at the London Coffee House on Ludgate Hill on 30 June 1823, 'for the purpose of establishing a society to promote the education of the poor in Newfoundland'.
The PM became patron; the Colonial Secretary (the Earl of Bathurst) became president; vice-presidents included the Bishop of Lichfield & Coventry (Henry Ryder) and William Wilberforce MP.
The first committee included Josiah Pratt and Edward Bickersteth (joint Secretaries of the CMS), Samuel Crowther and Daniel Wilson (vicar of Islington and afterwards Bishop of Calcutta).
Codner set up lay Associations all over the country to promote the cause, the Foreign Office granted land and free passages in government ships for teachers, the first arrivals at Newfoundland St John (in August 1824) rented a building and opened a school on 20 September.
The British government of Lord Liverpool decided in 1823 to revive the Greek idea of free daughter communities to promote settlements in unoccupied stretches of colonial territories where land, capital and labour could be brought together.
Captain James Stirling was sent to Western Australia as governor of the Swan River Colony with the support of Frederick Chidley Irwin as officer in charge of the 63rd Regiment.
He returned to England in 1835 and appealed to the Revd Baptist Noel (minister of St John's Chapel, Bedford Row in London, who later helped to found the Evangelical Alliance in 1846).
A descriptive sub-title was added to the name of the CCS in 1838, 'For sending out clergymen, catechists and schoolmasters to the Colonies of Great Britain and to British residents in other parts of the world'.
William Chave (clerical Secretary of the CCS) undertook a Continental deputation tour in February 1840, and set up a support organization in Paris.
In the following year a grant was made to Chantilly for a lay ministry based in Paris for a missionary district that included Courteuil, Mont l'Eveque, Lamorlaye, Gouvieux and Creil.
However, at that time chaplaincies developed sporadically, and the Continental work remained incidental to the Society's Colonial ventures William Wilberforce became a vice-president.
The union of the NSS and CCS took place on 1 January 1851: its new name was to be the Colonial Church and School Society, and Mesac Thomas (afterwards first Bishop of Goulburn in New South Wales) was appointed Secretary.
The decade of his leadership saw advance in six spheres of ministry: general missionary work in the colonies, the setting up of teachers training colleges, and missions to the Free Coloured population, to the Indians and French Canadians in Canada, among sailors in foreign ports, the army in the Crimea and Continental chaplaincies.
By 1857 the Society was involved in 25 chaplaincies (e.g. Basel, Lucerne, Vevey (1853), Zurich and The Hague (1854), and was ready to nominate to Lille, Bremen, Stuttgart, Turin and Madrid.
In the early years of the 20th century, there was a vastly increased immigration into the NW Territories where a large 'colony' of British subjects was being organized for settling in a district of Saskatchewan, and George Exton Lloyd (a deputation Secretary of the Society) volunteered to accompany it.
In May 1919 the Bush Church-Aid Society for Australia and Tasmania was founded to alert people in the cities to the needs of the back blocks and to raise funds.
Immigrants streamed into Western Australia and Victoria and to meet this need there were some exciting developments followed: setting up of hospitals in four States, Anglican Flying Medical Services (1937–67), the 'Flying Parson' (Leonard Daniels from Woking to Wilcannia, NSW in 1922), the School of the Air, children's Hostels, Mail-bag Sunday School and training of ordinands and women workers.
After the War, in 1946, Paris, Cannes, Ostend, Amsterdam and Oslo reopened, but a number of churches were destroyed by enemy action (The Hague by the RAF in error).
The Society was directly involved in the establishing of: Ayia Napa (Cyprus 1993), Leipzig (1995), Warsaw (1996) and Gdansk (1999), Nord (Pas-de-Calais based in Lille 1998), Kyiv (Ukraine 1999), Prague (an Anglican church in an Old Catholic diocese ecumenical project 2000), Klaipeda (Lithuania 2000), Poitou-Charentes (6 rural centres 1999), Brittany (rural based on Ploermel and two other centres 2000).
Success could be noted where chaplains were visionary and entrepreneurial, sensitive to accessible worship styles, good Bible teachers with a heart for people and gentle evangelists.
The second Bishop of Fulham (W M Selwyn) was a sitting member of the Colonial and Continental Church Society committee at the time of his consecration.