In 1671 Sir Thomas Modyford replied to enquiries of His Majesty’s Commissioners that: “Their Lordships will find among the statutes with these presented a law for the maintenance of the ministry; until this His Majesty was piously pleased to pay five ministers £100 each, but since they were left upon the charity of the inhabitants, he has encouraged them to enlarge their payments at St. Katherine’s, where he lives, from £50 to £140, and at Port Royal £200. At St. Katherine’s, Mr. Howser, a Switzer, officiates; at Port Royal, Mr. Maxwell, a Scotchman; at St. John’s, Mr. Lemmings, an Englishman, lately sent by my Lord of London; and in St. Andrew’s, Mr. Zellers, another Switzer; all these are orthodox men, of good life and conversation, live comfortably on their means, and preach every Sunday. Mr. Pickering, of St. Thomas and St. David’s, at Port Morant and Yallows, is lately dead, and they have none to supply his place. But, alas, these five do not preach to one-third of the island, and the plantations are at such distance that it is impossible to make up congregations; but they meet at each others’ houses, as the primitive Christians did, and there pray, read a chapter, sing a psalm, and home again; so that did not the accessors to this island come so well instructed in the article of faith, it might well be feared the Christian religion would be quite forgot. I have, my Lords, and shall use all the persuasive means I can to advance this people’s knowledge of the true God, as also of all Christian and moral virtues.” In 1675 a Mr. Crandfield reported that there were six churches and four ministers, and two years later there were but three clergy in the island. In a MS., once in the House of Assembly Library, entitled “The State of the Church in His Majesty’s Island of Jamaica,” dated May 1675 (which was allowed to perish after Richard Hill quoted from it in 1864), it was stated, after enumerating the then stipended ministers of religion: “All the other parishes on the northside, and St. Elizabeth’s on the south, are great and ill-settled, without churches, they being almost planted in Sir Thomas Lynch’s time, who ordered Glebe lands to be reserved in two or three places in every parish, that in time may prove convenient.” In 1677 Howser and Zellers, “His Majesty’s chaplains in Jamaica,” petitioned that they might receive the pay promised to them, and declared that “the island, in regard of its great poverty, is not able to allow maintenance for four chaplains resident there.” In the same year the Bishop of London represented the ill-usage of ministers in the Plantations, and their too great subjection to the vestrymen, especially in Jamaica; and the Lords of Trade and Plantations resolved that the clergy should, in future, “make a part of the vestry in the regulation of all matters, except in the settlement of their maintenance.”