The last entry in the minute book of the presbytery of Laggan, previous to December 30th, 1690, was on July 31st, 1681. “The meeting see fit to lay aside their ordinary business at this extraordinary meeting, only, if time will permit, we will hear the exegeses of the two young men who are upon their trials.” It is more than likely, as Dr. Briggs says in the appendix to American Presbyterianism: “That Mr. Makemy was probably licensed in the autumn of 1681 and after several appropriate trials and having preached for Mr. Hempton at Burt, April 2d, 1682, he was ordained to go out to America.” Two years previous, or 1680, Colonel William Stevens laid before the Presbytery of Laggan by letter the desire of the Presbyterian families in the lower counties of Maryland on the eastern shore, for a minister to labor in that part of the country. The clergy of the established church in Virginia and Maryland were not those who would appeal to earnest and pious nonconformists; Hammond in “Leah and Rachel or Two Fruitful Sisters, Virginia and Maryland” (London, 1656) used strong language in speaking of the supply of clergy from the old land, “Yet many came, such as wore Black coats, and could babble in a Pulpit, roar in a Tavern, exact from their Parishioners and rather by their dissoluteness destroy, than feed their Flocks;” to this may be added the testimony of Bishop Meade of Virginia (1829–1862) “Immense were the difficulties in getting a full supply of ministers of any character, and of those who came, how few were faithful and duly qualified for the station.” It is a well established fact that some who were discarded from the English Church obtained livings in Virginia, there was not only defective preaching but most evil living among them. One of them was for years president of a Jockey Club and another fought a duel in sight of the very church in which he had performed the solemn offices of religion. Governor Berkeley’s testimony in the matter has been frequently quoted, “As to religious teaching—we have forty-eight parishes and our ministers are well paid and by my consent should be better if they would pray oftener and preach less, but as of all other commodities, so of this, the worst are sent to us, and we have few that we could boast of since the persecution in Cromwell’s tyranny drove divers worthy men hither.”