Mr. William Liston reports: “September 29th, 1680, that Mr. Francis Makemy desires some more time and that he is diligent.” Again, March 9th, 1681: “Upon the good report we get of Messrs. Francis Makemy and Mr. Alexander Marshall, the meeting think fit to put them upon trials in order to their being licentiates to preach and they name I. Timothy 1:5 to Mr. Makemy.”
Again, April 20th, 1681, Francis Makemy delivered his homily upon I. Timothy 1:5 and was approved. Matt. 11:28 was appointed to him for the next meeting.
May 25th, 1681, Mr. Francis Makemy delivered his private homily on Matt. 11:28 and was approved.
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.”
Again, according to Meade, “It is not wonderful that disaffection should take place and dissent begin.” It was under these conditions and after Lord Howard of Effingham succeeded Culpepper in Virginia, having received royal instructions “to allow no person to use a printing press, on any occasion whatsoever,” that there came into Virginia the man whose influence in the cause of religious liberty in the colonies must be reckoned as second to that of but few others—this was Francis Makemie, the Irish founder of organized Presbyterianism in America. He came by the way of the Barbadoes and settled at Rehoboth by the river and founded the Presbyterian Church at Snow Hill, Maryland, 1683. He was earnest, fearless and indefatigable in his labors for the spiritual uplift of the people with whom his lot was cast, and it is worth noting that in those days of the intolerance of the established church, that the Presbyterian denomination began its existence in a colony founded by a Roman Catholic nobleman, Lord Baltimore. Having raised the blue banner in Maryland, he traveled by land as far as Norfolk and proceeded to Carolina, where it seems he labored among the people until the spring of the following year, as he was in North Carolina in May.