Lloyd's negative comments on the "dissenters" reflected the Church of England's belated attempts to counter the inroads made by Methodists with coloured Bermudians. Although the Church of England is the established church, and as such was the only church originally permitted to operate in Bermuda, Presbyterians and Methodists were permitted to have separate churches and to conduct their own services during the 18th Century, but were not permitted to conduct baptisms, weddings, and especially funerals (the only civil cemeteries in Bermuda prior to the 20th Century having all been attached to the churchyards of the nine Church of England parish churches), which were the remit of the established church, until about the 1820s. The Wesleyan Methodists sought to include enslaved blacks resulting in 1800 in the passage of a law by the Parliament of Bermuda barring any but Church of England and Presbyterian ministers from preaching. In December, 1800, the Methodist Reverend John Stephenson was incarcerated for six months for preaching to slaves. The Methodists also promoted education of slaves. The Church of England had generally been unwelcoming to slaves, and was never able to catch up to the Methodist's lead. In 1869, the African Methodist Episcopal Church was launched in Bermuda, and today the Anglican Church of Bermuda (as the Church of England in Bermuda was re-titled in 1978), though the largest denomination, has a disproportionately white membership.