About 1626 Hugh Campbell, a layman from Ayrshire, established a meeting on the last Friday of each month at his house in Oldstone, two miles from Antrim.
According to Alexander Gordon, it was influential, and furnished the model of the Worcestershire agreement framed by Richard Baxter in 1652, and adopted in numerous English counties in place of the parliamentary presbyterianism; and through John Howe, a member of the Antrim meeting (1671-5) became the parent of the county unions formed among English dissenters after the passing of the Toleration Act 1688.
The fame of the meeting brought to Antrim, about 1628, a company of English separatists and an Arminian, John Freeman, but they were unsuccessful in making proselytes.
Ridge was one of the five beneficed clergy who, at the primary visitation of Henry Leslie at Lisburn in July 1636, refused to subscribe to the new canons, which were to assimilate the doctrine and ceremonies of the Irish church to those of England.
Alexander Gordon asserts that there had been no actual presbyterianism in Ireland to this point, and the question of the form of church government had not been seriously raised, and that was Leslie's action, prompted by John Bramhall, that laid the foundation of a revolt against episcopal authority.