Central to CMS efforts in Sierra Leone and further afield was the role of 'native clergy' educated at Fourah Bay College in Freetown. As Hair points out, the importance of clerical education in Freetown is reflected in how just under half of the 112 'native clergy' who served the CMS in West Africa between 1843 and 1899 were trained at Fourah Bay College (Hair, 1962, pp. 71-72; Hair, 1964, p. 15). The endeavours of missionaries educated at Fourah Bay College also had wider cultural and economic effects through the secular attractions of their educational work, which influenced the emergence of a 'class of Western educated elite' in Yorubaland. African languages were used in evangelization, and the translation of the Bible into Yoruba and other West African languages promoted new standards of linguistic work. Ajayi points out how Crowther, following his ordination in London in 1843, returned to Sierra Leone and began preparing 'for a mission to Abeokuta by beginning to conduct services in the Yoruba language' (Ajayi, 1969, pp. xiv-xv, p. 30, pp. 33-34, pp. 67-77, pp. 223-224; Ayandele, 1966, p. 12; Peel, 2003, pp. 1-8, pp. 10-11; Hair, 1966, pp. 127-129).