The churches in Dartmouth were well worth a visit.  St. Saviour’s, built in 1372, contained an elaborately carved oak screen, one of the finest in the county and of singular beauty, erected in the fifteenth century.  It was in perfect condition, and spread above the chancel in the form of a canopy supporting the rood-loft, with beautiful carving and painted figures in panels.  The pulpit was of stone, richly carved and gilt, and showed the Tudor rose and portcullis, with the thistle, harp, and fleur-de-lys; there were also some seat-ends nicely carved and some old chandeliers dated 1701—­the same date as the fine one we saw in the church at Totnes.

[Illustration:  ST. SAVIOUR’S CHURCH, DARTMOUTH.]

The chancel contained the tomb, dated 1394, of John Hawley, who died in 1408, and his two wives—­Joan who died in 1394, and Alice who died in 1403.  Hawley was a rich merchant, and in the war against France equipped at his own expense a fleet, which seemed to have been of good service to him, for in 1389 he captured thirty-four vessels from Rochelle, laden with 1,500 tons of wine.  John Stow, a famous antiquary of the sixteenth century, mentioned this man in his Annals as “the merchant of Dartmouth who in 1390 waged war with the navies and ships of the ports of our own shores,” and “took 34 shippes laden with wyne to the sum of fifteen hundred tunnes,” so we considered Hawley must have been a pirate of the first degree.

There was a brass in the chancel with this inscription, the moral of which we had seen expressed in so many different forms elsewhere: 

  Behold thyselfe by me,
    I was as thou art now: 
  And them in time shalt be
    Even dust as I am now;
  So doth this figure point to thee
  The form and state of each degree.

[Illustration:  ANCIENT DOOR IN ST. SAVIOUR’S CHURCH]

The gallery at the west end was built in 1631, and there was a door in the church of the same date, but the ironwork on this was said to be two hundred years older, having probably been transferred to it from a former door.  It was one of the most curious we had ever seen.  Two animals which we took to be lions were impaled on a tree with roots, branches, and leaves.  One lion was across the tree just under the top branches, and the other lion was across it at the bottom just above the roots, both standing with their heads to the right and facing the beholder; but the trunk of the tree seemed to have grown through each of their bodies, giving the impression that they were impaled upon it.  The date of the woodwork (1631) was carved underneath the body of the lion at the top, the first figure in the date appearing to the left and the remaining three to the right, while the leaves on the tree resembled those of the oak.  Whether the lions were connected in any way with those on the borough coat-of-arms we did not know, but this bore a lion on either side of it, the hinder portion of their bodies hanging over each side