348 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
which was heretofore navigable up to this towne, and still is by 
small boats and barges with the help of the tide which floweth 
nearly a mile above it. A town famous in history for the landing 
here of the Trojan Brute, the founder of the British nation accord- 
ing to the opinion of antient writers, but of late years ridiculed by 
many learned men as fabulous. There is yet remaining towards the 
lower end of the town a certain rock still called Brute’s Stone, which 
tradition here, more pleasantly than positively, says is that which 
Brute first put his feet upon when he came ashore. This neat and 
clean town standeth eight miles to the north-east of Dartmouth, and 
twenty miles to the south-west of Exeter. It was sometime walled 
about, as appears by the gates yet standing, made a Corporation by 
K. John, inabled with many immunities by K. Henry 3rd, and 
sendeth two Burgesses to Parliament. Of so great consideration was 
it heretofore that the shore adjoining was thereof called Tottonesian 
Littus. But hereof let not this be thought too much.” 
Nor do I think that I am drawing too much on my imagination 
in supposing that the architectural remains to which I have 
referred, and the grand history of the old borough, may to some 
extent have influenced Prince in accepting the vicarage without 
the vicarage-house for the small sum of £50 a year. And if this 
was so, the beauty and associations of the building he was to 
minister in must have strengthened his determination, for the parish 
church of St. Mary, Totnes, of which Prince now became the 
vicar, must at that time have been a noble building. It had not 
then suffered at the hands of the eighteenth century churchwardens, 
who disfigured it with huge and unsightly galleries, cutting away 
the stonework of its handsome columns to fit their work into, and 
white-washing the pillars and walls and one side of its magnificent 
stone screen. Nor had the baldachino, so out of place, been then 
erected in the chancel. There were to be seen also many curious — 
epitaphs and brasses which have long since disappeared, but some 
of the inscriptions on which, thanks to Prince, have been preserved. 
The original handsome carved-wood ceiling was likewise in exist- 
ence, the portion in the chancel having been removed only about 
sixty years since. 
I can well imagine the delight with which Prince must have 
viewed his noble parish church, some portion if not all the chancel 
of which must date at least from the thirteenth century, and parts 
of which may have been the remains of the church which Judhael 
