At the east end of the church, on the outside, the apprentices of Totnes were wont to sharpen their knives, and the stones are curiously rubbed away in the process. The registers of Totnes are very early and of great interest, as containing much information concerning the old merchant families and the landed gentry of the neighbourhood with whom they married. The nearest great manorial house is that of Dartington, which was a mansion of the Hollands, Dukes of Exeter, and now belongs to the Champernownes. It possesses ruins of the splendid hall, of the date of Richard II., whose device, a white hart chained, appears repeated several times. On the opposite side of the river is the most interesting and unique parsonage of Little Hempston, a perfectly untouched building of the fourteenth century, exactly the priest's house of the time of Chaucer. The house consists of a structure occupying four sides of a tiny quadrangle. It has a hall, buttery, kitchen, and solar. Every window, except that of the hall, looks into the little court, which is just twenty feet square, and the rooms accordingly are gloomy. The late John Keble, who was often a visitor at Dartington Parsonage, would, when missing, be found there, dreaming over the life of the parish priest in the Middle Ages. A very singular circumstance is connected with the old Champernownes of Dartington. Gawaine Champernowne was married to the Lady Roberta, daughter of the Count de Montgomeri, leader of the Huguenots. On account of her misconduct she was divorced in 1582, by Act of Parliament passed for the purpose. However, oddly to relate, no sooner were they divorced than they patched up their quarrel and continued to live together as husband and wife, and had a large family. Happily the eldest son and heir was born before the Act was passed, or in all certainty he would have been illegitimate in the eye of the law. But the two younger sons and three daughters were the issue after the divorce. The old south gate of Totnes still remains, and at one time the chamber over it was a public-house. It has since been converted into a reading-room, and contains some good wood-carving of the Tudor age and a fine plaster cornice. On the north side of the church are the remains of the old priory of S. Mary, founded by Judael, Earl of Totnes, at the Conquest. These have been transformed into guildhall, prisons, and sexton's houses. The priory must have been a modest building. It stood just within the old town walls, which may be traced in fairly good preservation thence to the south gate. The church of Totnes is a vicarial church, as Judael granted it to the Benedictine Abbey of Saints Sergius and Bacchus at Angers. The priors had the right of presentation to the parish church up to the time of the dissolution of the religious houses, except during the wars with France, when the Crown appointed, this being an alien priory.