Treade soft, for if you wake this knight alone, You raise an host, religion’s champion, His country’s staff, right bold distributor, His neighbour’s guard, the poor man’s almoner, Who dies with works about him as he did, Shall rise attended most triumphantly. The Town Church of Plympton, originally dedicated to Thomas à Becket, but, when rebuilt in the fifteenth century, to St. Maurice, consists of a nave, north and south aisles, and a fine tower at the west end, in the Perpendicular style of the fifteenth century, and a chancel, as at St. Mary’s, of an earlier date, having an interesting sedilia and good decorated window at the east end—speaking of the masonry, and not of the glass, which is extremely bad. The south porch has a vaulted roof and parvise over, as at the other church. Much has been done of late years towards improving this parish church, but its internal effect is entirely marred by the unsightly plastered roof of the nave, and the close pews or pens. The nave-roof, I find by reference to the vestry book, was re-constructed in the year 1752, after the model of the new roof in Stoke Damerel Church, then recently put up. That was the dark age of English taste. How very dark may be imagined from this plagiarism. There are memorial windows in this church to members of the Treby family, and monuments to the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, Admiral Cotton, and other local celebrities. The following epitaph is the most curious:— Saml. Snelling, Gent. Twise Maior of this town, he died the 20 Day of Nov. 1624. The man whose body That here doth lye Beganne to live When he did dye. Good faith in life And death he proved, And was of God And man belov’d; Now he liveth In Heaven’s joy, And never more To feel annoy. The shaft of a large granite cross, probably the market cross, was discovered about forty-two years ago embedded in a wall of the Guildhall, taken down in the course of some alterations. In the register of this parish are some curious entries. Thus, there is record of a plague which carried off a great number of the inhabitants; and on one occasion forty marriages are said to have taken place in one day, by proclamation, at the Market Cross. This was during the Commonwealth, when the religious ceremony was ignored, and against the entry some stout Royalist or disappointed bachelor has written: “This was the hour and power of darkness.” We have yet to touch on the politics of the town.