The old school-house has a tablet in the wall, with the date of 1825 and then these words, “Built by subscription | and endowed with Lowton Meadow in Moreton | for supporting a school for ever | by the Rev. William Davy | curate of this parish.” His motives were set forth in his _Apology for giving Lowton Meadow to the Parish of Lustleigh_, a leaflet that he printed with his own printing-press. “Whereas from my long service in that church I have a strong regard and hearty desire for its present and future welfare, and being from repeated proofs too unhappily convinced of the unœconomical and profligate disposition of my immediate successors, and being willing in my lifetime to do the greatest and most lasting good with the little property I have in fee, I do hereby with the consent of my son (who by good conduct and kind providence is sufficiently provided for) offer to give to the officiating minister and churchwardens of the parish of Lustleigh all that one close or meadow called Morice or Lowton Meadow in Moreton Hampstead to have and to hold the same with the rents and profits thereof from and after the 25th of March 1824 in trust for ever for the support and maintenance of a school for poor children in the parish of Lustleigh aforesaid in the house to be erected in the parish town for that purpose.” The inscription and the leaflet both have the words ‘for ever,’ and these words are also on two patens that he had given to the church. They are “for the use of the Sacrament for ever”; and there is the same inscription on a chalice given by Edward Basill, who was Rector from 1660 to 1698. No doubt Davy copied Basill here, and hence applied ‘for ever’ to his later gift; and there is no question what ‘for ever’ meant--his gifts were to be kept. The patens have not yet been sold, but the meadow has. The adjoining owner wanted it, and wanted it very badly, as he had erected a pair of semi-detached residences close up to the hedge. And it was sold him for £300, or £25 less than Davy gave for it a century ago. As a matter of business, the thing seemed indefensible; and as a matter of sentiment, it certainly was vile. Sir Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton, and in the zenith of his fame the Corporation made him Mayor. He acknowledged this by sending down his portrait, painted by himself, to be hung in the Town Hall. Finding it was worth a good round sum, the Corporation sold it.--Of course, Parson Davy was not as eminent a man as Sir Joshua, but he was the only man of any eminence who ever lived in Lustleigh, at any rate, the only one in the Dictionary of National Biography. It was at Lustleigh that he did the work on which his reputation rests--I have described it in my first _Small Talk_, pages 32 to 34--and for forty years, as curate for an absent pluralist, he was devoted to the interests of the place. It was as scandalous for Lustleigh to sell a gift of his as for Plympton to have sold Sir Joshua’s.