The oldest part of the church is Norman, but of those older lords of Clovelly no record survives. They are as though they had never existed. Sir Walter Robert Cary is the oldest represented here, on a brass dated 1540. Other Carys survive in epitaph: William, who died in 1652, aged 76, who (it is claimed for him) not only served “three Princes, Queen Elizabeth, King James, and King Charles I.,” but his generation as well; and Sir “Robert Cary, Kt. (Sonne and Heyre of William), gentleman of the Privy Chamber vnto King Charles II., who, having served faithfully the glorious Prince, Charles I., in the long civil warr against his Rebellious subjects, and both him and his sonne as Justice of the Peace, died a Bachelor, in the 65th yeare of his age, An. Dom. 1675. _Peritura perituris relique_.” And so at last to the Williams family and the Hamlyns. In the days of those older lords, when the country was thinly populated, travel a penance, and the delights of the picturesque unthought of, Clovelly of course did not grow; and in our own times, now that beauty of situation is an asset and distinctly a factor in the value of land, and projectors of railways and hotels are currently reported to have eyes upon desirable sites, the Hamlyns have resisted all offers. So Clovelly will probably long remain unspoiled. It has two inns, the old “New Inn,” up-along, as we say here, and the “Red Lion,” “down tu kaay”--_not_, please, “down upon the key,” after the style and pronunciation of the outer world. If one could conceive such a fantastic thing in Clovelly as a street directory, it would consist almost wholly of those features, “Up-along,” “Down-along,” North Hill, and Quay. “The New Inn and Hotel,” as it now styles itself, does so with some show of reason, for the original “New Inn”--_when_ it was new I cannot conceive--still stands upon one side of the road, and a really new building has been erected opposite: the “Hotel” referred to in the new style, without doubt. There, in the larger rooms of modern ideas, guests breakfast, lunch, or dine, and those unfortunate ones who cannot be accommodated with a bedroom in the old house across the way, sleep. Unfortunate, I say, because at Clovelly one wants to fare after the old style. For years familiar (as thousands of people who have never been to Clovelly must be) with the well-known view of the street showing the “New Inn” and the quaint little soldier and sailor mannikins that serve as windmills on its projecting sign, had I cherished a resolution to stay in the old hostelry; and it had now at last come to pass. Up narrow, twisting stairs was my bedroom, looking out, through clusters of roses, upon the street; and being thus gratified in the main object, it was a small matter that I breakfasted and dined in the new building across the way. [Illustration: “UP-ALONG,” CLOVELLY.]