The chancel contained the tomb, dated 1394, of John Hawley, who died in 1408, and his two wives—Joan who died in 1394, and Alice who died in 1403. Hawley was a rich merchant, and in the war against France equipped at his own expense a fleet, which seemed to have been of good service to him, for in 1389 he captured thirty-four vessels from Rochelle, laden with 1,500 tons of wine. John Stow, a famous antiquary of the sixteenth century, mentioned this man in his Annals as "the merchant of Dartmouth who in 1390 waged war with the navies and ships of the ports of our own shores," and "took 34 shippes laden with wyne to the sum of fifteen hundred tunnes," so we considered Hawley must have been a pirate of the first degree.
There was a brass in the chancel with this inscription, the moral of which we had seen expressed in so many different forms elsewhere:
Behold thyselfe by me,
I was as thou art now:
And them in time shalt be
Even dust as I am now;
So doth this figure point to thee
The form and state of each degree.
ANCIENT DOOR IN ST. SAVIOUR'S CHURCH