shared the fate of the constables.  With great courage and determination the headborough rose to his feet and again attempted to enforce his authority, but with no better result.  When he picked himself up for a second time, it was to pass from the scene of his humiliation and, incidentally, out of the life of the young man who had defied his authority.

The young apprentice was Thomas Borrow (born December 1758), eighth and posthumous child of John Borrow and of Mary his wife, of Trethinnick (the House on the Hill), in the neighbouring parish of St Cleer, two and a half miles north of Liskeard.  At the age of fifteen, Thomas had begun to work upon his father’s farm.  At nineteen he was apprenticed to Edmund Hambley, maltster, of Liskeard, who five years later, in his official capacity as Constable of the Hundred of Liskeard, was to be publicly defied and twice knocked down by his insubordinate apprentice.

A trifling affair in itself, this village fracas was to have a lasting effect upon the career of Thomas Borrow.  He was given to understand by his kinsmen that he need not look to them for sympathy or assistance in his wrongdoing.  The Borrows of Trethinnick could trace back further than the parish registers record (1678).  They were godly and law-abiding people, who had stood for the king and lost blood and harvests in his cause.  If a son of the house disgrace himself, the responsibility must be his, not theirs.  In the opinion of his family, Thomas Borrow had, by his vigorous conduct towards the headborough, who was also his master, placed himself outside the radius of their sympathy.  At this period Trethinnick, a farm of some fifty acres in extent, was in the hands of Henry, Thomas’ eldest brother, who since his mother’s death, ten years before, had assumed the responsibility of launching his youngest brother upon the world.

Fearful of the result of his assault on the headborough, Thomas Borrow left St Cleer with great suddenness, and for five months disappeared entirely.  On 29th December he presented himself as a recruit before Captain Morshead, [3] in command of a detachment of the Coldstream Guards, at that time stationed in the duchy.

Thomas Borrow was no stranger to military training.  For five years he had been in the Yeomanry Militia, which involved a short annual training.  In the regimental records he is credited with five years “former service.”  He remained for eight years with the Coldstream Guards, most of the time being passed in London barracks.  He had no money with which to purchase a commission, and his rise was slow and deliberate.  At the end of nine months he was promoted to the rank of corporal, and five years later he became a sergeant.  In 1792 he was transferred as Sergeant-Major to the First, or West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, whose headquarters were at East Dereham in Norfolk.

It was just previous to this transfer that Sergeant Borrow had his famous encounter in Hyde Park with Big Ben Bryan, the champion of England; he “whose skin was brown and dusky as that of a toad.”  It was a combat in which “even Wellington or Napoleon would have been heartily glad to cry for quarter ere the lapse of five minutes, and even the Blacksmith Tartar would, perhaps, have shrunk from the opponent with whom, after having had a dispute with him,” Sergeant Borrow “engaged in single combat for one hour, at the end of which time the champions shook hands and retired, each having experienced quite enough of the other’s prowess.” [4a]

At East Dereham Thomas Borrow met Ann [4b] Perfrement, [4c] a strikingly handsome girl of twenty, whose dark eyes first flashed upon him from over the footlights.  It was, and still is, the custom for small touring companies to engage their supernumeraries in the towns in which they were playing.  The pretty daughter of Farmer Perfrement, whose farm lay about one and a half miles out of East Dereham, was one of those who took occasion to earn a few shillings for pin-money.  The Perfrements were of Huguenot stock.  On the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, their ancestors had fled from their native town of Caen and taken refuge in East Anglia, there to enjoy the liberty of conscience denied them in their beloved Normandy.  Thomas Borrow made the acquaintance of the young probationer, and promptly settled any aspirations that she may have had towards the stage by marrying her.  The wedding took place on 11th February 1793 at East Dereham church, best known as the resting-place of the poet Cowper, Ann being twenty-one and Thomas thirty-four years of age.

For the next seven years Thomas and Ann Borrow moved about with the West Norfolk Militia, which now marched off into Essex, a few months later doubling back again into Norfolk.  Then it dived into Kent and for a time hovered about the Cinque Ports, Thomas Borrow in the meantime being promoted to the rank of quarter-master (27th May 1795).  It was not until he had completed fourteen years of service that he received a commission.  On 27th February 1798 he became Adjutant in the same regiment, a promotion that carried with it a captain’s rank.

Whilst at Sandgate Mrs Borrow became acquainted with John Murray, the son of the founder of the publishing house from which, forty-four years later, were to be published the books of her second son, then unborn.  The widow of John Murray the First had married in 1795 Lieutenant Henry Paget of the West Norfolk Militia.  Years later (27th March 1843) George Borrow wrote to John Murray, Junr., third of the line:

“I am at present in Norwich with my mother, who has been ill, but is now, thank God, recovering fast.  She begs leave to send her kind remembrances to Mr Murray.  She knew him at Sandgate in Kent forty-six years ago, when he came to see his mother, Mrs P[aget].  She was also acquainted with his sister, Miss Jane Murray, [5] who used to ride on horseback with her on the Downs.  She says Captain [sic] Paget once cooked a dinner for Mrs P. and herself; and sat down to table with his cook’s apron on.  Is not this funny?  Does it not ‘beat the Union,’ as the Yankees say?”

The first child of the marriage was born in 1800, it is not known exactly when or where.  This was John, “the brother some three years older than myself,” whose beauty in infancy was so great “that people, especially those of the poorer classes, would follow the nurse who carried him about in order to look at and bless his lovely face,” [6a] with its rosy cheeks and smiling, blue-eyed innocence.  On one occasion even, an attempt was made to snatch him from the arms of his nurse as she was about to enter a coach.  The parents became a prey to anxiety; for the child seems to have possessed many endearing qualities as well as good looks.  He was quick and clever, and when the time came for instruction, “he mastered his letters in a few hours, and in a day or two could decipher the names of