ntous episode. The victory of Waterloo gave Europe
peace, and in 1816 the Borrow family returned to Norwich, there to pass
many quiet years. In 1819 Captain Borrow was pensioned--eight shillings
a day. From 1816 till his father's death in 1824 Borrow lived in Norwich
with his family. Their home was in King's Court, Willow Lane, a modest
one-storey house in a _cul de sac_, which we have already described. In
King's Court, Willow Lane, Borrow lived at intervals until his marriage
in 1840, and his mother continued to live in the house until, in 1849,
she agreed to join her son and daughter-in-law at Oulton. Yet the house
comes little into the story of Borrow's life, as do the early houses of
many great men of letters, nor do subsequent houses come into his story;
the house at Oulton and the house at Hereford Square are equally barren
of association; the broad highway and the windy heath were Borrow's
natural home. He was never a 'civilised' being; he never shone in
drawing-rooms. Let us, however, return to Borrow's schooldays, of which
the records are all too scanty, and not in the least invigorating. The
Norwich Grammar School has an interesting tradition. We pass to the
cathedral through the beautiful Erpingham Gate built about 1420 by Sir
Thomas Erpingham, and we find the school on the left. It was originally
a chapel, and the porch is at least five hundred years old. The
schoolroom is sufficiently old-world-looking for us to imagine the
schoolboys of past generations sitting at the various desks. The school
was founded in 1547, but the registers have been lost, and so we know
little of its famous pupils of earlier days. Lord Nelson and Rajah
Brooke are the two names of men of action that stand out most honourably
in modern times among the scholars[38]. In literature Borrow had but one
schoolfellow, who afterwards came to distinction--James Martineau.
Borrow's headmaster was the Reverend Edward Valpy, who held the office
from 1810 to 1829, and to whom is credited the destruction of the
school archives. Borrow's two years of the Grammar School were not
happy ones. Borrow, as we have shown, was not of the stuff of which
happy schoolboys are made. He had been a wanderer--Scotland, Ireland,
and many parts of England had assisted in a fragmentary education; he
was now thirteen years of age, and already a vagabond at heart. But let
us hear Dr. Augustus Jessopp, who was headmaster of the same Grammar
School from 1859 to 1879. Wr