The other boys got off with lighter punishment, but Borrow was the ring-leader.

Those were the 'good old times'! I have heard Dr.M.say that not for another life would he go through the misery he suffered as 'town boy' at that school.
Miss Frances Power Cobbe, who lived next door to Borrow in Hereford Square, Brompton, in the 'sixties, as we shall see later, has a word to say on the point: Dr.Martineau once told me that he and Borrow had been schoolfellows at Norwich some sixty years before.

Borrow had persuaded several of his other companions to rob their fathers' tills, and then the party set forth to join some smugglers on the coast.

By degrees the truants all fell out of line and were picked up, tired and hungry, along the road, and brought back to Norwich School, where condign chastisement awaited them.
George Borrow, it seems, received his large share _horsed_ on James Martineau's back! The early connection between the two old men, as I knew them, was irresistibly comic to my mind.
Somehow when I asked Mr.Borrow once to come and meet some friends at our house he accepted our invitation as usual, but, on finding that Dr.Martineau was to be of the party, hastily withdrew his acceptance on a transparent excuse; nor did he ever after attend our little assemblies without first ascertaining that Dr.Martineau was not to be present.[43] James Martineau died in 1900, but the last of Borrow's schoolfellows to die was, I think, Mr.William Edmund Image, a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant for Suffolk.

He resided at Herringswell House, near Mildenhall, where he died in 1903, aged 96 years.
Mr.Valpy of the Norwich Grammar School is scarcely to be blamed that he was not able to make separate rules for a quite abnormal boy.