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.