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, {3a} 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.