The last, unexpected, child of Robert and Edith Southey, and their only surviving son, he was always known as ‘Cuthbert’ to his family. He was born on 24 February 1819 and was indulged by his parents and older sisters. He was mainly educated at home. In 1836–1837 he accompanied his father on a lengthy trip to the West Country, and, in 1838, was one of the party on Southey’s final foreign journey, to France. Southey raised the money to send him to Queen’s College, Oxford (1837–1841), but Cuthbert did not display the precocious intellectual talent of his elder brother, Herbert. Cuthbert entered the Church and pursued a solid, if unspectacular, career, including terms as Vicar of Ardleigh 1851–1855, Kingsbury Episcopi 1855–1879, St James’s, Dudley 1879–1885 and Askham 1885–1888. He was married three times: to Christina Maclachlan (1819–1851) in 1842; to Henrietta Nunn (b. 1824) in 1853; and to Justina Davies (b. 1841) in 1871. Cuthbert was deeply opposed to Southey’s marriage to Caroline Bowles and edited one of the rival posthumous versions of Southey’s letters, Life and Correspondence (1849–1850). Cuthbert was embarrassed by many of his father’s views, including his religious unorthodoxy, enthusiasm for wine and virulent condemnation of some public figures. All of these aspects of Southey’s life were suppressed or explained away in Cuthbert’s edition.