Officer of the East India Company. Son of John Strachey. Educated at Westminster (adm. 1787) and Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1795; MA 1822). Writer EICS (Madras) 1796; Assistant in the Military, Secret and Political Department, 1798; Joint Assay Master, 1807; Private Secretary to the Governor, 1808; Judge and Magistrate of the Zillah of Cuddapah, 1809; Junior Secretary to Government, 1812; Chief Secretary, 1813; retired 1824. Strachey was Southey’s ‘substance’ (an older boy assigned to induct a new pupil into school rules and rituals) at Westminster School. During their schooldays, Strachey (perhaps in response to the scandal surrounding The Flagellant) was one of many acquaintances who treated Southey ‘like a scabby sheep’, dropping him. They were later only partially reconciled, but enough for Southey to commemorate Strachey’s departure for India in 1798 with a sonnet (‘Fair be thy fortunes in the distant land’) published in the Morning Post. Southey attempted to maintain their correspondence, but it had lapsed by April 1805 when he confessed that as Strachey had not replied to his letters, he would ‘not ... write to him again, nor in any way force myself upon him.’