Thomas Wedgwood (1771–1805): Chemist. Third son of the potter Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795; DNB). He inherited a substantial fortune of the death of his father and dedicated this to supporting writers and scientists. He was a patron of Beddoes’ Pneumatic Medical Institution and of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He participated in Davy’s Bristol experiments with nitrous oxide and later attended his lectures at the Royal Institution.

William Webb (c. 1771–1845): Deputy Commissary-General in the British Army. Webb had written to Southey in 1817 to defend the quality of the horses sent out to Portugal in 1808 to pull the British Army’s artillery and Southey had included Webb’s defence at History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (London, 1823–1832), I, pp. 554–555. The poor quality of the artillery horses was one of the reasons given for British forces not advancing after their victory in the Battle of Vimeiro (1808). In 1824 he solicited Southey’s advice on finding a publisher.

Elijah Waring (c. 1788–1857): Writer. Born in Alton, Hampshire, he was the son of Jeremiah Waring. He moved to Wales in c. 1810, living in Swansea and then Neath. He established the short-lived English-language periodical The Cambrian Visitor: A Monthly Miscellany in 1813. In 1817 he married Deborah (c. 1786–1867), sister of the prominent Quaker ironmaster and philanthropist Joseph Tregelles Price (1784–1854; DNB). Waring himself later abandoned Quakerism and joined the Wesleyan Methodists.

James White (1787–1885): Younger brother of Henry Kirke and (John) Neville White. He attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduating in 1815; Southey sent him some encouraging letters when White was disappointed by his academic performance. White never married and became a clergyman. Initially, he held difficult curacies in industrial parishes in West Bromwich and then St George’s, Manchester (1826–42) – Southey helped him acquire the latter post.

Henry Kirke White (1785–1806): The son of a butcher in Nottingham, White was a studious boy who, after being articled to a lawyer, learned classical languages and, with help from Capel Lofft (1753–1824 ; DNB), patron of Robert Bloomfield, published Clifton Grove, a Sketch in Verse, with other Poems in 1803. The book was violently attacked in the Monthly Review (February 1804); Southey then wrote to White offering encouragement.

Shadrach Weeks [also spelled ‘Weekes’] (dates unknown): Childhood friend of Southey. A servant of Elizabeth Tyler, Southey’s aunt, and a recruit to Pantisocracy.

John Taylor (1781–1864): Publisher and writer. Born in Retford, Nottinghamshire, he was the son of the bookseller James Taylor (1752–1823) and his wife Sarah (b. 1760). Educated at Lincoln and Retford grammar schools, he moved to London in 1803, where he worked in the publishing and bookselling trade. In 1806 he set up his own business with James Augustus Hessey (1785–1870). The firm’s staple fare was sermons, moral tracts and homilies.

Thomas Vardon (c. 1758-1836): Iron merchant and manufacturer in Greenwich, where he was a partner in the Crowley works and an important supplier to the Royal Navy. Vardon met Southey on his tour of the Netherlands in 1815. They had a mutual friend in John William Knox (1784–1862) and Vardon also knew the family of the wife of Southey’s old Westminster friend, Charles Collins.

Elizabeth Tyler (1739–1821): The older, unmarried half-sister of Southey’s mother. She had spent her early life looking after an elderly relative and on his death received an inheritance which she then spent on living the high life. Her extravagance was a source of great concern to her relatives, in particular her half-brother Herbert Hill. Elizabeth Tyler was painted by Joshua Reynolds and moved in cultural circles in Bath and Bristol, counting amongst her friends the Palmers, owners of the Theatre Royal, Bath.

Sharon Turner (1768–1847): Lawyer and historian who lived at Red Lion square near the British Museum and used the manuscripts thus accessible to him to compile a History of the Anglo-Saxons, 4 vols (1799–1805), on which Southey drew in Madoc (1805). A long term friend and correspondent of Southey, in 1817 Turner gave him legal advice over the Wat Tyler piracy.