Michael Maurice (1766–1855): Unitarian minister and schoolmaster. Born at Eastwood, Yorkshire, he was educated at Leeds Grammar, Hoxton Academy and Hackney College. In 1787 he converted to Unitarianism. From 1787–1792 he was assistant minister of the Old Meeting, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. He was a foundation member of the Unitarian Society in 1791 and in 1792 was elected evening preacher at the chapel at Hackney in which Joseph Priestley preached in the mornings. In 1794 he married Priscilla Hurry, daughter of a Yarmouth timber merchant.

James Heywood Markland (1788–1864): Antiquary. Born in Manchester, in 1808 he moved to London to practise law. He married Charlotte (d. 1867), daughter of Sir Francis Freeling, in 1821. Markland was a committed Anglican, collector of fine editions, and writer on literary history, and on antiquarian and religious subjects. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, member of the Roxburghe Club, and, after retiring to Bath in 1841, an active member of the Royal Archaeological Institute and the British Archaeological Association.

George Mitford (1760–1842): Educated at Edinburgh University he practised briefly as a surgeon and in later life assumed the unauthorised title of ‘Doctor’. He married Mary Russell (1750–1830), a distant and wealthy relation of the Dukes of Bedford. Their only child was the writer Mary Russell Mitford (1787–1855; DNB). Mitford’s inverate gambling, social pretensions and extravagant expenditure brought his family close to ruin on several occasions. Southey wrote to Mitford in 1812 to acknowledge receipt of copies of works by Mary Russell Mitford.

John Mitford (1781–1859): Suffolk clergyman, who took little interest in his parochial duties but played an important role in London literary life. He was a noted editor (especially of the works of Thomas Gray), editor of the Gentlemans Magazine 1834–1850, and close friend of Samuel Rogers and Bernard Barton. In 1810 he wrote to Southey for advice about his poem, Agnes, the Indian Captive (1811).

Miss Maynard (dates unknown): A friend of Felicia Hemans, Miss Maynard lived in Clifton, Bristol. Southey had met her in his home city, where they had acquaintances in common. In 1816 she sent Southey some manuscript music.

John Miller (1787–1858): Clergyman. Educated at the University of Oxford, where he won the Chancellor’s Medal for Latin prose and became a great friend of John Keble (1792–1866; DNB). In 1817 he delivered the University’s Bampton Lectures, on the subject of ‘The Divine Authority of Holy Scripture’. When he met Southey in 1820, Miller was a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford, and Curate of Bishopstone, Wiltshire. He sent Southey a copy of his work, most probably his Bampton lectures.

See Fricker, Mary (1771–1862)

Anna Dorothea Montagu (née Benson; 1773–1856): A former friend of Robert Burns, the widow of Thomas Skepper, a lawyer in York, and daughter of Edward Benson, a York wine merchant. She was Mary Barker’s friend, and married Basil Montagu in 1808.

Robert Lovell, Junior (1795–1836): The son of Mary and Robert Lovell, his father’s early death left him with few prospects (significantly less than those of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s children, whose paternal relations were capable of greater generosity). In 1803 the money paid by the Lovell family for his education ceased. Southey and John May tried to get Robert Lovell Junior into Christ’s Hospital. They failed. The boy was apprenticed to a London printer and effectively separated from his mother, who lived with the Southeys in Keswick.

Lovell family: A family of Bristol-based Quakers and pin manufacturers. Robert Lovell (1746–1804) and his first wife Edith Bourne (1745–1782) had two sons, Joseph and Robert (Southey’s brother-in-law), and five daughters. Lovell’s second marriage to Lydia Hill (1754–1816) produced five more children. Southey was on reasonable terms with all the Lovells, but their relationship was clouded by struggles over adequate financial provision for the son and widow of Robert Lovell.