Joseph Hucks (1772–1800): Writer. Educated at Cambridge, Hucks accompanied Samuel Taylor Coleridge on his 1794 tour, publishing an account — A Pedestrian Tour Through North Wales, in a Series of Letters — the following year. Southey — and Coleridge — renewed their acquaintance with him during their visit to Exeter in 1799 and Hucks contributed three poems to Southey’s Annual Anthology (1800). He died of consumption in 1800.

Thomas Hughes (1756–1832): Anglican clergyman and tutor to various members of the Royal Family from 1777. He became a Canon of Westminster Abbey 1793–1807, a Prebend of St Paul’s in 1807 and Vicar of Uffington in 1816. His wife, Mary Anne Hughes, was also a correspondent of Southey’s.

John Horseman (1776–1844): Clergyman. The son of an Oxfordshire cleric, he was educated at Corpus Christi, Oxford (BA 1795), where he remained as a fellow from 1795–1819. He was Rector of Heydon and Little Chishill from 1810. He was a university friend of Southey’s. Although they lost touch in the mid-1790s, in 1835 after a gap of ‘one and forty years’ Horseman wrote to Southey recalling their old acquaintance.

James Hook (c. 1772–1828): Dean of Worcester and brother of the writer and hoaxer Theodore Hook (1788–1841; DNB). Educated at Westminster School and St Mary Hall, Oxford (his admission to Christ Church was blocked in 1792 because of his involvement in ‘acts of insubordination’ whilst at school). Hook was one of the editors of the schoolboy magazine The Trifler, and a keen musician and artist. He was a friend of Southey’s during his time at Westminster, but their friendship did not last beyond schooldays.

Thomas How (c. 1758–1819): Originally from Devon, he graduated BA 1779 and MA 1785 from Balliol College, Oxford. How was Southey’s tutor at Balliol in 1793–1794. He was later Rector of Huntspill, Somerset 1804–1819.

Mary Anne Hughes (1770?–1853): The daughter of the Anglican clergyman George Watts (d. 1810), she married another cleric, Thomas Hughes. In the late 1810s she became a friend and correspondent of Southey and, later, of his second wife Caroline Bowles. She was also on excellent terms with Walter Scott, and her Letters and Recollections of the latter was published in 1904.

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784–1859): The child of radical, Unitarian parents, Hunt quickly earned a reputation as a poet and a theatrical critic. In 1808–1821 he was the editor of the anti-government paper The Examiner, a role that earned him two years in prison, 1813–1815, for attacking the Prince Regent. Southey was resentful of Hunt’s criticism of Coleridge and Wordsworth and thoroughly disliked The Examiner and its politics. In later life Hunt became a friend and supporter of Byron, Shelley and Keats and a well-known (though never a wealthy) man of letters.

William Howley (1766–1848): Bishop of London 1813–1828; Archbishop of Canterbury 1828–1848. He visited Southey in 1819 and they corresponded about Southey’s efforts to find a chaplain for the expatriate community in Pernambuco.

Thomas Jackson (1783–1873): Wesleyan Methodist minister and writer. The son of an agricultural labourer, he was born in Lincolnshire. His formal education finished at the age of twelve when he was sent to work on a farm. This was followed by an apprenticeship to a carpenter. He became a Methodist in 1801 and was appointed an itinerant preacher in 1804. He served some of the key circuits in London and the North of England and, as a result, was an influential figure.

William Hone (1780–1842): Radical satirist, journalist and bookseller. He was tried on three successive days, 18–20 December 1817, for blasphemous and seditious libel, but was acquitted after conducting his own defence, speaking for about seven hours on all three days. His The Political House that Jack Built (1819) was one of the most famous and bestselling satires of its day. In this phase of his career Southey regarded Hone with contempt and was anxious to see him jailed or transported.