John Sandford (1801–1873): Anglican clergyman. He held a long series of posts, rising to be Archdeacon of Coventry in 1861, and wrote widely on Church matters and social issues. His first wife, Elizabeth Poole (d. 1853), was the niece of Southey’s old friend from Somerset, Thomas Poole, and was herself a well-known writer on women’s issues, including On Female Improvement (1836).

Edward Rushton (1756–1814): Liverpool poet, journalist and anti-slavery campaigner, blinded in 1773 while assisting suffering Africans on board a slave ship. Southey met him in 1808.

John Rumney (1796–1861): Surgeon and Deputy Postmaster of Brough, Westmorland 1815–1844. He was an old friend of Tom Southey, from Tom’s days farming in the Brough area, and acted as the midwife at the birth of some of his children. Robert Southey wrote to him in 1822 asking for assistance in sorting out an incorrect invoice.

James Horace Rudge (1785–1852): Church of England clergyman, educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and ordained in 1808. He held a number of clerical appointments, including, from 1809, the post of Lecturer at St Anne’s, Limehouse, London, chaplain to various members of the royal family and Rector of Hawkchurch, Devon 1828–1852. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1814.

Robert Rouse (fl. 1820s): Clerk in the East India Company, working in its ‘Private Trade Warehouse’ in Leadenhall Street. Southey corresponded with him in 1826, when Rouse acted as an intermediary for someone offering Southey sight of previously unused letters that shed light on John Wesley (1703–1791; DNB).

William Rough (1772/3–1838): Lawyer and poet; only son of William Rough. Educated Westminster (adm. 1786, King’s Scholar 1789) and Trinity College, Cambridge (matric. 1792, BA 1796, MA 1799), he entered Gray’s Inn in 1796, and was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1801. He married Harriet (1778–c. 1820), an illegitimate daughter of John Wilkes (1725–1797; DNB). He served in the judiciary in Demerara and Essequibo and later Ceylon and was knighted in 1837.

Robert Rosser (d. 1802): Bristol-based printer. Best known for printing the Bristol Mercury.

William Ross (d. 1873): Worked in the calico printing trade and in the mid-1820s was employed by the Manchester-based firm John Dugdale & Brothers. In 1832 he set up his own firm, Potter & Ross, in Darwen, in partnership with Charles Potter (1802–1872), and later became Vice-President of the Salford Mechanics Institute. In 1840 he gave evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Copyright of Designs. Ross retired in 1847 and was twice Mayor of Salford (1853–1854 and 1854–1855).

William Roscoe (1753–1831): Lawyer, banker and leading public figure in his native Liverpool, which he represented in parliament 1806–1807. Roscoe was a Unitarian and a radical. He was also an expert on Italian history and literature and collected a notable library and series of Italian paintings, as well as writing The Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1796). He corresponded with Southey in 1798 on the whereabouts of William Gilbert.

Samuel Rogers (1763–1855): Poet and banker. His writings included The Pleasures of Memory (1792), ‘Columbus’ (1810), ‘Jacqueline’ (1814) and Italy (1822 and 1828). A wealthy, metropolitan Dissenter, Rogers was exceptionally well connected and had many acquaintances in common with Southey. They were on social terms, meeting occasionally and corresponding intermittently. They shared an interest in assisting others, a trait Southey drew on in 1816 when he asked Rogers to help the young poet Herbert Knowles.