• Name: Cobbett, William
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 9  March  1763
• Death Date: 18  June  1835
• Occupation: political writer
• Occupation: farmer

Godwin visited William Cobbett four times in 1811, during Cobbett's two year imprisonment in Newgate for seditious libel. The first visits are with John Philpot Curran (key=CUR01). Other visitors to Cobbett whom Godwin records meeting at Newgate include Thomas Cochrane (1775-1860), naval officer and Westminster MP, and Matthew Wood (1768-1843), sheriff of London. Other references to 'Cobbet' in the diary cannot be confirmed as the political journalist. A few can be confidently identified as someone else - the 1799 reference is before William Cobbett's return from America and 'Cobbet mercer' in 1813 seems to refer to a textile merchant with the same name. Godwin and Cobbett were united in their opposition to Malthusian political economy, though writing at opposite ends of the anti-Malthusian alliance. Cobbett referred in the Political Register to 'Mr Godwin, who has lived to the age of pretty near four score I believe, and who has as much talent in his little finger as Malthus has in his whole body' (quoted in Locke)'.

• Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, 18 June 183.
• James Grande, ‘Nineteenth-Century London in William Godwin’s Diary’, Journal of Victorian Culture 15.2, August 2010
• See Locke

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.