Southey became a state official only after distancing himself from revolutionary ideals and his criticism of the Anglican Church. In 1807, Wynn secured a government pension for Southey to support his work as a man of letters, replacing the financial support he had personally provided to his friend. In 1807, Southey began to adopt a more resolute stance against Catholic Emancipation, the granting of full political rights to Catholics. This position influenced the writing of his fictional work, Letters from England by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella , published in July of that year.

Between 1809 and 1813, he was funded by the periodical Edinburgh Annual Register to write a history of contemporary events in Europe. In 1809, he began his long-standing collaboration with the Quarterly Review periodical. In international politics, he advocated for the war against Napoleon, while within the British Empire, he focused on opposing constitutional reform aimed at enabling Catholic Emancipation. These issues were pivotal in the subsequent publication of works including History of the Peninsular War (1823-1832) and The Book of the Church (1824).

Southey derived more satisfaction from his work as a historian than as a poet, and his greatest ambition was to write the História de Portugal . In 1804, his project envisioned writing three volumes on the European history of Portugal; two or three volumes on the history of the Portuguese Empire in Asia; one volume on the history of Brazil; one volume on the history of the Jesuits in Japan; two volumes on the literary history of Spain and Portugal; and one volume on the history of monasticism. Of this ambitious project, Southey only completed his História do Brasil [History of Brazil], which was published in three volumes in 1810, 1817, and 1819, respectively. Alongside his project to write the História de Portugal , he reissued the chivalric romances Amadis of Gaul (1803), Palmerin of England (1807), and Chronicle of the Cid (1808).

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