[1] Educated at Caius College, Cambridge,[2] Cobbold entered the church, starting at St Mary-le-Tower in Ipswich before moving to Wortham in 1825 with his wife and three sons.

Thus his account of Mary Ann Wellington brought in no less than £600, much of it in small gifts, for the subject of the book, who was afterwards placed in an almshouse by Cobbold's exertions.

[3] One of the sons, Edward Augustus (born 1825), became vicar of the neighbouring parish of Yaxley, and another Thomas Spencer, a leading parasitologist.

His four volumes eventually found a home at the Suffolk Record Office, and have become an invaluable source of information about everyday life in the countryside at that time.

In 1977 a book entitled The Biography of a Victorian Village was published, in which Ronald Fletcher presents Richard Cobbold's account of 1860s Wortham.