Anne (Mant, Church of Ireland, ii. 43). In ‘A Letter to the Right Reverend William [King], Lord Bishop of Derry,’ printed in 1703, he protested that he had resided for nineteen years in Lisburn ‘neer the center’ of his archdeaconry, and had spent much on several other parishes.
After he had presented a petition to Sir Richard Cox on 3 Sept. 1703, the judges on 4 Dec. reported their opinion that he should be allowed a commission of delegates. Delays followed, and Matthews set forth, early in 1704, his claim to such a commission in two pamphlets, one called ‘Demonstrations that the Lord Chancellor of Ireland is bound by the Statute and Common Law, and also by his Commission and Oath as Lord Chancellor, to grant a Commission of Delegates;’ and the other, ‘The Argument of Archdeacon Mathews’ [Dublin], 1704. In reply to further appeals, Sir Richard Cox at the end of 1704 summoned all parties concerned to appear in the exchequer chamber on 20 Jan. 1705. Matthews subsequently printed ‘A Brief of the Printed Argument of Archdeacon Mathews on his Petition to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland,’ n.d., and on 5 June 1705 he presented a new petition to the house of peers in Dublin. The lords, in an address on 16 June to the Duke of Ormonde, lord-lieutenant, prayed that he should be relieved (Add. MS. 21132, fol. 30, indexed ‘Samuel Mathews’).
Matthews had adherents, notably John Pooley, D.D., bishop of Raphoe, who adds to his autograph, in a copy of Matthews's ‘Argument,’ the words ‘sent me Novber [1]704 by the ill-treated author, Archde. Mathews’ (cf. Cotton, Fasti Eccles. Hib. v. 240). Matthews's tracts were not generally offered for sale, but seem to have been distributed among his friends (ib.) They are consequently now very rare. Cotton says that Matthews was restored to his prebend, but not to his archdeaconry. He died unmarried after 1705. By what university he was created doctor of divinity does not appear.
[Cotton's Fasti Eccles. Hib. iii. 231–3, 241, 257, 271, v. 241, 242; Mant's Hist. of the Church of Ireland, ii. 42–3 (s. n. Leonard Matthews); Cat. of the Library of Trinity Coll. Dublin; Killen's Ecclesiastical Hist. of Ireland, 1875, ii. 183; Reid's Hist. of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, ed. Killen, 1867, ii. 438, 439; Lansdowne MS. No. 446, ff. 124–8.]
MATTHEWS, MARMADUKE (1606–1683?), Welsh nonconformist, was the son of Matthew Matthews (or Mathew Jones?) of Swansea, where he was born in 1606. He matriculated at All Souls' College, Oxford, on 20 Feb. 1623–4, and proceeded B.A. on 25 Feb. 1624–5, and M.A. on 5 July 1627 (Foster, Alumni Oxon.) In 1636 Laud, in the annual account of his province (Lambeth MSS. vol. 943; cf. Dr. Rees, Nonconformity in Wales, pp. 35–6), notes that he was vicar of Penmain in Gower, and was ‘preaching against all holy-days.’ He was ‘inhibited’ by the Bishop of St. Davids, and when proceedings were begun against him in the court of high commission, he fled to New England. He visited the West Indies, and finally became a ‘teaching-elder’ of the church of Maldon in New England. In 1658 he was induced by his friend and patron Colonel Philip Jones [q. v.], who chiefly supported his wife and family during his exile, to return to Swansea. He was appointed the minister of the parish of St. John's, Swansea, from which place he was ejected in 1662. He afterwards preached, by the connivance of the magistrates, ‘in a little chapel at the end of the town,’ and under the indulgence granted by Charles II to nonconformists in 1672, he took out a license to preach as an independent in his own house at Swansea (Rees, op. cit. p. 177). He died there about 1683. In his old age he was supported by his children, ‘of whom two or three were sober conformists’ (Calamy, Account, ed. 1713, ii. 732); one of them, Lemuel [q. v.], is separately noticed. Perhaps Edward Matthews, who matriculated at New Inn Hall, Oxford, on 11 July 1634, aged 19, and is described as a son of Matthew Jones of Swansea, was a younger brother of Matthews. Marmaduke was author of ‘The Messiah Magnified by the Mouthes of Babes in America,’ London, 1659, 8vo. It is dedicated to Philip, Lord Jones.
[Rees's Nonconformity in Wales, pp. 35, 36, 53–4, 177; Calamy's Account, ut supra; Foster's Alumni Oxonienses, 1500–1714; Matthews' Messiah Magnified, Ded.]
MATTHEWS, THOMAS (fl. 1537), translator of the Bible, pseudonym for John Rogers (1509?–1555) [q. v.]
MATTHEWS, THOMAS (1805–1889), actor and pantomimist, born 17 Oct. 1805, entered as a boy the office of the ‘Independent Whig,’ subsequently known after other changes as the ‘Sunday Times.’ After appearing at the Olympic Theatre he went to Sadler's Wells, where, on the retirement of Grimaldi in 1828, he appeared, 26 Dec. 1829, as clown in a pantomime called ‘The Hag of the Forest.’ Upon the revival of ‘Mother Goose’ he played clown for fifty nights, after being coached by Grimaldi. He then appeared at Covent Garden in successive years in ‘Puss in Boots,’ ‘Old Mother Hubbard,’ ‘Whittington and his Cat,’ and ‘Gammer
