communicated it to Sir Robert Cecil through Bacon, and simultaneously changed his lodging to Fleet Street. It devolved upon Bacon to make known his backsliding to Bancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, who promptly undertook his reconversion. He had many conferences with the archbishop, but they only ended in his being committed a close prisoner to the Fleet, where he was detained six months. He was, however, allowed free converse with his friends, ‘who sought to recover him,’ and was, moreover, put in good hope of further liberty. Among those who visited him were Thomas Morton [q. v.] , afterwards bishop of Durham, of whom he had a bad opinion, Sir Edwin Sandys, on whose vanity he enlarges, Sir Henry Goodyear, John Donne the poet, Richard Martin, and Captain Whitelock, who called St. Paul a widgeon, and was generally so blasphemous that his hearer momentarily expected his annihilation, but was ‘yet so witty as would almost tempt a man to forgive him, in spight of his heart and judgment.’ Bacon wrote him a letter during his imprisonment on his seduction, laying stress upon ‘the extreme effects of superstition in this last gunpowder treason.’ The high opinion entertained by Bacon of Matthew's literary judgment is shown by his submitting to him at this time the rough sketch of his ‘In felicem memoriam Elizabethæ,’ thus commencing a practice which he appears to have continued to the last (Matthew, Letters, p. 22). Another of Tobie's interviewers was Bishop Andrewes, and before the close of 1607 Alberico Gentili [q. v.] was sent by the renegade's father, as a last resource, to try and bring him back. Early in 1608, owing to a severe outbreak of the plague, Matthew was allowed to leave the prison on parole, and on 7 Feb. 1607–8 the combined influence of his father, Bacon, and Cecil (who had previously had a dispute with, but was now reconciled to him), procured his release from the Fleet. He was transferred to the charge of a messenger of state, who was made responsible for his appearance. Two months later he obtained the king's leave to go abroad.
He left England not to return for ten years. He seems to have first gone to Brussels, and thence to Madrid. There he appears in 1609 to have been in the train of Sir Robert Shirley (Winwood, Memorials, iii. 104, 128), and thither in the same year Bacon sent him his ‘Advancement of Learning,’ and the key to his famous cipher, about which he requests secrecy. In February 1610 Bacon sent him his ‘De Sapientia Veterum,’ and in the following year he was at Venice with his friend Mr. Gage (ib. iii. 384), through whom he became acquainted with Edward Norgate [q. v.] the illuminer. Sir Dudley Carleton met him there in 1612, ‘so broken with travel’ that the name ‘Il vecchio’ was applied to him (Court and Times of James I, i. 195). From 1611 onwards he missed no opportunity of urging Salisbury and others to obtain him permission to return home, if only as a recognition of his exemplary conduct while abroad; but the king turned a deaf ear to his importunities. In 1614 he was ordained priest at Rome by Cardinal Bellarmine (Foley). After this he probably returned to Madrid, where he possessed some influence and a wide circle of acquaintance. In 1616 his father, the archbishop, wrote to the newly converted Thomas Howard, second earl of Arundel [q. v.] , deploring his son's recusancy, and entreating the earl by his judicious advice to persuade him, ‘yea, to press him,’ to take a proper view of his duty ‘towards his king and his father, as well as his God.’ This would seem at first sight to imply that Tobie was in England, but his return was, it is almost certain, deferred until the following year, when influence which he had brought to bear upon Buckingham procured the king's consent (cf. State Papers, Dom. 1610–18, p. 465). He landed at Dover in May 1617, and was seen by Chamberlain on the 18th of that month at Winwood's house. Soon afterwards he went to Bacon at Gorhambury, and in August was entertained by Thomas Wilbraham at Townsend, near Nantwich, during the king's stay at that mansion. By October he was settled in London, and was observed to pay nightly visits to Gondomar (ib. p. 489). At this time, says Wood, he was generally allowed to be a person of wit and polite behaviour, and ‘a very compleat gentleman,’ remarkably conversant with foreign affairs. From London in 1618 he issued an Italian translation of Bacon's essays, entitled ‘Saggi morali del Signore Francesco Bacono, cavagliero inglese, gran cancelliero d'Inghilterra. Con vn altro suo trattato della sapienza degli antichi,’ London, 8vo. A dedicatory letter to Cosmo, grand duke of Tuscany, contains a fine eulogy of Bacon. On Bacon's impeachment, Matthew wrote him a letter which Bacon compared to ‘old gold’ (Matthew, Letters, p. 69; cf. Spedding, xiv. 286–7). A second edition of Matthew's translation appeared in 1619 and a third in 1621. The second edition (‘curante Andrea Cioli’) contains the essay ‘On Seditions and Troubles,’ which was not printed in English till 1625.
Though Matthew had now been nearly two years in England, he had not taken the oath of allegiance. The king was displeased at his constant refusal, and in January 1618–
