the court-martial affords a more satisfactory explanation. They judged that a naval officer was bound not to go beyond the Fighting Instructions as Mathews had undoubtedly done, and therefore condemned him. Their decision had a serious effect in fixing the rule that all battles, at any rate against enemies of equal or nearly equal numbers, were to be fought on one pattern. Mathews died on the 2nd of October 1751 in London. There is a portrait of him in the Painted Hall at Greenwich.
In Beatson’s Naval and Military Memoirs, vol. i., will be found a fair account of the battle of February 1744. It is fully dealt with by Montagu Burrows in his Life of Hawke. The French account may be found in Tronde’s Batailles Navales de la France. The Spanish view is in the Vida de Don Josef Navarro by Don Josef de Vargas. The battle led to a violent pamphlet controversy. The charges and findings at the courts-martial on both Lestock and Mathews were published at the time. The minor trials arising out of the action are collected in a folio under the title “Copies of all the Minutes and Proceedings taken at and upon the several Tryals of Captain George Burrish” (1746). A “Narrative” was published by, or for, Lestock in 1744, and answered by, or on behalf of, Mathews under the title “Ad——l M——w’s Conduct in the late Engagement Vindicated” in 1745. (D. H.)
MATHY, KARL (1807–1868), Badenese statesman, was born
at Mannheim on the 17th of March 1807. He studied law
and politics at Heidelberg, and entered the Baden government
department of finance in 1829. His sympathy with the revolutionary
ideas of 1830, expressed in his paper the Zeitgeist, cost
him his appointment in 1834, and he made his way to Switzerland,
where he contributed to the Jeune Suisse directed by
Mazzini. On his return to Baden in 1840 he edited the Landtagszeitung
at Carlsruhe, and in 1842 he entered the estates for the
town of Constance. He became one of the opposition leaders
and in 1847 helped to found the Deutsche Zeitung, a paper
which eventually did much to further the cause of German
unity. He took part in the preliminary parliament and in
the assembly of Frankfort in 1848–1849, where he supported
the policy of H. W. A. von Gagern, and after the refusal of
Frederick William IV. to accept the imperial crown he still
worked for the cause of unity. He was made finance minister in
Baden in May 1849, but was dismissed after a few days of office.
He then applied his financial knowledge to banking business in
Cologne, Berlin, Gotha and Leipzig. He was recalled to Baden
in 1862, and in 1864 became president of the new ministry
of commerce. He sought to bring Baden institutions into
line with those of northern Germany with a view to ultimate
union, and when in 1866 Baden took sides with Austria against
Prussia he sent in his resignation. After the war he became
president of a new cabinet, but he did not live to see the realization
of the policy for which he had striven. He died at
Carlsruhe on the 3rd of February 1868.
His letters during the years 1846–1848 were edited by Ludwig Mathy (Leipzig, 1899), and his life was written by G. Freytag (Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1872).
MATILDA (1102–1164), queen of England and empress, daughter of Henry I. of England, by Matilda, his first wife, was born in 1102. In 1109 she was betrothed to the emperor-elect, Henry V., and was sent to Germany, but the marriage was delayed till 1114. Her husband died after eleven years of wedlock, leaving her childless; and, since both her brothers were now dead, she was recalled to her father’s court in order that she might be recognized as his successor in England and Normandy. The Great Council of England did homage to her under considerable pressure. Their reluctance to acknowledge a female sovereign was increased when Henry gave her in marriage to Geoffrey Plantagenet, the heir of Anjou and Maine (1129); nor was it removed by the birth of the future Henry II. in 1133. On the old king’s death both England and Normandy accepted his nephew, Stephen, of Mortain and Boulogne. Matilda and her husband were in Anjou at the time. They wasted the next few years in the attempt to win Normandy; but Earl Robert of Gloucester, the half-brother of the empress, at length induced her to visit England and raise her standard in the western shires, where his influence was supreme. Though on her first landing Matilda only escaped capture through the misplaced chivalry of her opponent, she soon turned the tables upon him with the help of the Church and the barons of the west. Stephen was defeated and captured at Lincoln (1141); the empress was acclaimed lady or queen of England (she used both titles indifferently) and crowned at London. But the arrogance which she displayed in her prosperity alienated the Londoners and the papal legate, Bishop Henry of Winchester. Routed at the siege of Winchester, she was compelled to release Stephen in exchange for Earl Robert, and thenceforward her cause steadily declined in England. In 1148, having lost by the earl’s death her principal supporter, she retired to Normandy, of which her husband had in the meantime gained possession. Henceforward she remained in the background, leaving her eldest son Henry to pursue the struggle with Stephen. She outlived Henry’s coronation by ten years; her husband had died in 1151. As queen-mother she played the part of a mediator between her sons and political parties. Age mellowed her temper, and she turned more and more from secular ambitions to charity and religious works. She died on the 30th of January 1164.
See O. Rössler, Kaiserin Mathilde (Berlin, 1897); J. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville (London, 1892). (H. W. C. D.)
MATILDA (1046–1115), countess or margravine of Tuscany, popularly known as the Great Countess, was descended from a noble Lombard family. Her great-grandfather, Athone of Canossa, had been made count of Modena and Reggio by the emperor Otto I., and her grandfather had, in addition, acquired Mantua, Ferrara and Brescia. Her own father, Boniface II., the Pious, secured Tuscany, the duchy of Spoleto, the county of Parma, and probably that of Cremona; and was loyal to the emperor until Henry plotted against him. Through the murder of Count Boniface in 1052 and the death of her older brother and sister three years later, Matilda was left, at the age of nine, sole heiress to the richest estate in Italy. She received an excellent education under the care of her mother, Beatrice of Bar, the daughter of Frederick of Lorraine and aunt of Henry III., who, after a brief detention in Germany by the emperor, married Godfrey IV. of Lorraine, brother of Pope Stephen IX. (1057–1058). Thenceforth Matilda’s lot was cast against the emperor in the great struggle over investiture, and for over thirty years she maintained the cause of the successive pontiffs, Gregory VII., Victor III., Urban II., Paschal II., with varying fortune, but with undaunted resolution. She aided the pope against the Normans in 1074, and in 1075 attended the synod at which Guibert was condemned and deprived of the archbishopric of Ravenna. Her hereditary fief of Canossa was the scene (Jan. 28, 1077) of the celebrated penance of Henry IV. before Gregory VII. She provided an asylum for Henry’s second wife, Praxides, and urged his son Conrad to revolt against his father. In the course of the protracted struggle her villages were plundered, her fortresses demolished, and Pisa and Lucca temporarily lost, but she remained steadfast in her allegiance, and, before her death, had, by means of a league of Lombard cities which she formed, recovered all her possessions. The donation of her estates to the Holy See, originally made in 1077 and renewed on the 17th of November 1102, though never fully consummated on account of imperial opposition, constituted the greater part of the temporal dominion of the papacy. Matilda was twice married, first to Godfrey V. of Lorraine, surnamed the Humpbacked, who was the son of her step-father and was murdered on the 26th of February 1076; and secondly to the 17-year-old Welf V. of Bavaria, from whom she finally separated in 1095—both marriages of policy, which counted for little in her life. Matilda was an eager student: she spoke Italian, French and German fluently, and wrote many Latin letters; she collected a considerable library; she supervised an edition of the Pandects of Justinian; and Anselm of Canterbury sent her his Meditations. She combined her devotion to the papacy and her learning with very deep personal piety. She died after a long illness at Bodeno, near Modena, on the 24th of July 1115, and was buried
