TOBIE MATTHEW. – English priest, b. at Salisbury on 3 Oct 1577, d. at Ghent on 13 Oct 1655.
Of an Anglican family (his father was Archbishop of York and his mother was the daughter of W. Barlow, Bishop of Chichester), he took his degrees at Oxford (M.A. in 1597); in 1599 he entered Gray’s Inn, where he found his lifelong friend Francis Bacon (d. 1626), who called M. his alter ego; in 1604, after James I ascended the throne, he became a member of Parliament for St Albans, and was an elegant and easy-living courtier. His desire to travel, especially to Italy, was frustrated by his parents, who were very strict about religion, but in 1604 he was allowed to go as far as France.
Disregarding his promise, M. proceeded to Italy, where everything he saw deeply moved him. The Lenten processions in Florence and the devotion to the Madonna aroused in M. remorse for his past life; driven by his search for truth, in 1606 he abandoned Protestantism. Returning to England (1607), he was imprisoned for six months. In 1608 his friends obtained permission for him to go abroad, where he remained for ten years. In May 1614 he was ordained priest by St Robert Bellarmine in Rome. In 1617 he returned to England, but was exiled again from 1619 to 1622. Two letters of M. to the Pope remain, which cast doubt on the sincerity of King James I’s promises of tolerance (for the Catholic faith). In 1622 the King showed himself well disposed toward his return and made use of his diplomatic and linguistic skills by sending him to Madrid in 1623 as an adviser to the Duke of Buckingham and Prince Charles regarding the Spanish marriage then under negotiation. On his return, the King knighted him. Under Charles I (1625–49), M. was able to assist his fellow English Catholics until the Civil War of 1640 forced him to flee.
It is almost certain that M. was received into the Society of Jesus, of which he was a generous benefactor; fleeing persecution, he took refuge in the Jesuit house at Ghent, where he remained until his death.
M. translated into Italian (1618) the Essays of Lord Francis Bacon, English knight, Great Chancellor of England, together with another of his treatises on the wisdom of the ancients, with a dedicatory epistle to Cosimo, Grand Duke of Tuscany; and into English the Confessions of St Augustine (1620), the autobiography of St Teresa (1613), and the “Treatise on Wisdom” by Fr F. Arias (1650). He published A Relation of the Death of the Most Illustrious Lord Signor Troilo Savelli (1620), beheaded in Castel Sant’Angelo in 1620; A Missive of Consolation Sent from Flanders to the Calvinists of England (1647); and A True Historical Relation of the Conversion of Sir T. M. to the Holiest Catholic Faith, partly edited in his Life by C. Butler (1795), and completely in 1904 by A. H. Matthew, together with his valuable Letters (published by J. Donne in 1660) and other minor and uncertain writings. M. was a courageous Catholic who loved Italy greatly.