Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Matthews, Henry
MATTHEWS, HENRY, Viscount Llandaff (1826–1913), lawyer and politician, was born 13 January 1826 in Ceylon, where his father, Henry Matthews [q.v.], the author of The Diary of an Invalid, was a puisne judge. The judge was the son of John Matthews [q.v.], of Belmont, Herefordshire, and the brother of Byron's friend, Charles Skynner Matthews; his wife was Emma, daughter of William Blount, of Orleton, Herefordshire, a member of an old Catholic family. Matthews was brought up in his mother's faith, his father stipulating that he should not be sent to a Catholic school. He received, therefore, a varied and cosmopolitan education. Debarred by his religion from Oxford and Cambridge, he graduated at the university of Paris as bachelier-ès-lettres (1844), and proceeded to London University, where he took the degree of B.A. (1847) and LL.B. and won a law scholarship in 1849.
In 1850 Matthews was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. His unusual knowledge of the languages and systems of law of foreign countries brought him work of a special kind; and he soon acquired a large general practice both in Westminster Hall and on the Oxford circuit. His style of advocacy, which was brilliant but artificial, was admired and imitated by his circuit contemporaries; and he played a prominent part in the festivities of the bar mess. A man of considerable private means, he was not dependent upon the practice of his profession. He was fond of the pleasures of social life, and his personal charm and witty conversation introduced him to exclusive and fashionable circles. He spoke of himself as not being closely wedded to his circuit or profession.
In 1868 he took silk. The same year he stood as a conservative for the borough of Dungarvan and defeated Serjeant Barry by 157 votes to 105. His election he himself attributed to his having combined the nationalist and tory votes against the liberal candidate ‘at the cost of 800 bottles of whisky’ [Dublin Review, April 1906]. Acting with the then Home Rule party, he voted with Mr. Gladstone on the second reading of the Irish Disestablishment Bill (1869), and with the narrow majority which defeated the Irish University Bill (1873). In 1874 he lost his seat to a Home Ruler, and a subsequent attempt to win back the seat in 1880 was unsuccessful. He stood for North Birmingham in 1885, and in 1886 was elected for East Birmingham. The personal friendship of Lord Randolph Churchill led to his appointment as home secretary in 1886. He was the first Catholic since the passing of the Emancipation Act to become a Cabinet minister. An arrangement was made that the ecclesiastical patronage of the office should be transferred to the first lord of the Treasury.
In contrast with his brilliance at the bar, Matthews was unsuccessful in the House of Commons, which his foreign education never allowed him to capture. An unkindly observer likened him to a ‘French dancing master’. He was regarded as ‘a departmental success but a parliamentary failure’. As home secretary he had several difficult cases to deal with, in particular those of Lipski (1887), Miss Cass (1887), Mrs. Maybrick (1889), and the Davies brothers (1890). His decisions were on occasion attacked fiercely by Henry Labouchere in Truth and by W. T. Stead in the Pall Mall Gazette; in the case of Miss Cass a vote for adjournment was carried against the government and led him to tender his resignation, which, however, Lord Salisbury refused to accept. His refusal to recommend the reprieve of Lipski was followed by the condemned man's confession of guilt. Lord Chief Justice Coleridge considered Matthews the best home secretary he had known. He returned to the House of Commons in 1892, and was in opposition for the next three years. His failure to speak or vote when Mr. Gladstone introduced his Bill for the removal of surviving Catholic disabilities (popularly known as the Russell and Ripon Relief Bill) was commented upon by his co-religionists. He voted against the Bill for the disestablishment of the Welsh Church. On the return of the conservatives in 1895 he was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Llandaff. He claimed a remote connexion with the Irish family which had enjoyed this extinct title. As a peer he took little part in public life; but he was active in securing the passing of the Accession Declaration Act, 1910, by which the old form of declaration against the doctrine of transubstantiation, regarded as offensive to the Catholics of the Empire, was abolished. He was a loyal member of his own communion, and one of the founders of Westminster Cathedral. Yet he used to admit that on literary grounds he preferred the authorized to the Douai version of the Scriptures. He was for two years the vigorous chairman of the royal commission on the London water supply, which led to the formation of the Metropolitan Water Board (1902).
Although a leading figure at the bar Matthews was never regarded as a candidate for judicial honours. Amongst notable trials in which he appeared as counsel were Borghese v. Borghese (1860–1863), which involved complicated questions as to the devolution of the property of John, Earl of Shrewsbury; Lyon v. Home (1868), an action for the return of moneys and securities, brought against a ‘spiritualist’; the civil proceedings in the Tichborne case (1869); the Epping Forest case (1874), which concerned claims to common of pasture over the waste lands of the forest; and Crawford v. Crawford and Dilke (1886). His cross-examination of Sir Charles Dilke on the intervention of the Queen's proctor in the last case was skilful and effective. During his later years he was crippled by rheumatism. He died at 6 Carlton Gardens, London, 3 April 1913 and was buried with Catholic rites in the Anglican graveyard at Clehonger, Herefordshire. He was unmarried. He was caricatured by ‘Spy’ in Vanity Fair.
[Obituary notices in The Times, 4 April 1913, and Tablet, 12 April 1913; memoirs in the Dublin Review, January 1921; private information. There is an unpublished biography by W. S. Lilly.]