1908 he was appointed director of public prosecutions, an office which he discharged until his death with ability and discretion. In 1911 he was made a K.C.B., and in 1917 a baronet. He died at a nursing home in London on 6 June 1920.
Mathews was pre-eminently what newspapers call a ‘famous’ lawyer, for he always appeared in criminal trials, or in notorious civil cases. He was learned in criminal law, an adroit advocate and cross-examiner, and a fluent speaker who had claims to be called really eloquent, though his style was histrionic, and he was hampered by a weak and unpleasing voice. He was a small man, with a dapper figure, and a precise manner. He was fond of riding, and of horses, and liked to attend race-meetings when he could. Socially ‘Willie’ Mathews, as he was familiarly known, was exceedingly popular, and his popularity extended to much wider circles than might be suggested by his membership of the Turf, the Garrick, and the Beefsteak clubs. There, and anywhere, he was an animated talker, always ready with some anecdote, in telling which he could act, as well as narrate. He was a modest man: he was once offered a brief before the Privy Council; he crept in to watch that tribunal at work, and then asked the solicitors to allow him to decline the brief as he did not consider himself equipped for the task.
Mathews married in 1888 Lucy, daughter of Lindsay Sloper, musician, who survived him. They had no children.
[The Times, 7 June 1920; Law Journal, 12 June 1920; Law Lists; private information.]
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
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