In 1624 Sir Tobie was selected one of the eighty-four ‘Essentials,’ or original working members, of the abortive Academe Royal, of which the scheme had just been completed by Edmund Bolton [q. v.] In June 1625 he was at Boulogne, whence he wrote an interesting letter to the Duchess of Buckingham, describing Henrietta Maria in enthusiastic terms which rival those of his previous ‘picture’ of the infanta (Cabala, p. 302). A considerable portion of the next few years Sir Tobie spent abroad, probably either in Paris or in Brussels. It is said that in 1625, at Sir Tobie's special request, Bacon added his ‘Essay on Friendship’ to the series in commemoration of their long intimacy. On his death in the following year he bequeathed Matthew 30l. to buy a ring.
At the court of the new king Sir Tobie became more openly identified with the catholics, among whom he was sometimes known as Father Price. A secular priest of this name, described as ‘long a prisoner in Newgate,’ is included in Gee's list of 190 Romish priests and jesuits resident about London in March 1624 (‘Foot out of the Snare,’ printed in Somers, Tracts, 1810, iii. 87, 91).
In September 1633 a lying report was spread by Lodowick Bowyer to the effect that he had died at Gravesend, and that compromising correspondence from Laud to the pope had been found upon him (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. vii. 185). Later in the year he accompanied Strafford to Ireland in the capacity of secretary, but was soon back again in London, and his influence there at the moment was vividly depicted by the French ambassador. ‘The cleverest of the Catholic seminarists,’ he writes, ‘is Tobie Matthew, a man of parts, active, influential, an excellent linguist; he penetrates cabinets, he insinuates himself into all kinds of affairs, and knows the temper and purpose of those who govern the kingdom, especially of the Lord Treasurer, whom he manages so skilfully that he is able to realise all his schemes in favour of Spain. … He is a man, “sans intéret particulier, qui ne travaille que pour l'honneur et pour sa passion, qui est le soulagement et l'avancement des catholiques.”’ He was described as well affected to France, if only that country would aid him in his design, the means indicated being: 1. By interposing to obtain the same oath of allegiance for England as for Ireland, a project approved by the pope. 2. By establishing seminaries in France. 3. By subsidising a certain number of missionary priests, both from the ranks of jesuits, Benedictines, and seculars (‘Relation par M. de Fontenay au retour de son ambassade d'Angleterre,’ June 1634, ap. Ranke, Hist. of England, v. 448). In July 1636 Matthew was on a visit to Lord Salisbury at Hatfield; in October 1637 he got the credit (wrongly as subsequently appeared) of being chief instrument in the conversion of Lady Newport, whereupon ‘the king did use such words … that the fright reduced Don Tobiah to such perplexity that I find he will make a very ill man to be a martyr; but now the dog doth again wag his tail’ (Lord Conway to Earl of Strafford, Strafford Corresp. ii. 125). The queen's influence was in fact a guarantee to Matthew of a position at court, which if ill defined was so considerable as to prove a serious grievance to puritans of all shades. In 1639 a political squib, entitled ‘Reasons that Ship and Conduct Money ought to be paid,’ suggests that Sir Tobie was an abettor of the ‘Popish plot’ and, with Sir John Wintour and the queen-mother, was making a laughing-stock of the country (cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1639–40, p. 246). Habernfeld and Boswell followed this up next year in their ‘Particular Discovery of the Plot against King Kingdom and Protestant Religion,’ in which he is described as a ‘jesuited priest’ and ‘a most dangerous man, to whom a bed was never so dear that he would rest his head thereon, refreshing his body with sleep in a chair, neither day nor night spared his machinations; a man principally noxious … who flies to all banquets and feasts, called or not called, never quiet, a perpetual motion; thrusting himself into all conversations of superiors, he urgeth conferences familiarly that he may fish out the minds of men. These discoveries he communicates to the Pope's Legate, but the most secret things to Cardinal Barberini [in whose pay it was assevered he had been for many years] or the Pope himself’ (Rushworth, Hist. Collections, p. 1322). Prynne wrote of him in a similar vein as a papal spy and missionary sent to reclaim England. It was therefore only to be expected that in October 1640 he should be apprehended, or that (16 Nov. 1640) the House of Commons should join the lords in petitioning for his banishment. It is said that he voluntarily renounced the court and retired to reside at the English College (the House of Tertians) in Ghent. There he occupied himself in writing an account of his conversion, considered as the central feature of his life. This work, entitled ‘A True Historicall Relation of the Conversion of Sir Tobie Matthews to the Holie Catholic Fayth, with the Antecedents and Consequents thereof,’ 1640, and consisting of 234 pages of manuscript, was
