Mathew was born in the
French Second Empire in 1852, son of Major Arnold Henry Ochterlony Mathew (originally Matthews, d. 1894; his son later claimed him to have been 3rd Earl Landaff). Major Mathew was son of Major Arnold Nesbit Mathew (originally Matthews), of the Indian Army, and his Italian wife, Contessa Eliza Francesca, daughter of Domenico Povoleri di Nagarole, a Marquis of the Papal State; through this descent the Rev. Arnold Mathew claimed the title of Count Povoleri di Vicenza. Major Arnold Nesbit Mathew was allegedly the son- born only five months after his parents' marriage- of the 1st Earl Landaff, sent to live with an uncle in light of the circumstances of his birth. This constituted the basis for the Rev. Arnold Mathew's claim to be 4th Earl Landaff, which would not come to be officially recognised. Research revealed the contemporary birth of an Arnold Nesbit Matthews to William Richard Matthews and his wife Anne at Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, which in conjunction with the Rev. Arnold Mathew's father and grandfather having originally been named 'Matthews' rather than 'Mathew', has been considered to cast sufficient doubt on the claim to descent from the Earls Landaff as to render it invalid. Mathew was educated at
Sedbergh School. He was a relative of
Theobald Mathew, the noted "Apostle of Temperance". Mathew was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church. At age two, due to his mother's scruples, he was rebaptised in the
Church of England. Mathew "went on oscillating between Rome and Canterbury for the rest of his life." He studied for the ministry in the
Scottish Episcopal Church, but sought reconciliation and confirmation in the Church of Rome. He lost faith in the
biblical inspiration and in the
divinity of Christ. Mathew, under the name Povoleri, married Margaret Florence, fifth daughter of Robert Duncan, He was "described as a clerk in holy orders." He stopped using the name Povoleri in 1894. While his wife was listed in the 1897
Royal Blue Book as la Contessa Povoleri di Vicenza, he stopped using the title of Count in 1894. and became curious about the suggestion of an
Old Catholic Church in Great Britain. In 1897, O'Halloran was suspended in the
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster for "reasons of canonical discipline". O'Halloran condemned the censure and created the "Ealing schism". O'Halloran believed that such a movement would interest a large number of disaffected Roman Catholics and
Anglo-Catholics. In June 1906 the Royal Commission appointed in 1904 to inquire into "ecclesiastical disorders", afterwards known as the Ritual Commission. The king issued letters of business after the report. It was expected that the Catholic-minded Anglican clergy, with their congregations, might, by
Act of Parliament, be forced out of the
Anglican Communion. Persuaded by O'Halloran, Mathew joined the movement and was elected the first Regionary Old Catholic Bishop for Great Britain and in 1908 the
Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands (OKKN) was petitioned to consecrate him to this charge. Mathew's election was to some extent a precautionary endeavour by those anticipating a precipitate action by the Government regarding the Ritual Commission's findings, there were only a small number of Old Catholics in England. However, the King's Letters of Business dealing with the Report of the Ritual Commission received no further attention and no action was taken. The result was that those who had taken part in Mathew's election were able to remain within the Anglican Communion. Added to the natural differences with their former brethren in the Roman Church was a campaign of persecution directed by certain elements of the . In 1898 Willibald Beyschlag wrote, in
The American Journal of Theology, that Old Catholic churches sought "federation with other churches having an"
episcopal polity. They sought "recognition that they all belong to the one ecumenical church which rests upon the dogmatic and episcopal foundation of the early church, and can, therefore, practice communion with each other." Those negotiations had "no tangible result" in 1898, according to Beyschlag, who did not "think that such a result would be of any great value," because some Anglicans "emphatically desire to be 'catholic', and are at the same time wholly out of sympathy with the Old Catholics." Beyschlag distinguished that the
Ritualist Anglican Catholics "are on the way to Rome; the Old Catholics on the way from Rome."
Consecration Mathew was consecrated in
St. Gertrude's Cathedral,
Utrecht, on 28 April 1908, by the Archbishop
Gerardus Gul of Utrecht, assisted by two bishops, Jacobus Johannes van Thiel of Haarlem and Nicolaus Bartholomeus Petrus Spit of Deventer, and one
Catholic Diocese of the Old Catholics in Germany bishop, Josef Demmel of Bonn. Soon after the consecration, Mathew and O'Halloran were estranged and O'Halloran, under a pseudonym, Unprepared for the position in which he then found himself, Mathew informed Gul that he was himself a deceived victim and "the information given him by O'Halloran was entirely false" and offered to resign but his resignation was not accepted. Brandreth thought that the "exonerated him from personal blame" in this letter. In September 1909, he attended the
Old Catholic Congress in Vienna, where he sympathized with the Dutch Old Catholics conservative position which opposed the innovations being introduced among the German and Swiss Old Catholics to renounce the
Sacrament of Penance (auricular confession), the
intercession of saints and alterations to the
liturgy, including the omission of the Pope's name from the
Canon of the Mass. He proposed the acceptance of the 1673
Synod of Jerusalem's doctrines. In June 1910, he secretly consecrated, without agreement of the , and Mathew informed the Holy See of these consecrations. Beale and Howarth were suspended. In August, van Thiel declared that Old Catholics "could not be considered responsible for [...] Mathew's eventual particular attitude or opinions, because he only represents his own clergy and himself in England." Mathew was "in no sense a representative of the Church of Holland in England." In October, Mathew defended the consecrations in
The Church Times against a critical article in '
. In December 1910, ' concluded that Mathew had "given up communion with the other Old Catholics" when he acted against the Convention of Utrecht. He ignored "his duty to inform" the prior to "any consecration", so "that the case may be duly examined and all precautions taken that no unworthy person be consecrated;" he consecrated men who belonged to another Church "knowing that they were Roman Catholics and would probably remain so"; he consecrated alone without need and in secret. Although the Holy See usually did not respond to notifications about episcopal consecrations, Mathew sued The Times for libel, on the grounds that the newspaper was apparently endorsing the Pope's characterization of him as a "pseudo-Bishop" who had given aid to a "wicked crime". The trial was described as "tense with laughter over the elaborate and convoluted ecclesiastical definitions." A "material part of the case" about whether Mathew was truthful was the 1889 printed announcement sent to his congregation in Bath. The trial revealed that in 1897 Mathew restated that he had apostatized in 1889 and had circulated the printed announcement but by 1897 had concluded that his change in belief was a mistake; he therefore recanted the 1889 document, in 1897, which during the trial he said that he never wrote. He testified that he was
hypnotized in Bath and so the announcement was written without his knowledge. The jury found that
The Times had not been actuated by malice and the words of the report were true in substance and in fact. Moss wrote that Messara "had no power to do this without the consent of"
Gregory IV, in Damascus, "which was never given". According to Herzog, Gregory IV retracted Messara's statement. "It is hard to believe that an Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch would have been prepared to accept a married prelate into communion with his Church," Anson wrote. Mathew's wife "did not take part in the conference, and it is probable that her existence behind the scenes was again kept dark, as at the time of her husband's consecration in 1908." The
Mathew v. "The Times" Publishing Co., Ltd. trial revealed that although Mathew "was originally informed that all were welcome, he was not ultimately admitted" as a cleric into the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch. Either Novikov or Uxkull-Gyllenband, according to Anson, introduced Mathew to
Rudolph de Landas Berghes. Mathew wrote to
The Tablet within a month: But because the Holy See insisted that he would only be reconciled as a layman and would be obliged to accept the doctrine of papal infallibility and primacy of the Roman Pontiff, Mathew then sought union with the but the
Archbishop of Canterbury Randall Davidson refused to give him any position in the . Mathew retired to
South Mimms, a village in the English countryside in Hertfordshire, and contented himself with assisting at services in a parish church. He died suddenly, on 20 December 1919, at South Mimms and was buried in the churchyard at South Mimms. == Contemporary significance ==