Oliver Mathews

According to his own writings, Mathews seems to have been born around 1520. His father was Richard Mathews, a yeoman of Kinton near Chirbury, said by Richard Williams Morgan to have been from an "old and respectable family". Antiquary Richard Williams writes that they had "settled for many generations" near Caersws at Park farm, where he says Oliver Mathews appears to have been born. However, Edward Hamer, another antiquary, notes that if so they "appear to have occupied a subordinate position", because a branch of the Pryce family occupied the Park around that time. From his letters, Mathews seems to have considered himself Welsh, and of Celtic descent, referring to himself as a "Brittaine". He became a prosperous businessman, Mathews frequently served as warden of the Mercer's Company until 6 August 1572, when he paid to become a full brother and freeman, which was the last time he appears in their records. though his letter from 1615 indicates that he lived at the nearby village of Snead. He and his wife had a daughter, Jane, and two sons, Thomas, One source, William Allport Leighton, reports that Mathews married again on 30 November 1602 at Church Stoke, but the name of this second wife is not legible in the parish records. ==Works==

(1616) Four works by Mathews are known, consisting of one letter with historical notes, two blackletter chronicles, Shrewsbury publisher Stafford Price sent the manuscripts to John Thorpe, who communicated them to Thomas Hearne; Hearne transcribed them as an appendix to his History and Antiquities of Glastonbury (1722). In 1877, Shrewsbury publisher T. W. Bickley reprinted Hearne's 1722 transcription of all these manuscripts under the title The Scituation, Foundation, and Auncient Names of the Famous Towne of Sallop (the title of the most notable manuscript). Assessing his work in their History of Shrewsbury (1825), topographers Hugh Owen and John Brickdale Blakeway described it as containing "strange and unauthorised assertions", but noted that Mathews' statement that he was ninety-five years old when writing it "disarms all criticism", and ultimately write that he "amused his age" by penning it. saying that his age "is in some measure an excuse for the fanciful exposition of early British history" that he wrote. ==Notes==