His son, SIR TOBIAS, or TOBIE, MATTHEW (1577-1655), is remembered as the correspondent and friend of Francis Bacon. He was educated at Christ Church, and was early attached to the court, serving in the embassy at Paris. His debts and dissipations were a great source of sorrow to his father, from whom he is known to have received at different times £14,000, the modern equivalent of which is much larger. He was chosen member for Newport in Cornwall in the parliament of 1601, and member for St Albans in 1604. Before this time he had become the intimate friend of Bacon, whom he replaced as member for St Albans. When peace was made with Spain, on the accession of James I., he wished to travel abroad. His family, who feared his conversion to Roman Catholicism, opposed his wish, but he promised not to go beyond France. When once safe out of England he broke his word and went to Italy. The persuasion of some of his countrymen in Florence, one of whom is said to have been the Jesuit Robert Parsons, and a story he heard of the miraculous liquefaction of the blood of San Januarius at Naples, led to his conversion in 1606. When he returned to England he was imprisoned, and many efforts were made to obtain his reconversion without success. He would not take the oath of allegiance to the king. In 1608 he was exiled, and remained out of England for ten years, mostly in Flanders and Spain. He returned in 1617, but went abroad again in 1619. His friends obtained his leave to return in 1621. At home he was known as the intimate friend of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador. In 1623 he was sent to join Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I., at Madrid, and was knighted on the 23rd of October of that year. He remained in England till 1640, when he was finally driven abroad by the parliament, which looked upon him as an agent of the pope. He died in the English college in Ghent on the 13th of October 1655. In 1618 he published an Italian translation of Bacon's essays. The "Essay on Friendship" was written for him. He was also the author of a translation of _The Confessions of the Incomparable Doctor St Augustine_, which led him into controversy. His correspondence was published in London in 1660. For the father, see John Le Neve's _Fasti ecclesiae anglicanae_ (London, 1716), and Anthony Wood's _Athenae oxonienses_. For the son, the notice in _Athenae oxonienses_, an abridgment of his autobiographical _Historical Relation_ of his own life, published by Alban Butler in 1795, and A. H. Matthew and A. Calthrop, _Life of Sir Tobie Matthew_ (London, 1907).