Mary Matthew

Mary Matthew (c. 1516–1602) was a 16th-century Englishwoman who was the first woman in England to be granted her own coat of arms.

Biography Matthew was born about 1516 in Colchester, Essex. Her father was Thomas Matthew of Colchester. Her mother, a daughter of John Bardefeld, had first married Thomas Wesden of Lincolnshire and later married Mathew's father.

By 1540, Matthew was married to Thomas Langton, citizen and skinner of London. They had five children. After her husband's death, she remarried in 1552 to Andrew Judde, and they had a daughter. Heraldry was traditionally "a masculine practice" and "there are far more examples of women using their father’s or husband’s arms than being granted their own."

Matthew died in 1602 in Latton, Essex.