Oliver Mathews

Works

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.