Mathew, Arnold Harris

(1853–1919)

   Putative Archbishop.

   Mathew was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1878, but, after his marriage in 1892, was allowed to serve as a Church of England minister. In 1908 the Old Catholic Church of Holland (which had separated from the Church of Rome in 1724) consecrated him Archbishop of Great Britain – apparently in the belief that he had a considerable personal following. When the real situation came to light, the Dutch Church repudiated the consecration. None the less Mathew continued to describe himself as an Archbishop and went so far as to consecrate several other Bishops. Thus in the 1920s and 1930s, several Bishops existed in England who presumably stood in the Apostolic Succession, but whose jurisdiction was recognised by no one except themselves.

   H.R.T. Brandreth, Episcopi Vagentes and the Anglican Church, revised edition (1961);

   Arnold Harris Mathew, An Episcopal Odyssey (1915).