The Reverend Timothy Matthews was in his lifetime, and still is, a controversial figure. He is unknown to the Dictionary of National Biography, but was the subject of a laudatory biography published nearly a hundred years after his death. Notices concerning him have appeared from time to time in Bedfordshire newspapers and other periodicals. He has been more recently referred to in Miss Godber’s History of Bedfordshire. To Thomas Wright, his biographer, Matthews was ‘this truly great and noble minded man,’ whom he would include in succession with Wyclif, Latimer, Whitfield and Wesley! Miss Godber writes of a new spirit of expansion among all denominations induced by the growth of population and a wider view being taken of their responsibilities. She refers to Timothy Matthews as ‘the most unconventional figure of the time … a law to himself.’ The relationships between the established church and dissenters, related to general movements of Reform, are discussed by Professor Owen Chadwick in his work on The Victorian Church. Throughout the country, even before the accession of the Queen, these movements and ideas of Reform and change had begun.

In view of the interest shewn in Timothy Matthews and of his importance in the religious history of Bedford, it was felt that an edition of a bundle of letters in the files of John Kaye, Bishop of Lincoln from 1827 to 1853, whose diocese extended from the Humber to the Thames and included the archdeaconry of Bedford, would be of interest in throwing some new light on Matthews position and on the Bedford of his time. This bundle of letters is one of a collection of just over 250 bundles of correspondence received, dealt with and filed by the Bishop during his episcopate and returned to be with the diocesan records by his descendants many years after his death. Collectively they, in their turn, throw some light on the diligence of at least one bishop of the mid-nineteenth century. The letters in the bundle now under consideration were written between 1830 and 1836, and extracts are given from two letters in other Bedfordshire bundles.