• Name: Mathews, Charles
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 28  June  1776
• Death Date: 28  June  1835
• Occupation: actor

Godwin records his death - a day early, entering it on the 27th.

There are, however, a series of references to meetings with Mathews which seem plausibly linked to Charles Mathews. For example, 2.5.1818 'Mathews at Home, w. M J' refers to Mathews's trademark show, the several meetings in Scotland in 1816 correspond to a period where, according to the DNB, Mathews was touring in Scotland and Ireland (being prevented by the terms on which he'd left Covent Garden from playing in England) and 21.2.1832 'Dine at Mathews’s, w. C M, junr;' seems to refer to Mathews's only child, Charles James Mathews.

Confirmation comes from The Life and Correspondence of Charles Mathews pp. 361-2: 'In the year 1807 or 1807, Mr. Godwin called upon Mr. Mathews. He entertained a great admiration of him in public, he said, and not havng any mutual friend to introduce him, he had ventured upon the present mode rather than not become acquainted with him. From this time they met occasionally. Mr. Godwin had often witnesses Mr. Mathews's power of personation, and just before Mr. Godwin's last novel Cloudesley, was published, he addressed the following request to my husband:- ...'No. 44, Gower-place, February 14th. My dear Sir,-I am at this moment engaged in writing a work of fiction, a part of the incidents of which will consist in escapes in disguises. It has forcibly struck me that, if I could be indulged in the pleasure of half an hour's conversation with you on the subject, it would furnish me with some hints, which, beaten on the anvil of my brain, would be of eminent service to me on the occasion.'

The visit is then described in comic detail - Mathews fooling Godwin by turning into someone else - but, frustratingly, these contacts around the time of Cloudesley do not seem to have been recorded in the diary.

• DNB
• The Life and Correspondence of Charles Mathews, ed. by Edmund Yates (London: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1860).

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.