John Hobson Matthews (1858–1914) was an English-born Welsh Roman Catholic poet, Celticist, historian, archivist and solicitor.

[1] He attended schools in Blackheath and Cambridge and worked in the Colony of Malta for a short period with a shipping firm.

Matthews was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1877 and became a solicitor in 1889, subsequently working in Cardiff.

As a keen linguist and Celticist, he edited Emynau Catholig (English: 'Catholic Hymns'), translated Ffordd y Groes ("The Way of the Cross") and joined the Welsh Bardic Gorsedd Cymru.

He is particularly notable for being one of the first recent Catholic historians to draw attention to the Welsh-language Bard and Elizabethan era Roman Catholic martyr Richard Gwyn, with the result that the latter was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.