John Matthews (1755–1826) was a versatile English physician and poet, also involved in local affairs and politics in Herefordshire.
He moved back to acquire the estate of Clehonger, near Hereford, and built on it in 1788–90 the mansion of Belmont, situated on the banks of the River Wye with extensive lawns and plantations.
He was also colonel of the first regiment of Hereford militia, chairman of quarter sessions, and Member of Parliament for the county from 31 March 1803 to 1806.
After a protracted illness he died at Belmont on 15 January 1826; a monument to his memory was placed in the south aisle of Clehonger Church.
It was reprinted in 1801, and again in 1822, when the bookseller put on the title-page that it was ‘ascribed to Porson.’ Matthews wrote A Sketch from the Landscape: A Didactic Poem, addressed to R. Payne Knight, 1794, an attack which Richard Payne Knight, in the Advertisement to the second edition of the ‘Landscape,’ stigmatised as "a sort of doggerel ode" and "a contemptible publication".