Mathew Kemp (c. 1630 – December 1682) was a British attorney who emigrated from England to the Colony of Virginia where he became a government official, planter and politician.
He inherited land in Lancaster County from his father, although in 1662 he had to assert his interest in court as attorney for Sir Gray Skipwith, who had married his widowed mother and had been named as executor of Edmund Kemp's estate.
[10] In March 1661, the Virginia General Assembly named him to arrange a land transaction between Moore Fauntleroy and the Rappahannock Native Americans.
[18] Instead, he joined with Governor Sir Henry Chicheley in requesting the king pay the soldiers sent to Virginia to quash Bason's Rebellion.
[19] Nonetheless, the burgesses refused to re-elect him as Speaker in the next session; he was in third place after Thomas Ballard and Isaac Allerton, and the House chose Robert Beverley as clerk.
Governor Sir henry Chicheley prorougued the House upon orders of Governor Culpeper, who had traveled to England for consultations, but within two weeks some people in Gloucester County were cutting down tobacco plants, first on their own farms, then those of others, supposedly instigated by Major Robert Beverley, the house clerk.
[25] Kemp died in December 1682, shortly before Governor Culpeper's return from England, and so did not see Batholomew Black Austen, one of the tobacco cutters, hanged in front of the Gloucester County courthouse.