[8] As Principal, Smith presided over a college of twelve Fellows, six senior and six junior (including a Vice-Principal and Bursar), as well as 60 or 70 students.
Sources conflict on whether William Smyth, a co-founder of Brasenose College, was definitely related to Matthew Smith/Smyth and therefore granted him the position through nepotism.
[10][1][11] Churton wrote in an 1800 biography of William Smyth:Matthew Smyth, the first Principal of Brasen Nose college, is intitled[sic] to a place here by his personal merits and probable kin to the Founder, though none of the pedigrees of the family, which I have seen, acknowledge him; not have I been able, from any other quarter, fully to authenticate the fact.
In it, he named two executors: his nephew William Smith (parson of Barton in the Clay) and the then prominent Robert Morwent (second President of Oxford's Corpus Christi College).
He also gave lands to his own Brasenose College as income to support a scholar from Smith's home region (born near either Farnworth or Prescot).