Matthew Slade ((in Latin) Mattheus Sladus) (1569–1628) was an English nonconformist minister and royal agent, in the Netherlands by 1600 and active there in the Contra-Remonstrant cause.
1594, became vicar of Embleton, Northumberland, but resigned the living to travel in Europe and the east in search of manuscripts, and died in Zante before 1613.
[5] As a scholar, Slade was on good terms with Isaac Casaubon, Gerard Vossius, and Joseph Justus Scaliger.
[7] Slade then withdrew from the Brownist congregation, which excommunicated him; one of the points at issue was the Dutch approach to infant baptism.
[1] When in 1611 Conrad Vorstius was appointed successor to Jacobus Arminius as theological professor at the University of Leiden, Slade wrote an attack on him, Cum Conrado Vorstio (1612),[11] the second volume being published by his associate Jodocus Hondius the Younger.
Hugo Grotius, the prominent Remonstrant, had visited England in 1613, and Dutch Calvinist preachers wished to diminish his influence there.
[13] As a side issue, the reputation of Erasmus was called into question by Slade, who associated him polemically with some heretical positions, while suggesting he would have enjoyed his popularity with the Remonstrant faction.
[17] When the debate became important to diplomacy, Slade passed intelligence to Sir Dudley Carleton, who was English ambassador at The Hague from 1616.
[20] In September 1619 Carleton wished to track down William Brewster, the future Pilgrim Father; Slade located him as somewhere in Leiden.
He married Gertrude, daughter of Luke Ambrose, an English preacher there, and was father of Matthew Slade (1628–1689), born 9 June 1628 in England, who became a physician.
Under the anagram of Theodorus ‘Aldes,’ Matthew wrote ‘Dissertatio epistolica de Generatione Animalium contra Harveium’ (Amsterdam, 1666; reprinted twice at Frankfurt in 1668), and was author of several medical treatises.