Author: BROWNE, Hyde Mathis
Biography:
BROWNE, Hyde Mathis (1787-1813?: ancestry.co.uk)
Although the author of The Mad Minstrel (1812) is given only as H. M. B. on the title page he can be confidently identified as Hyde Mathis Browne, surgeon and author of The Apothecary’s Vade Mecum which, like the book of verse, was printed and sold in 1812 by J. Murray, W. Blackwood, J. Cumming, and Munday and Slatter. He was the second of three sons born to John Browne and Charlotte Mathis who had married at Chichester, Sussex, on 27 Feb. 1783. He was named for his grandfather, Hyde Mathis, and baptised at Storrington, West Sussex, on 26 Oct. 1787. Nothing is known of his education but he trained to be a surgeon and served first in the Bedford militia before joining the 3rd regiment of Oxfordshire local militia. He married Mary Anne Judd on 6 June 1809 at St. Mary’s, Banbury, Oxfordshire. They had two sons: Hyde Mathis, baptised at Banbury on 1 Sept. 1811, and William, baptised on 20 Sept. 1812. The latter died in 1813 and was buried in Banbury on 19 May. No death record has been located for Hyde Mathis Browne but accounts of a case heard by the House of Lords assert that he died during the Peninsular War at St. Jean de Luz near Bayonne in 1813 and was buried there. (The long-running case concerns the claims of his relative, Henry Browne, to the title Viscount Montague.) Mary Anne Browne remarried in 1822 and his son, Hyde, died unmarried in 1844. The Mad Minstrel supplies compelling evidence for Hyde Mathis Browne’s authorship including, for example, references to his medical practice and military service, his home in Banbury, and poems addressed to Mary Ann (Marianne). The preface gives his age as “barely twenty-four.” Although the preface also states that “this is the fourth time the writer…has ventured before the Public as an author,” only The Apothecary’s Vade Mecum has been identified. One of the poems is addressed to his brother as “E. J. B—e”; the reference must be to his elder brother John who was baptised at Storrington in 1785 and served in the military. (ancestry.co.uk 21 Apr. 2026; findmypast.co.uk 21 Apr. 2026; Case of Henry Browne, Esq. on his Claim to the Title and Dignity of Viscount Montague [1851]) SR