Henry Matthews, 'The Home Secretary'

Leslie Ward ('Spy') presents Henry Matthews, Q.C., M.P.—Salisbury's Home Secretary and the first Roman Catholic to hold Cabinet office since the Reformation—leaning forward at a dispatch box, one heel lifted, body angled in arrested forward motion. The pose suggests a man perpetually on the verge of making his case rather than having made it: Matthews was considered an eloquent advocate but a shaky departmental minister. His prominent nose is exaggerated in the manner standard to the series. The caption 'The Home Secretary' carries a faint irony: Matthews held the office during the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888 and faced fierce parliamentary criticism for his department's failures—though this plate predates that crisis by a year.