This writer came to Ireland in the Reign of Charles I and acquired a considerable estate in Meath. His father was the youngest of a family of twenty-one and followed the then new and promising trade of watchmaker. Matthew was born at Ballyboy in County Offaly. His father appears to have prospered at the watchmaking business for he gave Matthew a liberal education, first at Mr. Neile's school and later at Trinity College, which he entered in June, 1718 aged 17. This indicates the year of birth as being 1700 or 1701. He took a BA degree in 1722 and was later ordained in the established church.

As an impecunious curate he married Letita Vanlewin, whose father was a doctor. Shortly afterwards the Pilkingtons were introduced to Swift, who has left us the following little vignette of the pair. (It will be found in a letter dated October, 1730 to Lord Bathrust in regard to the proposed issue of a Dublin Miscellany by the poet, William Dunkin).

"And a little, young, poetical parson, who has a littler, young, poetical wife, shall have the whole profit. And take notice that the word littler is not a blunder. And the young parson aforesaid hath very lately printed his own works, all in verse and some not unpleasant; in one or two of which I have the honour to be celebrated, which cost me a guinea and two bottles of wine; On another occasion Swift referred to the Pilkingtons as "the mighty Thomas Thumb and her Serene Highness of Lilliput".

The Pilkingtons had several children before the marriage ended in divorce in the spiritual court, on the grounds of the wife's adultery. Swift was not slow to change his opinion of them. He states in a letter to Pope: "Yet I confess that Doctor Delany, the most eminent preacher, is a very unlucky recommender. For he forced me to countenance Pilkington, introduced me to him and praised the wit, vertue and humour of him and his wife. Whereas he proved the falsest rogue and she the most profligate whore in either Kingdom 2.

Pilkington lived during the period of his first marriage in Saint Andrew's Parish. The register of that church shows that several of his children were baptised there and that, sadly, some of them died young and are buried there.

Pilkington remarried in the early 1750's, this time to a Miss Ann Sandy's. She was an ugly woman and had little otherwise to recommend her, if we are to believe that Pilkington's son, John Carteret, had to say about her in his memoirs.

The Dictionary of National Biography has confused Michael Pilkington the poet, with another Matthew Pilkington (who turns out to be an entirely fictitious person). To this latter the D.N.B. has ascribed The Gentleman's and Connoisseur's Dictionary of Painters, as well as a comfortable living in Donabate. F. Elrington Ball, Editor of Swift's correspondence and local historian, has set the record straight in a contribution to Notes and Queries, where he set out the will of Matthew Pilkington, the poet, dated February 1754, and demonstrated conclusively that he was Vicar of Donabater, County Dublin, from 1741 until his death and that he was the author of The Gentleman's and Connoisseur's Dictionary of Painters, first published in 1770. This dictionary was accepted for many years as the standard work on the lives of the world painters and went through numerous editions. A note appended to his will indicates that Pilkington died in July 1774.

The extent to which Pilkington had become estranged from his own children and the degree of rancour involved, can be judged from the following provision in his will, which it will be noted was made some twenty years before his death: "Item To my son William Pilkington, who never felt a filial affection for me (to the utmost of my observation) I give the some of five pounds sterling and to those two abandoned wretches, John Carteret Pilkington and Elizabeth Pilkington, I give the some of one shilling if demanded within twelve months, and I should abhor to mention them in any deed of mine, if it were not to prevent all possibility of dispute or litigation".

Almost alone among the poets dealt with in his book, Matthew Pilkington's life is particularly well documented. Not only does he figure extensively in the correspondence of Swift, but also in the Memoirs of his first wife, Letitia, and of his son, John C. Pilkington. In addition, several of his poems are self-revelatory.