Watson, RICHARD

Watson, RICHARD, divine, was born at Heversham in Westmorland in August 1737. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was elected fellow (1760), professor of Chemistry (1764), and regius professor of Divinity (1771). He became archdeacon of Ely, and in 1782 bishop of Llandaff, retaining two rectories, but visited his diocese but rarely. A Liberal in politics and theology, he published, besides sermons, essays, and charges, an Apology for Christianity in answer to Gibbon (1776), and an Apology for the Bible (1796) in reply to Paine. He died 2d July 1816. See his egotistic autobiography (1817).