Rt Rev Richard Watson (1737–1816) was an Anglican clergyman and academic, who served as the Bishop of Llandaff from 1782 to 1816. He wrote some notable political pamphlets.
He was born in Heversham, Westmorland (now Cumbria), and educated at Heversham Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge,[1] on a scholarship endowed by Edward Wilson. In 1759 he graduated as Second Wrangler, in 1760 became a fellow of Trinity[1], and in 1762 received his MA. He went on to become a professor of chemistry in 1764, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1769 after publishing a paper on the solution of salts in Philosophical Transactions.
Watson's religious career began when he became Regius professor of divinity in 1771.[1] In 1773, he married Dorothy Wilson, daughter of Edward Wilson of Dallam Tower and a descendant of the eponymous benefactor who had endowed Watson's scholarship. In 1774, he took up the position of prebendary of Trinity College. He became archdeacon of Ely and rector of Northwold in 1779, leaving the Northwold post two years later to become rector of Knattoft. In 1782, he left all his previous appointments to take up the post of Bishop of Llandaff, which he held till his death in 1816. In 1788, he purchased the Calgarth estate in Troutbeck Bridge, Windermere, Westmoreland.
He contributed to the Revolution Controversy, most notably in 1796 when he delivered his counterblast to Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason in An Apology for the Bible which he had "reason to believe, was of singular service in stopping that torrent of irreligion which had been excited by [Paine's] writings"[2]. In 1798 he published An Address to the People of Great Britain, which argued for national taxes to be raised to pay for the war against France and to reduce the national debt. Gilbert Wakefield, a Unitarian minister who taught at Warrington Academy, responded with A Reply to Some Parts of the Bishop Llandaff's Address to the People of Great Britain, attacking the privileged position of the wealthy.
An autobiography Anecdotes of the life of Richard Watson, Bishop of Landaff was finished in 1814 and published posthumously in 1817.
He was buried at St. Martin's Church in Windermere. One of his great, great, great grandsons, Reverend David Watson (1933–84) of St. Michael le Belfrey, became a renowned evangelical clergyman over a century after the bishop's death.