Watson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1769, and for some years afterwards contributed many chemical papers to the 'Philosophical Transactions.' In 1771 he published 'An Essay on the Subjects of Chemistry, and their General Divisions.' In 1781 he published two volumes 12mo. of 'Chemical Essays;' a third appeared in 1782; and a fourth in 1786 completed the work, which has often been reprinted, and was long very popular. In connection with his chemical professorship, Watson obtained from Government, by proper representations, a salary of 100l. for himself, and for all future professors. He also paid some attention to theoretical and practical anatomy, as having a certain relation to the science of chemistry.
In October, 1771, on the death of Dr. Rutherforth, he unexpectedly obtained the lucrative and important office of Regius Professor of Divinity, and in that capacity, held the Rectory of Somersham in Huntingdonshire. At this time he had neither taken his degree of B.D. or D.D., and by his own account, seems to have known little more of theological learning than he did of chemistry seven years before. Yet such was his good fortune, or the reputation that he had established, for carrying an object whenever he took it in hand, that no other candidate appeared for the professorship, while his eloquence and ingenuity supplied the want of deeper erudition, and attracted as numerous audiences to the exercises in the schools at which he presided, as had ever attended his chemical lectures.
Watson himself, in the anecdotes of his life, gives the following account of this circumstance:—"I was not, when Dr. Rutherforth died, either Bachelor or Doctor in Divinity, and without being one of them I could not become a candidate for the Professorship. This puzzled me for a moment, I had only seven days to transact the business in, but by hard travelling, and some adroitness, I accomplished my purpose, obtained the King's mandate for a Doctor's degree, and was created Doctor on the day previous to that appointed for the examination of the candidates. Thus did I, by hard and incessant labour for seventeen years, attain at the age of thirty-four, the first office for honour in the University; and, exclusive of the mastership of Trinity College, I have made it the first for profit; I found the Professorship not worth quite 330l., and it is now worth 1000l. at least."
Watson's clerical preferment after this was very rapid. In 1773, through the influence of the Duke of Grafton, he obtained possession of a sinecure rectory in North Wales, which he was enabled to exchange during the course of the following year for a prebend in the Church of Ely. In 1780 he succeeded Dr. Plumtree as archdeacon of that diocese; the same year he was presented to the Rectory of Northwold in Norfolk, and in the beginning of the year following, received another much more valuable living, the Rectory of Knaptoft in Leicestershire, from the hands of the Duke of Rutland, who had been his pupil at the University. Lastly, in July, 1782, he was promoted to the bishopric of Llandaff, by the Prime Minister of that period Lord Shelburne, who hoped thereby both to gratify the Duke of Rutland, and also to secure an active partisan.
Watson, however, proved a very unmanageable bishop, and during the course of his political career was singularly free and independent in his sentiments. One of his first acts was to publish in 1783, 'A Letter to Archbishop Cornwallis on the Church Revenues, recommending an equalization of the Bishoprics.' This he did in spite of all that could be said to make him see that it would embarrass the Government, and at the same time do nothing to forward his own object. And so he continued to take his own way, and was very soon left to do so, without any party or person seeking either to guide or stop him.
In 1783 Bishop Watson had married the eldest daughter of Edward Wilson of Dalham Tower in Westmoreland. In the year 1789 he retired from politics and betook himself to an estate which he had at Calgarth, on the banks of Winandermere, occupying himself in educating his family, and in agricultural improvements, especially planting, for which he received a medal from the Society of Arts in 1789.
Previous to this, in 1786, his friend and former pupil, Mr. Luther, of Ongar in Essex, had left him an estate which he sold for more than 20,000l. Bishop Watson died on the 4th of June, 1816, in his seventy-ninth year. His writings are very numerous and miscellaneous in their character; some of the more well known are:—an 'Apology for Christianity,' written in 1776 in answer to Gibbon; a 'Collection of Theological Tracts, selected from various Authors, for the use of the Younger Students in the University,' in six volumes 8vo., 1785; 'Apology for the Bible, in a series of Letters addressed to Thomas Paine,' 1796; and, 'An Address to the People of Great Britain,' which went through fourteen editions, 1798.
One of the best practical results of his chemical studies was the suggestion which he made to the Duke of Richmond, at that time Master of the Ordnance, respecting the preparation of charcoal for gunpowder, by burning the wood in close vessels, a process very materially improving the quality of the powder, and which is now generally adopted.—Anecdotes of the Life of Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, written by himself. London, 1817.—Memoir by Dr. Thomas Young, Encyclopædia Britannica.—English Cyclopædia.
