North American station, till in November 1837 he was appointed to the Calliope frigate, with Captain (afterwards Sir Thomas) Herbert (1793–1861) [q. v.] After two years on the coast of Brazil the Calliope was sent to China, where she was actively employed during the first Chinese war. On 6 May 1841 Watson was promoted to the rank of commander, and was moved with Herbert to the Blenheim; and while in her was repeatedly engaged with the enemy, either in command of boats or landing parties. On 23 Dec. 1842 he was advanced to post rank, and the next day, 24 Dec., was nominated a C.B. From February 1846 to October 1849 he commanded the Brilliant, a small frigate, on the Cape of Good Hope station; and in December 1852 was appointed to the Impérieuse, a new 50-gun steam frigate, then, and for some years later, considered one of the finest ships in the navy. In 1854 she was sent up the Baltic in advance of the fleet, Watson being senior officer of the squadron of small vessels appointed to watch the breaking up of the ice, and to see that no Russian ships of war got to sea. It was an arduous service well performed. The Impérieuse continued with the flying squadron in the Baltic during the campaigns of 1854 and 1855. After the peace she was sent to the North American station, and returned to England and was paid off early in 1857. In June 1859 Watson was appointed captain-superintendent of Sheerness dockyard, where he died on 5 July 1860. He was married and left issue; his son, Captain Burges Watson, R.N., is now (1899) superintendent of Pembroke Dockyard.
[O'Byrne's Nav. Biogr. Dict.; Navy Lists; Gent. Mag. 1860, ii. 217.]
WATSON, SAMUEL (1663–1715), sculptor, was born at Heanor, Derbyshire, in December 1663. He executed some of the fine wood-carvings at Chatsworth, commonly attributed to Grinling Gibbons [q. v.] The dead game over the chimney piece in the great chamber is by his hand, and for this and other decorations in the same chamber in lime-tree wood, all completed in 1693, he received 133l. 7s. The trophy containing the celebrated pen over the door in the south-west corner room is likewise his work. He also carved the arms in the pediment of the west front in 1704; the stone carvings in the north front, finished in 1707, and other decorations both in wood and stone. Walpole says that ‘Gibbons had several disciples and workmen … Watson assisted chiefly at Chatsworth, where the boys and many of the ornaments in the chapel were executed by him’ (Anecdotes, ed. Wornum, p. 557). But it seems clear, since he made out his own bill for the above-mentioned works, that he executed them on his own account. He died at Heanor on 31 March 1715.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists.]
WATSON, THOMAS (1513–1584), bishop of Lincoln, was born in 1513 in the diocese of Durham, it is said at Nun Stinton, near Sedgefield. He was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, proceeding B.A. in 1533–4 and M.A. in 1537. He is confused by Strype and others with John Watson (d. 1530), master of Christ's College, Cambridge [see under Watson, John, 1520–1584]. About 1535 Watson was elected fellow of St. John's College, where he was for several years dean and preacher. There, writes Roger Ascham [q. v.], Watson was one of the scholars who ‘put so their helping hands, as that universitie and all students there, as long as learning shall last, shall be bound unto them’ (Scholemaster, ed. Mayor, p. 198). Besides Ascham, Watson had as friends and contemporaries Cheke, John Redman, Sir Thomas Smith, and others who led the revival of Greek learning at Cambridge. They would frequently discuss Aristotle's ‘Poetics’ and Horace's ‘Ars Poetica’ while Watson was writing his tragedy of ‘Absalom.’ Watson's fastidious scholarship would not allow him to publish it because in one or two verses he had used an anapaest instead of an iambus, though Ascham declared that ‘Absalom’ and George Buchanan's ‘Jephtha’ were the only two English tragedies that could stand ‘the true touch of Aristotle's precepts’ (ib. p. 207). Watson's play is said to have remained in manuscript at Penshurst, but it is not mentioned in the historical manuscripts commission's report on the papers preserved there (3rd Rep. App. pp. 227 sqq.); it has erroneously been assigned by Mr. Fleay and others to John Watson [q. v.], bishop of Winchester, and has also led to Thomas's confusion with Thomas Watson [q. v.], the poet (e.g. Gabriel Harvey, Works, ed. Grosart, i. 22, 23, 112, 218, ii. 83, 171, 290, where the references i. 112, 218, ii. 83, 290 are to the poet; and Nash, Works, ed. Grosart, ii. 65, 73, iii. 187, where the last reference also is to the poet).
In 1543 Watson proceeded B.D., and in 1545 Stephen Gardiner [q. v.], bishop of Winchester, appointed him his chaplain and rector of Wyke Regis in Dorset; he is also said to have been presented to the vicarage of Buckminster, Leicestershire, in
