of publication by editing the first issue of ‘Men of the Time,’ remarkable for an unparalleled misprint en bloc at the expense of the bishop of Oxford, and the portentous length of the article on the editor, who has awarded himself three times as much space as he has bestowed on Tennyson.
Besides his poems, he was the author of several prose works, of which, as he says, ‘he did not think it worth while to claim the paternity.’ His most noteworthy compilation is the memoir and letterpress accompanying the beautiful issue of Turner's ‘Liber Fluviorum’ in 1853. He died on 5 April 1864 at Blenheim Crescent, Notting Hill, whither he had moved from St. John's Wood in 1860. His widow survived until 13 Dec. 1873, and was buried beside her husband in Highgate cemetery. Their son Alaric Alfred (1825–1901), married in 1859 Anna Maria, elder daughter of William and Mary Howitt, and was well known as a spiritualist. Etchings of Watts and his wife are prefixed to the two volumes of the ‘Life’ by Alaric Alfred Watts.
[Alaric Watts: a Narrative of his Life, by his son, Alaric Alfred Watts, 1884; Maginn and Bates in the Maclise Portrait Gallery.]
WATTS, GILBERT (d. 1657), divine, a younger son of Richard Watts, by his wife Isabel, daughter of Arthur Alcock of St. Martin's Vintry, London, widow of his cousin, Thomas Scott (d. 1585) of Barnes Hall, Ecclesfield, Yorkshire, was grandson of John Watts (1497?–1601) of Muckleton, Shropshire, by his wife Ann, daughter of Richard Scott of Barnes Hall. Watts was thus of kin to Thomas Rotherham [q. v.], archbishop of York and second founder of Lincoln College, whose arms he quartered with his own. His elder brother, Richard, M.A., fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, vicar of Chesterton, Cambridgeshire, and chaplain to Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford [q. v.], became the owner of Barnes Hall after the death, on 17 July 1638, in Ireland, of his elder half-brother, Sir Richard Scott, comptroller of the household to the same earl.
Gilbert was born at Rotherham, Yorkshire. He studied for a few terms at Cambridge, and on his admission as batler or servitor at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1607, he was permitted to reckon them towards qualifying for a degree (Oxford Univ. Reg. ii. i. 371). He graduated B.A. on 28 Jan. 1610–1611, M.A. on 7 July 1614, was elected a fellow in 1621, and became B.D. on 10 July 1623. On 1 Nov. 1642 Watts was created D.D. during the king's visit to Oxford, having been presented on 11 July previous to the rectory of Willingale Doe, Essex. His rectory was sequestrated by the Westminster assembly in August 1647; but although the clerk of the committee for plundered ministers was ordered to show cause for the act, the ground of complaint against Watts does not appear.
He returned to Oxford, died at Eynsham on 9 Sept. 1657, and was buried in the chancel of All Saints. By his will, dated 5 Sept. (proved 5 Nov.) 1657, Watts left to Lincoln College ‘soe many bookes as cost me threescore pounds,’ to be chosen and valued by Thomas Barlow [q. v.], then librarian of the Bodleian. Watts was a good preacher and an excellent linguist. Wood says he had ‘so smooth a pen in Latin or English that no man of his time exceeded him.’
Watts translated Bacon's ‘De Augmentis Scientiarum,’ and his rendering called ‘Of the Advancement and Proficience of Learning, of the Partitions of Sciences,’ Oxford, 1640, fol., was highly praised on its appearance. His translation of D'Avila's ‘History of the Civil Wars of France’ was never published; and he left other works in manuscript, including ‘A Catalogue of all the works of Charles I,’ which is preserved among the manuscripts at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 433; Wood's Colleges and Halls, ed. Gutch, p. 248; Foster's Athenæ, 1500–1714, iv. 1584; Burrows's Visitation, p. 508; Newcourt's Repert. Eccles. ii. 668; Addit. MS. 15671, ff. 172, 174; Will P.C.C. 472 Ruthen; Hunter's Hallamshire, p. 443; J. R. Scott's Family of Scott of Scots Hall, p. 157.]
WATTS, HENRY (1815–1884), chemist, was born in London on 20 Jan. 1815. He went to a private school, and was articled at the age of fifteen as an architect and surveyor; but, finding himself unsuited for this profession, supported himself by teaching, chiefly mathematical, privately and at a school. He then went to University College, London. In 1841 he graduated B.A. in the university of London. In 1846 he became assistant to George Fownes [q. v.], then professor of practical chemistry at University College, and occupied this post, after Fownes's death in 1849, until 1857, under Professor Alexander William Williamson. Owing to an incurable impediment in speech he found himself unable to obtain a professorship, and, on this account, was ultimately induced to devote himself entirely to the literature of chemistry. In 1847 he was elected fellow of the Chemical Society. In 1848 he was engaged by the Cavendish Society to translate into English and enlarge Leopold Gmelin's classical ‘Handbuch
