physician extraordinary to the queen, and in 1870 physician in ordinary. He was one of the physicians who attended the prince consort in his last illness. He was created a baronet on 27 June 1866. He retired from practice soon after 1870. He last attended the comitia of the College of Physicians in March 1882, on which occasion all the fellows present rose when he entered the room, a rare mark of respect, and the highest honour which the college can bestow on one of its fellows who has ceased to hold office.
Watson died on 11 Dec. 1882. His portrait, by George Richmond, hangs in the censors' room at the College of Physicians. He left a son, Sir Arthur Townley Watson, Q.C., and one daughter.
[Marshall's obituary notice in Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, vol. lxvi.; Lancet, obituary notice, 16 Dec. 1882; Works.]
WATSON, WALTER (1780–1854), Scottish poet, was born of lowly parentage at Chryston, parish of Calder, Lanarkshire, on 29 March 1780. At the age of eight he became a herd, and after a spell at weaving he tried farm service for a time at home, and employment as a sawyer in Glasgow, after which he enlisted in the Scots greys in 1799. Discharged at the peace of Amiens, 1802, he presently married and settled as a weaver in Chryston. He changed to Kilsyth, Stirlingshire, in 1820, after which he made various experiments till 1849 in the adjoining counties of Stirling, Lanark, and Dumbarton—now working as a sawyer and again as a weaver—finally settling at Duntiblae, near Kirkintilloch, Dumbartonshire, where he died on 12 Sept. 1854. He was buried in Calder churchyard, and a granite monument was erected at his grave in 1875. He was survived by a widow and four members of a family of ten. Several of Watson's lyrics—especially such merry, festive songs as ‘Sit down, my Cronie,’ and ‘A wee drappie o't’—though not of specially fine quality, have a winning shrewdness and vivacity that have secured them a certain popularity. Watson published three small volumes of his verse in 1808, 1823, and 1843 respectively, and a volume of his ‘Select Poems’ was edited by Hugh Macdonald in 1853.
[Macdonald's Memoir; Rogers's Modern Scottish Minstrel; Grant Wilson's Poets and Poetry of Scotland.]
WATSON, WILLIAM (1559?–1603), secular priest and conspirator, born on 23 April, apparently in 1559, was, like his contemporaries, Anthony Watson [q. v.] and Christopher Watson [q. v.], a native of the diocese of Durham. His name does not occur in the ‘Visitations of Durham’ (ed. Foster, 1887), but his father must have been a man of some position if William's statement is to be trusted, that he was ‘sent to Oxforde at 10 yeares of age with my tutor (a perfect linguist, which my father kept to teach).’ He must be distinguished from the ‘William Watson of Durham, pleb.,’ who matriculated, aged 26, from All Souls' on 28 Nov. 1581, and graduated B.A. in the following February, for the future conspirator ‘at 14 came to the inns of court,’ and at sixteen ‘passed the sea to Rheims’ (Watson to the Attorney-general, printed in Law, Archpriest Controversy, i. 211 sqq.). Watson's family was evidently Roman catholic, and his name does not appear on the registers at Oxford or at the inns of court. According to Parsons, who is even less veracious than Watson himself, Watson came to Rheims ‘a poor, little begging boy,’ and obtained employment in menial offices at the English College, where he made sport for the students ‘in tumbling, for which his body was fitly made, and so he passed by the name of Wil. Wat., or Wat. Tumbler’ (Parsons, Manifestation, 1602, ff. 83–4). Watson's own account was that ‘my studies until I was 18 yeares of age were in the 7 liberall sciences intermixte, with the tongues, phisicke, common lawe (and especially histories all my life time for recreacon); from 18 to 21 I studied the lawes canon and civil with positive divinitie, and perfecting of my metaphisicke and philosophie; after that, untill my return home, I plyed schoole divinitie.’ His library, when he was arrested, contained, besides theological works, ‘lawe bookes, Machiavels works, tragedies, cronycles, collecions of Doleman, Philopater, Leycesters Commonwealth.’
Watson was confirmed at Rheims on 25 March 1581, received minor orders on 23 Sept. 1583, was ordained subdeacon on 21 Sept. 1585, deacon at Laon on 22 March 1585–6, priest on 5 April, and on 16 June following was sent as missioner to England (Douai Diaries, pp. 13, 178, 198, 209, 211). He was captured almost immediately and imprisoned in the Marshalsea; he was soon released on condition of leaving England within a specified time, during which he was not to be molested. Richard Topcliffe [q. v.], however, who had been commissioned to hunt out priests, seized Watson, shut him up in Bridewell, and severely tortured him (cf. State Papers, Dom. Eliz. ccii. 61). In 1588 Watson escaped to the continent (on 30 Aug. in that year two
