Richard Watson

Richard Watson (1737-1816), Bishop of Llandaff, was frequently involved in political matters in the 1790s, becoming a favorite target of radical reformers like Benjamin Flower.  In 1796 Watson wrote a popular response to Thomas Paine’s Age of reason, Part 2, titled An Apology for the Bible.  But it was his Address to the People of Great Britain in 1798 that especially angered reformers, for in that work he endorsed Pitt’s policies both at home and abroad, a position in sharp contrast to his more reform-minded views of the 1780s.  A year before his conviction for libeling Watson, Flower had lambasted the Bishop's  “apostasy” in an editorial in Flower's paper, The Cambridge Intelligencer.  Writing on 12 May 1798, Flower argued that the princ­iples of reform he was espousing in his paper were not only “the sentiments of Locke and Newton” but had in recent years been “enforced from the pulpit of this University [Cambridge]” and  “pleaded for in the better days of Watson and Paley” as the sentiments “best calculated to promote peace, order and goodwill towards men.” Others voiced their disappointment with Watson as well as Flower, and they too suffered for it.  Gilbert Wakefield’s reply to Watson’s Address, ridiculing Watson for changing his earlier views, led to Wakefield’s trial and imprisonment, even though Watson, to his credit, tried to stop the prosecution.