Joshua Watson

English wine merchant, philanthropist, a prominent member of the high church party and of several charitable organisations, who became known as “the best layman in England”. Married Mary whose uncle was Charles Daubeney. Joshua from his early years was brought into contact with other members of the high-church party, of which he afterwards became the virtual leader. Among his early friends and advisers were William Stevens, the disciple and biographer of William Jones of Nayland, and founder of the Club of Nobody’s Friends, of which Joshua Watson was an original member; Jonathan Boucher, who became in 1785 vicar of Epsom, where John James Watson had his first curacy; and Sir John Richardson (afterwards a judge in the court of common pleas), who had been a college friend of John James Watson.Among other friends were Henry Handley Norris, with whom he maintained an unbroken friendship of nearly sixty years, and William Van Mildert, rector of St. Mary-le-Bow in the city (afterwards bishop of Durham). Van Mildert submitted both his Boyle Lectures and his Bampton Lectures to Watson’s revision, and was largely guided by his advice in literary matters. Nor was Van Mildert the only man of letters who showed confidence in his literary power. At the house of Van Mildert in Ely Place he met the elder Christopher Wordsworth, master of Trinity College, Cambridge, whom he joined in revising the proof-sheets of Christopher Wordsworth the younger’s work, Theophilus Anglicanus. These men were, with Archdeacon Benjamin Harrison and William Rowe Lyall, Watson’s chief friends and coadjutors. In 1814 Watson retired from business to devote himself exclusively to works of piety and charity. He never missed any meeting of the Society for Propagation of the Gospel, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, or the National Society, and his counsel was highly valued. He took a deep interest in the colonial church, being an intimate friend of Bishop Middleton of Calcutta, Bishop Inglis of Nova Scotia, Bishop Broughton of Australasia, and subsequently Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand. In 1814 he was appointed, together with his friend Archdeacon Cambridge, treasurer of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which during his treasurership increased greatly its work and income. About the same time he became secretary of the relief fund for the German sufferers from the Napoleonic wars. In 1817 the Church Building Society, called at first the Church Room Society, was formed. Watson was largely instrumental in its foundation, drawing up the original resolution. This was quickly followed by a royal commission for church building issued under Lord Liverpool’s government. Watson was one of the commissioners, and found the work so engrossing that in 1822 he took a house, No. 6 Park Street, Westminster, where he lived for sixteen years, to be near the scene of his labours.He was also treasurer of the Clergy Orphan School, which was, perhaps, of all his benevolent schemes, the one nearest to his heart.