MEMOIR OF H. C. WATSON, ESQ. 
265 
with his brother-in-law, Sir Henry Slingsby, though Lady Claypole, daughter 
of the Protector, is said to have begged on her knees that Dr. Hewett’s life 
might be spared; and afterwards, on her own death-bed, she is reported to have 
upbraided her father with the death of Hewett. He was author of various 
clerical writings, and is mentioned in many political publications of the time. 
(See Clarendon, Vol. VI., p. 624.) A good portrait of Dr. Hewett is in the 
possession of Mr. Hewett Watson ; but he is not aware why it left the family 
of Hewett in the direct line. 
The following curious anecdote connected with the history of this family may 
be worth repeating. It is duly entered in the MS. Family History before 
adverted to, but whether true in all respects, is not known by the subject of our 
memoir :—“ The House of Leeds originates from a clerk to one of the most 
respectable merchants of a former age. A nursery-maid playing with the infant 
daughter of her master, Sir William Hewett (or ITewit), Lord Mayor of 
London, had the misfortune accidentally to push her out of a window that 
fronted the river Thames. A young gentleman, of the name of Osborne, and 
ancestor in a direct line to the present Duke of Leeds (1780), immediately 
plunging into the water, at the hazard of his own life, saved that of the child. 
Sir William afterwards gave his daughter in marriage, with an immense fortune, 
to Mr. Osborne. Several of the nobility, and particularly the Earl of Shrewsbury, 
had desired to pay their addresses to the young lady; but Sir William declared 
that Osborne should possess what he so gallantly had preserved. The present 
family preserve the picture of the Lord Mayor, at Kiveton House, ^Nottinghamshire.” 
Mr. Watson's family, on the paternal side, for some generations, has been 
more prolific in females than in males; and in consequence he has few known 
relatives bearing the same surname, common as it is in most of the Northern 
counties. His seven sisters were married respectively to the late Mr. S. F. Heys 
(uncle of the present Earl of Winterton), —Major Spence, of the 31st Foot,— 
the late Mr. George Scholes, of Manchester, Banker,—Mr. J. Bulkeley John¬ 
son, of Park Place, London,—Captain Wakefield, of the 36th Foot,—Mr. J. H. 
Lloyd, of the Inner Temple,—and Mr. W. Garton, of Kent Terrace, Regent’s 
Park. His two brothers (extravagant young men) entered the service of the East- 
India Company, and one of them, Lieutenant Holland Watson, of the Company’s 
European Regiment, died suddenly last Summer. 
Mr. Hewett Watson was born May 9, 1804, at Park Hill, near Firkeck, 
Yorkshire, where his father was resident for a short period. From that place his 
family removed to Worksop, in Nottinghamshire; and afterwards to Congleton, 
Cheshire, for which county his father was many years a magistrate. This re¬ 
moval to Congleton is the earliest occurrence in his life remembered by him ; but 
for a considerable period following this removal he has no recollection of any 
