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Author: Watkins, Charles

Biography:

WATKINS, Charles (1767-1808: ancestry.co.uk)

He was baptised at Gelli, Llanvetherine, Monmouthshire, Wales, on 3 Sept. 1767, the youngest of nine children of Rev. William Watkins (1720-67) and his wife Philadelphia Constable (1731-1823), who had married in 1753. Nothing is known of his education prior to his entering the Middle Temple in London in 1796. He was called to the bar in 1803 but practised mostly as a conveyancer. He wrote a variety of legal works: An Essay towards the Further Elucidation of the Law of Descents (1793), Reflections on Government (1796), A Treatise on Copyholds (1797-9), Principles of Conveyancing (1800 and frequently reprinted). He married Mary Williams (1774-1868) on 28 Dec. 1802 at All Saints, Wandsworth, South London. They had two daughters and a son who were all born in Brompton, Kensington, London. He died on 14 Jan. 1808 at Gloucester and was buried the following day. His will identified his mother (not in ODNB) and two siblings, Edward and Sarah (not in Ancestry Trees) and his friend Robert Sudley Vidal (1770-1841), a solicitor. Vidal edited the third edition of Watkins’s Treatise on Copyholds (1821) and lived at Cornborough, near Bideport, Devon. Watkins evidently spent some time there, as Sonnets, and other Poems (1799) contains a sonnet, “Cornborough.” (ancestry.co.uk 4 Oct. 2022; ODNB 4 Oct. 2022; Sun 31 Dec. 1802; Worcester Journal 21 Jan. 1808; GM Feb. 1808, 172) AA

 

Books written (1):

Tewkesbury: Printed by Dyde; sold by West, 1799