William Watts

Title

William Watts

Description


Source

William M. Klimon

Publisher

Center for Norbertine Studies

Birth Date

1590

Death Date

1649

Bibliography

William Watts, or, more commonly, Watts, was an Anglican clergyman and theological writer, who served as a fellow at Cambridge, a royal chaplain and a parochial vicar. His 1631 translation of St. Augustine's Confessions was his first published work and was, he claimed, “the hardest taske that ever I yet undertooke.” He undertook the work in part to answer the first translation of the Confessions into English, published in 1620 by Sir Tobie Matthew, a Catholic convert and later secret Jesuit priest. The standard English Protestant edition until Pusey's revision in 1838, Watt's translation remains in print even today as the English version in the Loeb Classical Library's bilingual edition of the Confessions.

References: STC, 912, Elligott.