Author: Tighe, William
Biography:
TIGHE, William (1766-1816: DIB)
He was the eldest son of William Tighe (d 1782), landowner of Rossana in County Wicklow and MP for Athboy in Meath, and Sarah (Fownes) Tighe of Woodstock, County Kilkenny. He was probably born at Rossana. He followed his father in being educated at Eton College (1775-84) and St. John’s, Cambridge (matric 1784; no record of a degree). After Cambridge he embarked on a continental tour before returning to Ireland where he had inherited extensive estates through both of his parents. He was to augment these through his own marriage in 1793 to Marianne Gahan of Coolquil, County Tipperary. He was elected to the Irish parliament, serving as MP for Banagher in County Offaly (1789-90), and for the boroughs of Wicklow (1790-97) and Inistioge (1797-1800). He supported Catholic emancipation although this did not prevent his properties being raided in 1797 and again in 1798, and he voted against the Act of Union. When the Act passed, he left politics for a time and developed his topographical interests. A member of the Royal Dublin Society from 1784, he prepared a geological map of Kilkenny and published Statistical Observations Relative to the County of Kilkenny (1802); both are recognised as fine contributions to the field. His brother Henry Tighe was involved in private theatrical performances in Kilkenny and William Tighe contributed and performed a prologue in 1803. He returned to politics in 1806 as MP for Wicklow and moved to London where he lived in St. James’s, Westminster. In 1810 his cousin and sister-in-law, Mary Tighe (q.v.), died at his Woodstock home; he subsequently edited and arranged the publication of her Mary, a Series of Reflections and Psyche, with Other Poems. Tighe suffered from increasingly poor health and died at home in London on 19 Mar. 1816. His will, proved on 1 June 1816, leaves the London house to his wife, the bulk of the estates to his elder son, William, and the residue to a younger son, Daniel. A daughter, Hannah, received £10,000. A curious codicil directs payment of an annuity to Mrs Henrietta Molyneux as payment for £1000 she had invested with him; likely she was the disinherited daughter of Sir Capel Molyneux of Dublin. (DIB 3 Dec. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 3 Dec. 2021; The Private Theatre of Kilkenny [1825])