TIGHE, Richard (d. 1673), of St Catherine’s parish, Dublin.

The Tighes took their name from a village in Rutland, but had long been settled at Corby Castle in neighbouring Lincolnshire. Richard Tighe came from a cadet branch seated at Market Deeping in Lincolnshire, and his mother was from Kelthorpe in Rutland. His social connections therefore covered both counties, with relatives including the Lacys of Stamford and the Listers of Coleby; Richard’s father may have been the ‘cousin William Tighe’ mentioned in Thomas Lister’s* will in 1668.19A. Gibbons, Notes on the Vis. Lincs. 1634 (Lincoln, 1898), 22-8, 253-7; Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ireland (1904 edn.), 591. Despite the family’s strong connections with the east of England, Richard Tighe’s career was destined to be in Ireland. The date of his settlement in Ireland is unknown, but in 1642 and 1643 he was working in partnership with a Dublin merchant, Daniel Hutchinson*, supplying provisions to the Leinster garrisons under the command of the 12th earl of Ormond.20HMC 8th Rep. 539. Tighe was certainly resident in Dublin at the end of the decade, and was given command of 120 firelocks in the forces under Colonel Michael Jones in May 1649.21CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 165, 535. Over the next few years Tighe became a leading figure in the Independent clique, centred on Dr Samuel Winter’s Dublin congregation, which wrested control from the traditional merchant elite after the Cromwellian invasion. He was appointed sheriff of the corporation in October 1649, and a year later became an alderman and auditor.22Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin III, 491, 504, 508. In October 1651 he was elected mayor, and in this capacity helped to collect the ‘depositions’ of Dublin Protestants who had suffered in the massacres of 1641.23HMC 8th Rep. 573. In December 1652 Tighe was appointed commissioner for the high court of justice in Dublin, with a remit to investigate crimes committed by Catholics during the wars, and in September 1653 he was appointed justice of the peace for co. Dublin.24TCD, MS 844, ff. 136, 139v. Tighe became treasurer of the city corporation in October 1653, and was re-elected mayor in 1655.25Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 51, 80, 82.

Tighe profited from his civic position. As mayor in 1651 and 1655 he received a salary of £200 a year, and his expenses on the city’s behalf (for example, in rebuilding the Newgate) were soon translated into lucrative leases, or payments from the rents of the corporation’s Baldoyle lands.26Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 6-7, 10, 38-9, 57, 90-1. Tighe also speculated in the land settlement, travelling to London with Daniel Hutchinson in the summer of 1654 with the intention of buying up lands cheaply from adventurers eager to turn their investments into cash.27HMC Egmont, i. 541-2. In June he made three important deals, acquiring lands in Westmeath, King’s and Queen’s Counties, for far less than their real value. His deal with James Baynton, for example, brought him £600-worth of adventure lands in Queen’s County for an outlay of only £250.28CSP Ire. Adv. pp. 53-4, 81, 282. In all, Tighe’s new adventure lands amounted to 2,800 acres across the three counties.29Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 211. These investments do not seem to have overstretched him financially: by 1656 he had enough excess money to become involved in lending money on statute staples in Dublin, where he registered bonds for £216 and £1,100.30Irish Statute Staple Bks. 151.

Tighe’s stake in the Irish economy gave him a heightened interest in the politics of the Cromwellian protectorate. In the mid-1650s he continued to work closely with Daniel Hutchinson. When the elections for cos. Kildare and Wicklow were held in Dublin on 2 August 1654, Tighe and Hutchinson lobbied for the return of two Englishmen, Oliver St John* and Richard Salwey*, but without success.31HMC Egmont, i. 553. Tighe and Hutchinson were both appointed to the assessment commissions for the city and county of Dublin in October 1654 and January 1655.32An Assessment for Ire. In May 1655 the two joined other Dublin merchants in petitioning the acting governor of Ireland, Henry Cromwell*, for the removal of the customs barriers between Ireland and Britain, asking that the Irish should have the same trading privileges as the Scots, and emphasizing Ireland’s position within the Cromwellian union.33SP63/286, ff. 57v-58. Unlike Hutchinson, who soon became disillusioned, Tighe’s support for the protectorate strengthened as the decade progressed. In the elections for the second protectorate Parliament in August 1656, Tighe was returned as MP for the city of Dublin. It seems that he was the favoured candidate of the corporation, for on 2 September 1656 he was granted an allowance of £100 from the Dublin treasury, to cover his expenses at Westminster.34Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 103. He also enjoyed wider support within the city, ‘being a person approved of by all the good and sober people there, and recommended to that employment, more especially by the most eminent persons of Dr Winter’s church’.35TSP v. 477.

Despite Tighe’s popularity in Dublin, and his impeccable religious credentials, when he arrived in London at the end of the month he was refused permission to take his seat. Henry Cromwell, who admitted that he was ‘not much acquainted with the gentleman’, expressed his surprise at Tighe’s exclusion by the protectoral council (‘the only fault that ever I heard by any objected against him was his too much forwardness in appearing of his highness and government’), and on 6 October asked Secretary John Thurloe* to get the decision reversed.36TSP v. 477. Henry Cromwell may have been relying on old information, as by this time the mistake had already been rectified by the councilors at Whitehall, and Tighe had taken his seat by 23 September.37CJ vii. 427a.

As an MP, Tighe played three different roles. First, he represented the interests of Dublin, in religious and economic questions. On 20 October 1656 he was named to the committee to consider questions of trade, which had a direct relevance to Dublin, and on 18 December, in the midst of the debate on the case of the notorious Quaker, James Naylor, he presented a letter from the city warning of ‘the growing of the Quakers there’.38Burton’s Diary, i. 169; CJ vii. 442a, 448a, 452a. In June 1657 Tighe also voiced the concerns of his Dublin constituents when opposing a proposal to raise the Irish rate to £10,000 per month, arguing that ‘the assessments are excessive in Ireland; and you will undo the people forever if you lay any fresh burden on them’.39Burton’s Diary, ii. 210. Tighe’s second role was as a supporter of Henry Cromwell’s allies in the Old Protestant interest, promoting issues of wider Irish concern. He was named to the committee of Irish affairs on 23 September, and in later months he was appointed to committees to settle lands on John Blackwell in cos. Dublin and Kildare, to confirm the ‘Irish donatives’ (which included lands allocated to Sir Charles Coote*, Sir Hardress Waller* and Sir Theophilus Jones*), and to perfect the grant of estates to Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), among others.40CJ vii. 427a, 477b, 494b, 526b, 529a, 532a, 546a. Tighe had an interest in promoting such cases, in the hope of a more general ruling on the Irish land settlement. In early March 1657 he expressed his concerns to Anthony Morgan* that ‘we shall be boxed out of our farms where are stocks are in our absence’, and insisted that his concerns should be passed on to Henry Cromwell in Ireland.41Henry Cromwell Corresp. 223. He was appointed to the committee on the Irish attainder bill later in the month.42CJ vii. 515a.

Concern for the Irish land settlement may have influenced Tighe’s third area of activity, in the constitutional crisis of the spring and summer of 1657. On 10 March he was named to the committee to consider the 4th article of the Remonstrance, which concerned qualifications for Irish and Scottish voters.43CJ vii. 501b. In the crucial vote on retaining the offer of the crown to Oliver Cromwell* in the 1st article on 25 March, Tighe joined the majority of Irish MPs in voting for kingship.44Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 23 (E.935.5). In April he was appointed to successive committees to attend the protector and to satisfy his queries over the new constitution, now known as the Humble Petition and Advice.45CJ vii. 521a, 521b, 524a. Once Cromwell had rejected the crown, Tighe continued to be involved in such issues. He was active in the discussion on the Additional Petition and Advice on 15 June, when he again argued the Irish case, asking that Ulster and Leinster might be afforded the privileges recently conceded to Munster.46Burton’s Diary, ii. 248. When the clause was referred to a committee on the same day, Tighe was appointed one of its members.47CJ vii. 557a. The constitutional changes would affect the prosperity of the city of Dublin and the security of landowners, and by the end of the sitting in June, it seems that Tighe’s three areas of parliamentary activity had merged into one.

Tighe returned to Dublin in August 1657, and did not attend the second sitting of Parliament in January 1658.48Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 123. In the later 1650s he resided in his house in St Katherine’s parish, Dublin, and concentrated on his civic and business affairs.49Irish Census, 1659, 371. After the fall of the protectorate, Tighe sided with the Old Protestants who opposed the new commonwealth, and on 14 December 1659, the day after the Dublin coup, he was appointed colonel of the foot regiment raised from the Dublin suburbs.50Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 172. Although he did not sit in the General Convention in March 1660, he was appointed commissioner for poll money in the city of Dublin and County Kildare from April.51Irish Census, 1659, 620-1, 638-9. Tighe had little trouble at the restoration of the king. In October 1660 he was re-appointed to his command over the suburban forces, received an official pardon from Charles II on 15 February 1661, and in 1662 was appointed sheriff of co. Kildare.52Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 197; NAI, Lodge’s MSS, 1.A.53.55, f. 64; NLI, GO MS 67, p. 199. In later years Tighe’s wealth steadily increased. An indication of this can be seen in the statute staple books, which show that he lent money on bonds worth over £10,000 during the 1660s.53Irish Statute Staple Bks. 151. Money made Tighe a figure of some importance in Irish society. In 1663 he was able to use his influence with the government to secure the interests of his new son-in-law, Theophilus Sandford, in his estates in co. Roscommon.54HMC 8th Rep. 513, 539. In February 1664 he was granted a lease of the corporation’s land at Oxmantown Green, with licence to create a bowling green and accommodation there.55Cal. Ancient Recs. Dublin IV, 285-6. In June 1665 the ‘airy’ green at Oxmantown, was said to ‘fan the nobility and gentry of both sexes every day’ during the plague season in Dublin.56CSP Ire. 1663-4, p. 591. Whether or not Tighe conformed to the established church after 1660, he was on sufficiently good terms with the dean of Christ Church cathedral, Dr John Parry, to be appointed as his attorney in a land transaction of August 1666.57HMC Ormonde, n.s. iii. 243.

Tighe died on 20 February 1673 and was buried at St Michan’s church, Oxmantown, on 26 February, leaving a son and three daughters.58NLI, GO MS 67, p. 199. His son, William, was the ancestor of the Tighes of Woodstock, co. Kilkenny. Through his daughters, his descendants included the Lords Mount Sandford, the earls of Cavan and the earls of Milltown.59Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ireland, 591.