William Tisdall

William Tisdall (1669–1735) was an Irish clergyman. He was well known in his own time as a writer on religious controversies, but he is now mainly remembered for his friendship with Jonathan Swift. The friendship was damaged by Tisdall's wish to marry Esther Johnson, Swift's beloved friend Stella.

Life He was born in Dublin, son of William and Anna Tisdall, who came from Carrickfergus. Stella, it seems, would marry Swift or no one: whether or not, as she is said to have claimed, they were secretly married in 1716 remains a matter of intense debate, on which no final conclusion is possible. After Stella's death in 1728, the two men were reconciled, and Tisdall witnessed Swift's will. Tisdall died on 8 June 1735.

Tisdall in 1706 married Eleanor Morgan, daughter of Hugh Morgan, of the prominent County Sligo landowning family, whose seat was at Cottlestown, and his wife Penelope Blayney, daughter of Henry Blayney, 2nd Baron Blayney, and had a son, also called William, who followed his father into the Church. Philip Tisdall, who was later, as Attorney General for Ireland, to be a very powerful figure in the Irish administration, was a cousin of William in the next generation.

Works Tisdall was well known in his own lifetime for his pamphlets on religious controversies, of which the best known was Conduct of the Dissenters in Ireland (1712). He joked that this pamphlet saved Ireland as surely as Swift's The Conduct of the Allies saved England; Swift was not amused by the comparison. He published little after 1715, apparently feeling that the political climate was unreceptive to his opinions.