William Whitshed

Who was William Whitshed?

William Whitshed was an Irish politician and judge who held office as Solicitor-General and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland; just before his death he moved to become Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas. He became the Member of Parliament for Wicklow County in 1703, and was appointed as Solicitor-General in 1709; he was Lord Chief Justice 1714-1727. He is principally remembered for the hatred he aroused in Jonathan Swift, who among many other insults called him a "vile and profligate villain", and compared him to William Scroggs, an English Chief Justice notorious for corruption. These attacks were the result of the trial of Edward Waters, Swift's publisher, for seditious libel, where Whitshed's conduct of the trial was widely condemned as improper, and Whitshed's unsuccessful efforts to have another printer indicted for publication of The Drapier Letters.