The son of Edward Tighe, M.P., and his wife Anne Jones; he was educated at Eton (1785-94) and Lincoln's Inn. He eloped with the second Lady Mountcashell, whom he married in 1822 after the death of her husband; they lived in Pisa as Mr. and Mrs. Mason. Thomas Medwin describes him as the son of the poet Mary Tighe; perhaps he passed as such in the Byron-Shelley circle.