William Whitshed

William Whitshed (1679–1727) was an Irish politician and judge who held office as Solicitor-General and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland; just before his death he became Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas. He became the Member of Parliament for County Wicklow in 1703, and was appointed as Solicitor-General in 1709; he was Lord Chief Justice 1714–1727.

He is mainly remembered for the bitter hatred he inspired in Jonathan Swift, who among many other insults called him a "vile and profligate villain", and compared him to William Scroggs, the Lord Chief Justice of England in the 1670s, who was notorious for corruption. The principal cause for Swift's hatred of the judge was 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 publisher indicted for bringing out The Drapier Letters.