Sir William Tite, C.B., was the son of Mr. Arthur Tite, a London merchant. He was born in London in 1798, and after receiving his education at private schools, became a pupil of David Laing, the architect of the Custom House. Sir William Tite designed many buildings in London and the provinces, and a considerable number of the more important railway stations; but the work with which his name is especially associated was the rebuilding of the Royal Exchange, which cost £150,000, and was opened by the Queen on the 28th of October 1844. In 1838 he was elected President of the Architectural Society, and of the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1861-63, and from 1867-70. He entered Parliament in 1855 as Member for Bath, and continued to represent that constituency until his death. In 1869 he was knighted, and in the following year he received the Companionship of the Bath. Sir William was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and also of the Society of Antiquaries. He died at Torquay on April 20th, 1873, and was buried in Norwood Cemetery.

Sir William Tite was an ardent collector of manuscripts, books, and works of art, and he formed a very large and choice library, which contained many valuable manuscripts, and a great number of rare early English books. It was sold by Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, in May and June 1874. The sale occupied sixteen days, and realised nineteen thousand nine hundred and forty-three pounds, six shillings. There were three thousand nine hundred and thirty-seven lots.

Among the more notable manuscripts in the library were a richly illuminated Lectionarium, written on vellum about A.D. 1150 at the monastery of Ottenbeuren in Suabia, which sold for five hundred and fifty pounds; a Wycliffe New Testament on vellum of the first half of the fifteenth century, which brought two hundred and forty-one pounds; a copy of the Four Gospels of about the same period, which fetched one hundred and eight pounds; a number of HorÆ and other service books, and three devotional works written by Jarry, the famous French calligraphist. There were also the original manuscripts of three of the novels of Sir Walter Scott—Peveril of the Peak, the first volume of the Tales of my Landlord (The Black Dwarf), and Woodstock, which together realised three hundred and ninety-eight pounds. The collection also contained a block-book, The Apocalypse, which brought two hundred and eighty-five pounds; four Caxtons, the most important of which—a perfect copy of the second edition of the Mirrour of the World—sold for four hundred and fifty-five pounds; and many books from the presses of Machlinia, Pynson, Wynkyn de Worde, Notary, and other early English printers. Shakespeare was well represented. The first three folios were to be found in the library, as well as the first editions of Lucrece and the Sonnets, and a large number of the quarto plays. The first folio and Lucrece realised respectively four hundred and forty pounds and one hundred and ten pounds. There was also a choice collection of the works of other writers of the time of Elizabeth and James I. A copy of the first edition of Don Quixote; and a set of the first five editions of Walton's Compleat Angler, which sold for sixty-eight pounds, also deserve especial notice. A series of autographs in thirteen folio volumes realised three hundred and twenty-five pounds; and the sale catalogue contained as many as two hundred and fourteen lots of autograph letters of Mary Queen of Scots, Lord Bacon, Cromwell, and other celebrities.

Sir William Tite was the author of a 'Report of a Visit to the Estates of the Honourable Irish Society in Londonderry and Coleraine in the year 1834,' and of a 'Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities found in the Excavations at the New Royal Exchange,' which he published in 1848. Several of his papers and addresses, which principally treated of bibliographical or antiquarian subjects, were privately printed. He was a liberal promoter of all schemes for the advancement of education, and he founded the Tite Scholarship in the City of London School.