The son of Francis Samuel Daniel-Tyssen (1813–1875) and his wife, Eliza Julia Knight-Bruce, he was born in December 1856 at Sandgate, Kent.
[1] Among his siblings were Ellen Blanche Daniel-Tyssen (wife of William W. P. Fletcher) and Maria Harriet Arabella Daniel-Tyssen (first wife of Wilfred Joseph Cripps).
His first cousin was William Tyssen-Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst of Hackney.
He was the curate of Highweek in Devon from 1880–83, before changing denomination and joining the Catholic Church in 1883.
[3] He took up a teaching position at St Edmund's College, Ware in 1883, before serving with the South Africa Company in Bechuanaland in 1891.