England.’ It is a quarto pamphlet of twenty-eight pages, licensed in London on 15 July 1689. Philips says he was ‘animated and perhaps transported by a glowing zeal for religion, an anxious sympathy with his friends, and a pungent sense of his own sufferings.’ He calls upon England to save the protestants of Ireland, and dilates upon the danger of letting it fall into French hands. He conjectures that there were one million British protestants in Ireland in 1685, of which one-fifth were fit to bear arms. This pamphlet contains interesting details as to the capacities of Ireland, and mentions the vast number of salmon on the Ulster coast. In 1690, according to Harris, Philips published in London an octavo tract, entitled ‘Lex Parliamentaria. The Law and Custom of Parliaments of England,’ but there is no copy of it in the British Museum or in Trinity College, Dublin. In 1691 he published, in London, in quarto, ‘A Problem concerning the Gout, in a Letter to Sir John Gordon, F.R.S.,’ an eminent physician. This short treatise, with Gordon's very complimentary answer, is reprinted in the eleventh volume of the ‘Somers Tracts.’ Philips's remarks are very sensible, not the less so that he disclaims all knowledge of medicine, though in his youth he had been ‘conversant in the most delightful study of anatomy.’ He bases his claim to be heard on age and experience, and on the fact that he had had the gout once or twice annually for twenty years. ‘In the tenets of religion,’ he incidentally remarks, ‘I desire to be always orthodox.’
Philips was ruined by the war, his house burned down, and the improvements of more than eighty years laid waste. He himself was imprisoned for debt. He had farmed part of the Irish revenue under Joseph Dean and John Stepney in connection with Ranelagh's patent of 1674 [see Jones, Richard, third Viscount and first Earl of Ranelagh]. Dean and Stepney had a mortgage on Philips's estate, but they owed a much larger sum to the crown, and had no great public service to appeal to. In 1692 Philips petitioned that his debt to them should be set off against theirs to the crown, and that he should be released. The lord lieutenant Sidney and the commissioners of revenue in Ireland reported in Philips's favour, but Dean and Stepney protested against the proposed settlement, and Philips remained in debt. The seventh of the articles exhibited in the House of Commons (30 Sept. 1695) against Lord-chancellor Sir Charles Porter [q. v.] was that he illegally released Philips when in prison as a debtor at the suit of Morris Bartley (O'Flanagan, i. 453). Harris says Philips died in 1696. It appears from inquiries made in Ulster that his family severed their connection with Londonderry county soon after 1700. George Philips had a son William, who is separately noticed.
[Treasury Papers in the Public Record Office, vol. xx. No. 11; Walker's True Account of the Siege of Londonderry, 1689; Berwick's Rawdon Papers; Ware's Irish Writers, by Harris; Witherow's Derry and Enniskillen; Graham's Siege of Derry; O'Flanagan's Irish Chancellors, vol. i.; Macaulay's Hist. of England, chap. xii.]
PHILIPS, HUMPHREY (1633–1707), nonconformist minister, born in Somerton, Somerset, matriculated at Oxford on 14 Nov. 1650 as ‘serviens,’ was elected a scholar of Wadham College in July 1651, and graduated B.A. in January 1653–4. He developed puritanical opinions, and was chaplain and tutor for a time to the Bampfield family at Poltimore, near Exeter. Returning to Oxford, he was elected fellow of Magdalen College, proceeded M.A. in 1656, was ordained at the age of twenty-four, and frequently preached in the university and in the neighbourhood. Being ejected by the royalist visitors from Magdalen College in 1660, he retired to Sherborne, Dorset, where he preached, but he was ejected thence in 1662. He refused to promise that he would refrain from preaching, and was committed to Ilchester gaol, where he remained for eleven months. When discharged he went to Holland, visited Leyden and other university cities, and had an opportunity of discussing theological questions with Dr. Gisbert Voet, the last survivor of the synod of Dort which met in November 1618. On his return to England he preached in many parts of the country, but was much persecuted for his adherence to presbyterian doctrines. He lived mainly on a property he possessed at Bickerton, Somerset. He died at Frome on 27 March 1707. His only published works are two funeral sermons.
[Palmer's Nonconformists' Memorial; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Gardiner's Registers of Wadham College.]
PHILIPS, JOHN (1676–1709), poet, was born on 30 Dec. 1676 at Bampton, Oxfordshire. His grandfather, Stephen Philips, a devoted royalist, was canon-residentiary of Hereford Cathedral and vicar of Lugwardine, where he died in 1667. His father, Stephen Philips, D.D. (1638–1684), became in 1669 archdeacon of Shropshire and vicar of Bampton, in succession to Thomas Cook, B.D., whose only daughter and heiress, Mary, he had married (Wood, Fasti Oxonienses, ed.
