[Memoir by Captain Andrew Drew, R.N., in the United Service Magazine, June 1850; Marshall's Roy. Nav. Biogr. v. (Suppl. pt. i.) 242; Gent. Mag. 1840, i. 652; information from Admiral Sir Augustus Phillimore, Sir John's nephew.]
PHILLIMORE, JOHN GEORGE (1808–1865), jurist, eldest son of Joseph Phillimore [q. v.], was born on 5 Jan. 1808. He was educated at Westminster School and at Oxford. On 28 May 1824 he matriculated from Christ Church, of which he was faculty student, and graduated B.A. in 1828, having taken a second class in the classical schools; he proceeded M.A. in 1831.
From 1827 to 1832 he held a clerkship in the board of control for India, and on 23 Nov. in the latter year was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, where he was elected a bencher in 1851. In 1850 Phillimore was appointed reader in civil law and jurisprudence at the Middle Temple. In 1851 he took silk, and in the following year he was appointed reader in constitutional law and legal history to the Inns of Court. He represented Leominster in the liberal interest in the parliament of 1852–7, and spoke with ability on free trade, law reform, the ballot, and similar topics. He died on 27 April 1865 at his residence, Shiplake House, Oxfordshire. By his wife Rosalind Margaret, younger daughter of Sir James Lewis Knight Bruce [q. v.], he had issue an only son.
Phillimore was a learned jurist and a man of large culture. His writings, all published at London (8vo), are as follows: ‘Letter to the Lord Chancellor on the Reform of the Law,’ 1846. 2. ‘Thoughts on Law Reform,’ 1847. 3. ‘Introduction to the Study and History of the Roman Law,’ 1848. 4. ‘An Inaugural Lecture on Jurisprudence, and a Lecture on Canon Law,’ 1851. 5. ‘Principles and Maxims of Jurisprudence,’ 1856. 6. ‘Influence of the Canon Law’ (in ‘Oxford Essays’), 1858. 7. ‘Private Law among the Romans,’ 1863. 8. ‘History of England during the Reign of George the Third’ (one volume only), 1863.
[Barker and Stenning's Westminster School Register; Welch's Alumni Westmonast.; Foster's Alumni Oxon. and Baronetage; Times, 27 April 1865; Haydn's Book of Dignities, ed. Ockerby; Members of Parliament (Official Lists); Law Times, 6 May 1865; Gent. Mag. 1865, pt. i. p. 802.]
PHILLIMORE, JOSEPH (1775–1855), civilian, eldest son of Joseph Phillimore, vicar of Orton-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire, by Mary, daughter of John Machin of Kensington, was born on 14 Sept. 1775. He was educated at Westminster School and Oxford, where he matriculated from Christ Church on 30 May 1793, graduated B.A. in 1797, B.C.L. in 1800, and proceeded D.C.L. in 1804. Besides prizes at Christ Church for Latin verse in 1793 and Latin prose in 1798, Phillimore gained, in the latter year, the university English essay prize by a dissertation on ‘Chivalry,’ printed in the ‘Oxford English Prize Essays,’ Oxford, 1836, vol. ii.
Admitted a member of the College of Advocates on 21 Nov. 1804, he practised with success in the ecclesiastical and admiralty courts, and in 1806–7 was commissioner for the disposal of Prussian and Danish ships seized by way of reprisals for the violation of the neutrality of Hanover by the Prussian government, and the submission of Denmark to France. In 1809 he succeeded Dr. French Laurence [q. v.] as regius professor of civil law at Oxford, chancellor of the diocese of Oxford, and judge of the court of admiralty of the Cinque ports. On 17 March 1817 he was returned to parliament in the Grenville interest for the borough of St. Mawes, Cornwall, vacant by the death of his friend Francis Horner [q. v.]; he continued to represent it until the dissolution of 2 June 1826. He was then (9 June) returned for Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, but did not seek re-election on the dissolution of 24 July 1830.
Phillimore was one of the original members of a short-lived third party formed in 1818. During his brief parliamentary career he distinguished himself by his able advocacy of catholic emancipation and his luminous expositions of international law. He was placed on the board of control for India upon its reconstitution on 8 Feb. 1822, and held office until the fall of Lord Goderich's administration in January 1828. On 23 Jan. 1833 he was named principal commissioner for the final adjudication of the French claims under the treaties of 1815 and 1818. He also presided over the registration commission appointed on 13 Sept. 1836, and drafted the report. Phillimore was appointed king's advocate in the court of admiralty on 25 Oct. 1834, and chancellor of the diocese of Worcester and commissary of the deanery of St. Paul's in the same year; chancellor of the diocese of Bristol in 1842, and judge of the consistory court of Gloucester in 1846. He retained the chair of civil law at Oxford until his death, which took place at his residence, Shiplake House, near Reading, on 24 Jan. 1855.
Phillimore married, on 19 March 1807, Elizabeth (d. 1859), daughter of the Rev. Walter Bagot, rector of Blithfield, Staffordshire, younger brother of William, first lord Bagot, by whom he had, with other issue,
