PHILLIP, Guy, of Dorset.

Very little is known about this MP, but on the few occasions he was mentioned in the records it was in association with members of the wealthy family of Brooke of Holditch in west Dorset, which had a close relationship with the borough and burgesses of Lyme Regis, which Phillip represented in the Parliament of 1432. In 1415 Sir Thomas Brooke† (d.1418) and his wife Joan (d.1437) had received a royal grant of the borough to hold for term of their lives, CPR, 1413-16, p. 325. and at the time of Phillip’s return to Parliament he was closely linked not only with the widowed Joan but also with her son the younger Sir Thomas Brooke*, by whom he was engaged in positions of trust. Early in the following year he was the Brookes’ co-feoffee for the settlement of jointure in the former Fitzwaryn manors in Dorset, Somerset and Northamptonshire on Sir Thomas’s daughter, another Joan, when she married the son of Ralph Bush* and his wife Eleanor, the Fitzwaryn heiress. This led to his participation in 1439 in further transactions regarding the same inheritance, intended to protect the interests of the widowed Joan Bush following her second marriage, to John Carent*. CP25(1)/292/67/133; 69/231; Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 357-8; CPR, 1441-6, p. 34. It may be credibly assumed that the Brookes had been behind Phillip’s election to Parliament.