PHILLIPS, Henry (1616-77), of Aylesbury, Bucks.

The Phillipses had been one of the more prominent families in Aylesbury since the early sixteenth century.11R. Gibbs, A Hist. of Aylesbury (Aylesbury, 1885), 172. This MP’s father had probably been the man who married Mary Adams at Aylesbury in 1600, but none of their children survived infancy and Mary died in 1612. However, a second marriage produced a string of children, the first of whom was the future MP.12Aylesbury par. reg. What inheritance his father left at his death in 1628, when Henry was still aged only 12, remains unclear, but it is likely that his upbringing was relatively comfortable. That he was able to pay 10s in 1642 towards the collections to assist the Irish Protestants confirms that he was one of Aylesbury’s wealthier inhabitants.13Bucks. Contributions for Ireland, 81. By 1646 he was described as a gentlemen in the Aylesbury parish register entry recording the birth of his son Matthew.14Aylesbury par. reg.

The civil war probably opened up political opportunities for Phillips that would not otherwise have existed. Aylesbury was not an incorporated borough and, whatever their claims to gentility, the Phillipses were among the grand families from which the county magistracy had usually been drawn. It seems likely that, as a keen supporter of Parliament, Phillips made himself useful in the numerous lower-ranking county offices that sprang up during the 1640s. He may well have been the ‘Mr Phillips’ who was the receiver for the 200 horses raised in Buckinghamshire under the ordinance of 25 July 1643.15Bucks. Contributions for Ireland, 127, 128, 130, 132. However, only later did he begin to make a more visible mark in local politics. In 1649 he was among Aylesbury townsmen who petitioned Parliament asking that the sequestered lands of Sir John Pakington* at Heydon Hill be granted to the town as compensation for the losses they had suffered during the civil war.16Gibbs, Hist. of Aylesbury, 172. Parliament proved to be sympathetic and in January 1650 allowed Pakington to grant those lands himself in return for a reduction in his sequestration fine. Phillips was then appointed one of the 13 trustees charged with administering the resulting revenues.17VCH Bucks. iii. 10. The following month he received another appointment when the Committee for Compounding named him as one of their three sequestrators for Buckinghamshire. Among the more important duties this job involved was administering the extensive estates in the county which had been confiscated from George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham.18CCC 173, 631, 739, 766; CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 102, 128. It is thus possible but not certain that Phillips was the person who got into trouble with the council of state in March 1650 for arresting persons without proper authority.19CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 26, 528. In 1653 he was added to the Buckinghamshire commission of the peace and appointed as one of the judges for poor prisoners.20C231/6, p. 259; A. and O. In his capacity as a justice of the peace he approved the appointment of John Jorden as the parish registrar for Aylesbury in September 1653.21Aylesbury par. reg.

Traditionally, parliamentary elections at Aylesbury had been overseen by the four constables of the two manors within the town’s boundaries. One of those estates, the manor of Walton, had belonged to the chapter of Lincoln Cathedral and was thus sold in 1650 by the commissioners for the sale of cathedral lands. Three years later Phillips was able to buy it from the purchaser, a London linen draper, William Meade.22VCH Bucks. iii. 13. As the new lord of the manor, Phillips probably acquired a residual electoral interest which then assisted him when he stood for Parliament in 1654. He was elected for the town’s only available seat on 16 June. Nothing is known about his participation in this Parliament. It is unclear whether he stood again in 1656, when Thomas Scot I* gained the seat.

During the late 1650s he remained active as a local official, adding membership of the Buckinghamshire assessment and militia commissions to the list of positions he held.23A. and O. The Restoration brought those roles to an abrupt end, however, and he was removed from all the local commissions. Moreover, he lost out financially when his lands at Walton reverted to Lincoln Cathedral.24VCH Bucks. iii. 13. Worst of all, he came under suspicion of plotting against the new government. In the summer of 1662 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Gatehouse at Westminster. After six months in custody he was released, pending a possible trial.25CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 2. Either he or one of his sons is likely to have been the person to whom another suspected plotter, William Goodman, was accused of writing a letter containing pro-Dutch comments at the time of the second Anglo-Dutch war.26CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 429. A widower following the death of his wife in the autumn of 1674, Phillips survived her by three years. When he died in November 1677, he was buried in St Mary’s, the parish church in Aylesbury.27Aylesbury par. reg.; Lipscomb, Buckingham, ii. 63n. He was the only member of the family to sit in Parliament. His son Henry junior, a wealthy London merchant, became one of the major benefactors of Aylesbury grammar school when he bequeathed £500 to it at his death in 1714. He also left instructions that he be buried close to his father.28Lipscomb, Buckingham, ii. 55, 63n; Gibbs, Hist. of Aylesbury, 179.