PHILIPS, George Richard (1789-1883), of 22 Hill Street, Berkeley Square, Mdx. and Weston House, Long Compton , Warws.

The adored and dutiful only child of one of the most wealthy cotton entrepeneurs of the industrial revolution, the ‘unofficial Member for Manchester’ in the unreformed House Sir George Philips, Philips had sat as a paying guest for a rotten borough prior to its abolition by the 1832 Reform Act, of which his family were firm supporters.1Warws. RO, Philips mss CR 456/8, G. to G. R. Philips, 20 June 1842; A. Wadsworth and J. de Lacy Mann, The cotton trade and industrial Lancashire, 1600-1780, (1931), 289. With his father pursuing the family’s claims on South Warwickshire, where they had recently constructed a vast mansion, Philips accepted an invitation to stand for the newly created borough of Kidderminster, where he was introduced as ‘a commercial man ... well suited to represent a commercial town ... whose principles and conduct are approved by that illustrious statesman and patriot, Lord Holland’. Though deemed certain to succeed, he was narrowly defeated at the general election that December, a disappointment for which his father’s successful return, ‘considering what it may lead to in George’s instance’, was deemed ‘ample indemnification’ by the Whig commentator Sydney Smith.2BL L.23.c.7.(93.), election address; Warwick Advertiser, 23 June 1832; Letters of Sydney Smith, ed. N. Smith, ii. 570.

Philips continued to nurture the borough, however, and at the unanticipated election of 1835 topped the poll, having promised to support a ‘temperate’ reform of the established church, the admission of Dissenters to universities (except as fellows), and to give the incoming Peel ministry a fair trial, although he would ‘watch with a jealous eye the men who opposed the reform bill’.3Berrow’s Worcester Jnl. 8 Jan. 1835. His immediate rally to the Whig opposition on the Speakership, 19 Feb., and votes for Lord John Russell’s Irish Church appropriation clauses in early April (the issue which forced Peel’s resignation), later earnt him ‘three groans from one of the largest and most respectable public meetings held in the town of Kidderminster’ and ‘three cheers’ for his former opponent.4The Times, 14 Apr. 1835. He was possibly the Mr. R. Philips who attended the meeting in Cockspur Street to establish the Reform Association, 21 May 1835.5The Times, 22 May 1835.

Although it is generally accepted that Philips spoke only twice during his 32 year stint in the Commons, it is possible that alongside his two known speeches in the unreformed House, some of those attributed to his father between 1818-30, and his distant cousin Mark Philips from 1835-47, were also his.6D. Brown, ‘From “Cotton Lord” to Landed Aristocrat: the Rise of Sir George Philips’, Hist. Research, lxix (1996), 80. A more frequent attender than his silence might imply, he divided with the reappointed Melbourne ministry on most major issues and brought up occasional petitions, including one from Kidderminster’s beer retailers for on-premises consumption, 2 Aug. 1836, and others for the abolition of church rates, 3, 11 Mar. 1837. Earlier that year, in what The Times lampooned as ‘a very middling speech’ at a constituency dinner, ‘Prophetic Philips’ lauded the ‘path of safety’ pursued by ministers between the ‘Destructives, who were running on a course which must end in the subversion of property’, and the party by whom ‘they were designated as a milk and water government that had done and intended to do nothing’, and forecast that the Lords would ‘be compelled to pass’ the Irish municipal corporations bill, which, ‘with a degree of folly and baseness which he could not comprehend’, they ‘had thought proper to throw out’.7The Times, 14 Jan. 1837. He may well have been the Mr. Philips who presented a petition for a repeal of the duty on raw cotton, 5 July 1837.

At that year’s general election Philips abandoned Kidderminster and came forward as a second Liberal for the venal borough of Poole, where both the sitting Members had vacated. After a fierce contest against two Conservative baronets he was narrowly returned in second place, amidst allegations of wholesale bribery and intimidation by his agents. Attempts to unseat him for corruption, however, came to nothing and he remained at Poole for the rest of his career, evidently assisted by deep pockets.8The Times, 3 May 1837; Manchester Times, 1 July 1837; Jackson’s Oxford Jnl., 29 July 1837. He continued to give steady support to the Liberals in the lobbies and brought up local petitions against the Maynooth grant, 27 Jan. 1841, and for the ports and harbours bill, 27 Apr. 1847, changes to the mendicancy laws, 15 June 1848, and the clergy relief bill, 21 May 1849, although the extent to which these reflected his own beliefs is unclear. His presentation of petitions against the factory bill, 26 Apr., 3 May 1843, probably accorded with his own views. A consistent supporter of free trade, he voted for Peel’s repeal of the corn laws in May 1846 and rallied behind the incoming Russell ministry next month. Despite his goodstanding with local agents, by February 1852 it was clear that he intended to quit Parliament.9Lady Charlotte Guest (1950), ed. earl of Bessborough, 272, 289. At that summer’s dissolution he duly retired, claiming to have ‘steadily adhered to those principles of civil and religious liberty and of progressive reforms ... which I advocated on my first introduction to your borough’.10Morning Chron. 2 July 1852.

Unlike his father, whom he had succeeded in 1847, Philips shunned involvement with the family’s business affairs, but drawing an income sufficient ‘to procure every enjoyment a rational man and a gentleman can desire’, as he put it, devoted himself to those ‘liberal pursuits which occupy my mind and never allow me a moment’s ennui’.11G. R. Philips to father, 28 Feb. 1827, cited in Brown, 78. The quintessence of a commercial man’s son turned country squire, whose marriage into the Irish aristocracy (and Commons’ membership) eased his acceptance into landed society, his estates encompassed 6,694 acres across four counties by 1873, and were worth £220,000 at the time of his death in February 1883, when the baronetcy became extinct. His will, dated 8 June 1876, made ample provision from his personalty of £266,000 for the families of his three daughters Juliana, Emily and Louisa (d. 1870), respectively the wives of Lord Duncan, the 2nd Baron Carew and the 14th earl of Caithness.12The Times, 27 Feb., 15 June 1883; Will register 1883.