Family and Education

b. by 1533.2

Offices Held

Biography

John Phelips evidently owed his returns for Weymouth and Poole to his kinsman Richard Phelips, himself knight of the shire for Dorset in Mary’s third Parliament. Both quitted the House prematurely and without leave and were on that account informed against in the King’s bench during Easter term 1555. A writ of venire facias was soon afterwards directed to the sheriff of Somerset and Dorset, but no further process was taken against John Phelips until Michaelmas 1558 when he was fined 53s.4d. and gave as his sureties Richard Fitzjames of Redlynch, Somerset, and one of Richard Phelips’s servants, Andrew Horde. In the meantime Phelips had sat for Poole in the Parliament of 1555 where he is thought to have joined in the opposition to a government bill: a ‘Mr. Fillips’ appears on the list of opponents to the measure, and the similarity of the spelling used further down the list for his kinsman Thomas Phelips [Mr. Thomas Fillips] creates the presumption that it was he and not a namesake, Richard Philipps, the Member for Pembroke Boroughs, who was meant.3

Little else has come to light concerning Phelips. Either he or a namesake was a servant of the Marquess of Exeter in the early 1530s at a time when Richard Phelips was surveyor for the marquess in the southwest. In January 1554 a John Phelips witnessed the will of William Hodges of Ilchester, Somerset, in which sums of money were left to ‘Mr. Phelips of Montacute’, his wife and children; this John Phelips was named first bailiff of Ilchester in 1556.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: M. K. Dale

Notes

• 1. C219/282/13; Huntington Lib. Hastings mss Parl. pprs.
• 2. Presumed to be of age at election.
• 3. KB27/1176, 1188; Guildford mus. Loseley 1331/2.
• 4. LP Hen. VIII, xiii; PCC 1 More, 38 Drury; CPR, 1555-7, p. 528.