, author of several books relating to ancient customs and privileges
, author of several books relating to
ancient customs and privileges in England, was the son of
a gentleman, and born at Prestbury in Gloucestershire,
Sept. 28, 1601. When he was very young, he spent some
time in one of the inns of chancery; and thence translated
himself to the Middle-temple, where he became learned in
the law. In the civil war he continued loyal, having always been an assertor of the king’s prerogative; and was
so zealously attached to Charles I. that, two days before
the king was beheaded, he wrote a protestation against the
intended murder, which he caused to be printed, and
affixed to posts in all public places. He also published, in
1649, 4to, a pamphlet entitled “Veritas inconcussa; or
King Charles I. no man of blood, but a martyr for his
people:
” which was reprinted in Considerations against the dissolving and taking
them away:
” for which he received the thanks of William
Lenthall, esq. speaker of the late parliament, and of the
keepers of the liberties of England. For some time, he
was tilazer for London, Middlesex, Cambridgeshire, and
Huntingdonshire; and spent much money in searching records, and writing in favour of the royal prerogative: yet
he was but poorly rewarded by the place of one of the commissioners for regulating the law, worth 200l. per annum,
which only lasted two years. After the restoration of
Charles II. when the bill for taking away the tenures was
depending in parliament, he wrote and published a book,
to shew the necessity of preserving them. Its title is “Tenenda non Tollenda: or, the Necessity of preserving Tenures in Capite, and by KnightVservice, which, according
to their first institution, were, and are yet, a 'great part of
the salus populi, &c, 1660,
” 4to. In The Antiquity, Legality, Reason, Duty, and Necessity
of Prae-emption and Pourveyance for the King,
” 4to and,
afterwards, many other pieces upon subjects of a similar
kind. He likewise assisted Dr. Bates in his “Elenchus
Motuum;
” especially in searching the records and offices
for that work. He died Nov. 17, 1690, in his eighty-ninth
year; and was buried near his wife, in the church of Twyford in Middlesex. He was a man well acquainted with
records and antiquities; but his manner of writing is not
close or well digested. He published various political
pamphlets, and among them one in 1681, which, supposing
him to have been sincere, proves his passion for royal prerogative to have been mu h superior to his sagacity and
judgment: it is entitled “Ursa Major et Minor; shewing,
that there is no such fear, as is factiously pretended, of
popery and arbitrary power.
” In the Archaeologia, vol.
XIII. is an account of a ms. of his in the Harleian collection, entitled “An Expedient or meanes in want of money
to pay the sea and land forces, or as many of them as shall
be thought expedient without money in this year of an
almost universal povertie of the English nation.
” In
Strype’s life of Whitgift (p. 89), is a notice of one Fabian
Phillips, one of the council of the marches of Wales, who
appears to have been an ancestor of our author.