Philips, George (c.1630–1697), briefly governor of Derry during the Jacobite siege and author of an important study of English parliamentary procedure, was born in about 1630 at Crondall in Hampshire, the son of Dudley Philips of Limavady, Co. Londonderry, and his first wife, Elizabeth. His paternal grandfather was the noted plantation servitor Sir Thomas Phillips (qv); his maternal grandfather, George Downham (qv), was Church of Ireland bishop of Derry. It is not known for certain when Dudley Philips died, though the last known reference to him occurs in a document from 1673. It is likely, however, that George had taken control of the family estates by this time, since the previous year he had mortgaged an estate to Joseph Deane (qv), one of the farmers of the Irish revenue, for over £3,600.
Not much is known of Philips's early life and career. He was educated in England, at Christ's Hospital, and then at Christ's College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1645, aged fifteen, and left without taking a degree. His father had been heavily involved in the military defence of the plantation in the early 1640s, and at some point George must have joined him in arms in Ireland, for both figured in the list of ‘forty-nine officers’. Although the Philips family were staunch upholders of the established church and not particularly sympathetic to the parliamentarian cause, by 1653 George was acting as a justice of the peace in Co. Londonderry. Not surprisingly he was also prominent in the affairs of the borough of Limavady, representing the family on the corporation and being chosen as provost in 1659.
From what is known of his political sentiments in later life it may be inferred that Philips warmly welcomed the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Shortly afterwards he was commended by Bishop George Wilde (1610–65) of Derry for his efforts in the local magistracy, as ‘a very able and a very worthy person’ (HMC, Hastings MSS, iv, 122), and in 1661 he was given a commission as a cornet in the regiment of horse commanded by the duke of Ormond (qv). This phase of his military career was short-lived, however, and he was out of the regiment the following year. He was, however, elected to represent Limavady in Charles II's Irish parliament (1661–6) and may also have been given the post of registrar of the court of claims, presumably through Ormond's influence, although his enjoyment of the emoluments of this office could only have been transitory, for by 1672 he was seriously in debt and borrowing on the security of the family estate. It was his zeal as a justice of the peace that brought him back to the notice of the duke of Ormond, once more lord lieutenant, at the time of the alarms over the Popish Plot and the covenanter rising in Scotland. Philips was exactly the kind of magistrate the staunchly anglican Ormond needed: vigorous in action and undeviatingly loyal to crown and church. He was responsible for the confiscation of arms from local catholics in 1678, pursued rapparees with great energy, and showed exactly the same firmness of purpose, and a pronounced sectarian prejudice, in dealing with local presbyterians suspected of disaffection. With Ormond's backing, he acquired in 1681 the office of constable of Culmore Castle, near Derry. He was originally promised a grant from the treasury of £1,000 to enable him to purchase the patent, but it was not forthcoming and he was obliged to borrow money (with Ormond acting as guarantor). This increased his indebtedness still further, and within three years financial necessities obliged him to sell out. By now he was being referred to as Colonel Philips, though whether this title related to a rank in the regular army or in the militia is unclear.
Philips's finances worsened still further as a result of the depredations of the Jacobite armies in 1689, which left his estate in Limavady and his house, the recently built New Hall, in ruins. But at the same time the events of the Jacobite war, and in particular the siege of Derry, pushed him once again into the limelight, and at first it appeared to him that King William's (qv) victory might bring him better fortune. He took pride in the part he had played in the events surrounding the siege, since he had been responsible for warning the citizens of the approach of the Jacobite troops, had subsequently served for a brief spell as governor of the garrison, and had then been dispatched to England to urge the new king to send a relief force. In return for these services he received several small payments to tide his family over the worst of their difficulties, and the lord chancellor, Sir Charles Porter (qv), once intervened to release him from imprisonment for debt. But hopes of more substantial rewards came to nothing, and at his death he owed his various creditors over £9,000. None the less, he remained loyal to the court, or at least to his particular friends in the government, during the Irish parliamentary sessions of 1692 and 1695, in which he represented his county and acquired something of a reputation as an orator. He cultivated the image of an elder statesman, playing on his previous parliamentary experiences at the Restoration. In 1694 he sent unsolicited advice to the new lord deputy, Lord Capel (qv), urging the summoning of a new parliament in Ireland in order to deal with the pressing problems with which the kingdom was confronted – the decay of trade and manufacture, the plague of tories and rapparees that was devastating the north, and the continuing threat from ‘papists’, against whom he recommended the passage of punitive laws. At the same time he deplored the overheated behaviour of the opposition in 1692, as manifested in their ‘capricious’ vote over the supposed ‘sole right’ of the Irish house of commons to initiate supply bills (which gout had prevented him from speaking against). Thus his vote against the impeachment of Porter in 1695, while in part a repayment for a personal favour, was also a piece with his stated political predilections, his ‘high church’ sentiments, and his Ormondist loyalties.
It was in the last phase of his career, after the Glorious Revolution, that Philips belatedly made his mark as an author. In the summer of 1689, while in London, he published a pamphlet, The interest of England in the preservation of Ireland, humbly presented to the parliament of England, a contribution to Irish protestant agitation for prompt military intervention against the Jacobite regime in Dublin. The following year there appeared the book which probably constitutes his principal claim to the attention of posterity, Lex parliamentaria: the laws and customs of parliaments of England, a manual of parliamentary procedure set out in the form of a collection of precedents. The considerable antiquarian labour involved was not something for which Philips's previous experience would seem to have prepared him. Typically, misfortune dogged him even after his death, in robbing him of the credit for his own work, for the signature to the book, ‘G. P.’, was misinterpreted by nineteenth-century bibliographers and ascribed instead to George Petyt. There was no such muddle about his last publication, a soon forgotten medical treatise upon his own personal scourge, A problem concerning the gout (1691).
Philips died early in 1697, being described as ‘recently deceased’ in the Limavady corporation book on 17 April (Boyle, 40). Within a few months his estate had been sold, and nothing remained in Co. Londonderry of perhaps its most remarkable plantation family. Instead of a great estate, his son William Philips (qv) had to make do with inheriting a modest literary talent.