the first time, by a practical and beneficial revolution of procedure, enabled the ecclesiastical courts to take evidence vivâ voce, and not as before only by the slow and cumbrous methods of written depositions. He was also the author of the act of 1856 for the abolition of the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts in suits for defamation (18 and 19 Vict. c. 41). While in parliament he spoke frequently, and with effect, on questions where his knowledge of ecclesiastical or international law gave him a special authority; his best speeches were those on church rates in May 1853, against the abandonment of the belligerent right to seize enemy goods in neutral ships in 1854, and on the dispute about the lorcha ‘Arrow’ in 1857, out of which the Chinese war arose. He contested Coventry at the general election in the latter year, but, failing to win the seat, did not again seek to enter parliament.
In 1867 Phillimore succeeded Dr. Stephen Lushington [q. v.] as judge of the high court of admiralty and as official principal of the archbishopric of Canterbury or dean of arches, and was sworn of the privy council. Dr. Lushington, however, did not resign the mastership of faculties, an office held since 1857 with the office of dean of arches, and constituting practically the emoluments of that post, but retained it till his death in 1873. Thus Phillimore for five years served the country as an ecclesiastical judge at a salary that did not pay the expenses of his office, and at the cost to himself of resigning his three chancellorships of Chichester, Oxford, and Salisbury. It was at the earnest request of Archbishop Longley that he consented to take this course, but only in 1873 was he appointed to the mastership of faculties with its salary of 600l. a year (see preface to his edition of his ‘Judgments,’ 1876). His chief ecclesiastical judgments were those in Martin v. Maconochie, 1868 (see Dale, Judgments of the Privy Council, and Sir R. Phillimore in Martin v. Maconochie, 1871), Elphinstone v. Purchas, 1870, on eucharistic ritual (see Law Reports, 3 Adm. and Eccl. 66; and Law Reports, 3 Privy Council, pp. 245 and 605); Sheppard v. Bennett, on the doctrine of the Real Presence, 1869 and 1870 (Law Reports, 2 Adm. and Eccl. 335, and 3rd ditto, 167; and Law Reports, 2 Privy Council, p. 450); and Boyd v. Phillpotts, the Exeter reredos case, in 1874 (Law Reports, 4 Adm. and Eccl. p. 297; and Law Reports, 6 Privy Council, p. 435). In 1871 and 1872, at the request of the government, he temporarily held the office of judge-advocate-general; and in 1875, pursuant to section 8 of the Judicature Act, 1875, he resigned his ecclesiastical judgeship. He was created a baronet in 1881, and in March 1883 resigned his judgeship in the probate division of the high court.
In 1879 he was president of the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations. He served, too, on numerous royal commissions, including those on neutrality, naturalisation, ritual, and the building of the courts of justice, and also on the judicature and the ecclesiastical courts commissions. His influence upon church affairs through the leaders of the high church party was very considerable, and, as an old boy and a member of the governing board, he took a deep and continuous interest in the concerns of Westminster school. He died on 4 Feb. 1885 at The Coppice, near Henley-on-Thames, and was buried in Shiplake churchyard.
Phillimore belonged to a class of lawyers that has now passed away. He was a scholar both in the classic and in modern languages, and a jurist of wide reading. As an advocate he displayed great industry and tact, and he had a polished address and a considerable gift of eloquence; ‘very handsome and very clever’ was Dean Stanley's impression of him at their first meeting in 1835 (Prothero, Life of A. P. Stanley, i. 149). His best forensic appearances were in his defence of his brother-in-law, Archdeacon Denison, against the charge of heresy, and his conduct of the Smethurst will case (see Ballantine, Experiences of a Barrister's Life, i. 258), of Smith v. Tebbitt (Law Reports, 1 P. and M. p. 398), the case of the Banda and Kirwee booty, and the Knightsbridge ritual case. On the bench he was dignified, painstaking, and courteous; and he delivered a series of important judgments, full of historical and legal knowledge, and luminously expressed. It is true that some of his ecclesiastical judgments were not upheld by the privy council upon appeal, though in the last ritual case, Read v. Bishop of Lincoln, the privy council decidedly returned on several points to a view closely approximating to Phillimore's, whose churchmanship and reading of church law and history were of the old high-church type. As a judge in admiralty and matrimonial causes, and as an occasional member of the judicial committee of the privy council prior to 1874, he left his mark on the law, and that at a time when new practice and an increasing volume of litigation were occasioning many new departures. The Teutonia (Law Reports, 3 Adm. and Eccl. p. 394), and the Charkieh (Law Reports, 4 Adm. and Eccl. p. 59), in admiralty; Cheese
