Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/211

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
203

Yeeres of Age, laye in a Traunce the Space of Tenne Days … and hath continued the Space of Three Weeks,’ London (by Robert Waldegrave), 1581, 8vo, with a long prayer appended; dedicated to Edward Denny (Brit. Mus.). 5. ‘The Perfect Path to Paradice, containing divers most ghostly Prayers and Meditations for the Comfort of Afflicted Consciences … also a Summons to Repentance,’ London, 1590, 12mo; dedicated to the Earl of Essex; an edition, dated 1626, 12mo, is at the British Museum.

To ‘A Sermon of Calvin … upon Heb. xiii. 13’ (London, 1581), Phillips appended ‘An Answere to the Slanders of the Papistes against Christe's Syllie Flock … quod J. P.,’ and to George Gascoigne's ‘Dromme of Doomes Daye,’ he added ‘A Private Letter the which doth teach Remedies against the bitternesse of Death, by I. P. to his familiar Friend, G. P.’

On the ‘Stationers' Registers’ appear entries of two books by Phillips, not otherwise known: ‘Precious Pearles of perfecte Godlines to be used of every faythfull Xpian, begonne by the Lady Fraunces Aburgavenny, and finished by John Phillip’ (7 Dec. 1577) (Lady Abergavenny was first wife of Henry Neville, lord of Abergavenny, and daughter of Thomas Manners, first earl of Rutland); and ‘The Rudimentes of Reason gathered out of the Preceptes of the worthie and learned Philosopher Periander, by John Philips, Student in Divinitie’ (26 April 1578). Abraham Fleming [q. v.], in his ‘Bright Burning Beacon’ (1580), mentions ‘John Philippes’ among those who wrote on the earthquake of 6 April 1580, but no book by Phillips on this topic is accessible.

Phillips was equally energetic as a writer of elegiac verse, and he is responsible for the four epitaphs, published in single folio sheets, all extant in unique exemplars, which respectively celebrated the wife (d. 7 July 1570) of Alexander Avenet, lord mayor of London (London, by Richard Johnes), in the Huth Library; Alderman Sir William Garrat (d. 27 Sept. 1571), London (by Richard Johnes), at Britwell; Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox (d. 9 March 1577–8), London (for Edward White), at Britwell; Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton (d. 30 Nov. 1581), in the Huth Library.

More ambitious memorials of the dead were modelled by Phillips on the poems in the ‘Mirrour for Magistrates;’ in each the ghost of the person commemorated is made to relate his or her own achievements. The title of the earliest is ‘A Commemoration of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox,’ London (by John Charlewood), 1578, in seven-line stanzas; copies are in the British Museum and at Britwell. The countess's ghost introduces into her biography an elaborate panegyric on Queen Elizabeth. ‘The Life and Death of Sir Phillip Sidney, late Lord Gouernour of Flushing. His Funerals solemnized in Paules Churche, where he lyeth interred; with the whole Order of the Mournfull Shewe as they marched throwe the Citie of London on Thursday, the 16 of February 1587,’ London (by Robert Waldegrave), was dedicated to the Earl of Essex. The poem, in seven-line stanzas, is somewhat uncouth. It opens with the line (Sidney's ghost is speaking)

You noble brutes, bedeckt with rich renown

(brutes = Britons). A unique copy is in the British Museum. It is reprinted in Butler's ‘Sidneiana.’ A like ‘Commemoration of Sir Christopher Hatton,’ in six-line stanzas, appeared in 1591, London (by Edward White), and was dedicated to Sir William Hatton. The only copy known, formerly at Lamport, in the possession of Sir Charles Isham, is now at Britwell. It was reprinted in ‘A Lamport Garland,’ edited for the Roxburghe Club by Charles Edmonds, 1881. A slightly less lugubrious romance in fourteen-syllable ballad metre by Phillips is ‘A rare and strange Historicall Nouell of Cleomenes and Sophonisba surnamed Juliet. Very pleasant to reade,’ London (by Hugh Jackson), 1577, 8vo; dedicated to George Fiennes, lord Dacre. Arthur Broke had published in 1562 his ‘Historie of Romeus and Juliet,’ in which the name Juliet is first introduced into English literature.

Another John Phillips (d. 1640), who was a graduate of Cambridge (M.A. and B.D.), and vicar of Faversham, Kent, from 1606 till his death in 1640, published in 1625 ‘The Way to Heaven’ (London, 4to). This was an expansion of a funeral discourse on a friend, Edward Lapworth, M.D., a reputed papist [see under Lapworth, Edward, 1574–1636].

[Hunter's MS. Chorus Vatum in Brit. Mus.; Addit. MS. 24488, f. 69; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 99; Collier's Poetical Decameron, ii. 50–2, 125–6, his extracts from Stationers' Registers, 1557–70 pp. 148–9, 1570–87 pp. 48–52, and his Bibliographical Account, ii. 155–9; Hazlitt's Bibliographical Collections; information kindly given by R. E. Graves, esq.]

S. L.

PHILLIPS, JOHN, D.D. (1555?–1633), bishop of Sodor and Man, was born in Wales, probably about 1555. He was educated at St. Mary Hall, Oxford, and graduated B.A. on 19 May 1579, M.A. on 25 May 1584. In 1579 he became rector of Sessay, North Riding of Yorkshire; and in 1583, rector of