PHILLIPS, AUGUSTINE, is included in the 1593 list of Strange's men, and played for them or the Admiral's in 2 Seven Deadly Sins about 1590-1 as 'Mr. Phillipps'. Probably he joined the Chamberlain's men on their formation in 1594. He appears in the actor-lists of 1598 and 1599, was one of the original Globe shareholders of 1599, and on 18 February 1601 gave evidence as to the performance of Richard II by the company before the Essex rising. He is also in the official lists of the King's men in 1603 and 1604, in the actor-list of Sejanus in 1603, and in that of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays. 'Phillips his gygg of the slyppers' was entered in the Stationers' Register on 26 May 1595 (cf. p. 552). It has been conjectured that Phillips was a brother-in-law of Alleyn, to whom Henslowe wrote on 28 September 1593, 'Your sister Phillipes & her husband hath leced two or thre owt of ther howsse, yt they in good health & doth hartily comend them unto you.' If so, his wife was probably Elizabeth Woodward. But it is also possible that the family in question was that of one Edward Phillipes, who was also in relations with Henslowe and Alleyn.[1] An Augustine Phillipps buried at St. Saviour's, Southwark, in 1592, was probably a relative of the actor, whose children the register of the same parish records as Magdalen (bapt. 29 September 1594), Rebecca (bapt. 11 July 1596), and Austen or Augustine (bapt. 29 November 1601, bur. 1 July 1604). The father is designated histrio, 'player,' or 'player of interludes'. The parish token-books show that he dwelt in Horse-shoe Court during 1593 and 1595, thereafter near the Swan in Paris Garden, in Montagu Close during 1601, in 'Bradshaw's Rents' during 1602, and in Horse-shoe Court again during 1604.[2] But by 4 May 1605, when he made his will, he was of Mortlake, Surrey, where he had a house and land of which he had lately purchased the lease.[3] Doubtless he had prospered. A note of heraldic irregularities delivered by William Smith, Rouge dragon, to the Earl of Northampton as commissioner for the Earl Marshal states that 'Phillipps the player had graven in a gold ring the armes of S^r W^m Phillipp, Lord Bardolph, with the said L. Bardolph's cote quartred, which I shewed to M^r. York at a small gravers shopp in Foster Lane'.[4] The will mentions Phillips's wife, whose name was not Elizabeth but Anne, his daughters Magdalen, Rebecca, Anne, and Elizabeth, his mother Agnes Bennett, his brothers William and James Webb, his sister Margery Borne, and her sons Miles and Philipps, and his sister Elizabeth Gough. Elizabeth had been married at St. Saviour's in 1603, to Robert Gough (q.v.) of the King's men, who witnesses the will.[5] Margery Borne may have been the wife of William Borne alias
- ↑ Henslowe, ii. 302; Henslowe Papers, 36, 41.
- ↑ Collier, iii. 322, 325; Rendle, Bankside, xxv.
- ↑ Variorum, iii. 470.
- ↑ S. Lee in Nineteenth Century for May 1906, quoting a manuscript by Smith in private hands, with the title A Brief Discourse of y^e causes of Discord amongst y^e Officers of arms and of the great abuses and absurdities comitted by painters to the great prejudice and hindrance of the same office. Northampton did not get his title until 1604.
- ↑ Collier, iii. 323.
