Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/154

 ployed as official note-taker at the trial of Vowell and Fox in 1654, and was also concerned in the trial of Slingsby and Hewitt in 1658 (ib. 1654 p. 235, 1658–9 p. 11). From 7 to 14 May 1659 he again acted as clerk of the House of Commons (Commons' Journals, vii. 644, 650). By these different employments Phelps made sufficient money to purchase a part of the manor of Hampton Court, which was bought from him in 1654 for the use of the Protector (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1654, pp. 180, 223).

At the Restoration the House of Commons included Phelps and his fellow-clerk Broughton among the regicides, and on 14 May 1660 voted their arrest (Commons' Journals, viii. 25). Prynne was ordered to secure all the public documents which were among the papers of Phelps, and his goods were also seized (ib. pp. 27, 32, 43, 47). On 9 June it was further voted that he should be excepted from the Act of Indemnity for future punishment by some penalty less than death; and on 1 July 1661 he was attainted, in company with twenty-one dead regicides (ib. pp. 60, 286). Phelps, however, succeeded in evading all pursuit, and in 1662 he was at Lausanne in company with Ludlow. At the close of that year he and Colonel John Biscoe bought goods at Geneva and other places, and resolved to try to make a livelihood by trading in Germany and Holland (, Memoirs, ii. 344, ed. 1894). In 1666 he appears to have been in Holland, and his name was included in a list of exiles summoned on 21 July to surrender themselves within a given time to the English government (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1665–6, pp. 342, 348, 358). The date and the place of his death are unknown. A tablet to his memory was erected a few years ago in St. Martin's Church, Vevay (, ii. 513; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. vi. 13).

[Authorities cited in text.] 

PHELPS, SAMUEL (1804–1878), actor, the seventh child and second son of Robert M. Phelps and his wife Ann, daughter of Captain Turner, was born 13 Feb. 1804, at 1 St. Aubyn Street, Plymouth Dock, now known as Devonport. Coming of a Somerset stock, he was both by his father's and mother's side connected with people of position and affluence. His father's occupation was to supply outfits to naval officers. A younger brother, Robert Phelps (1808–1890), was a good mathematician. He graduated B.A. from Trinity College, Cambridge, and took holy orders. In 1833 he was elected fellow of Sidney Sussex, and from 1843 till his death was master of that college.

Samuel was educated in his native town, and at a school at Saltash kept by Dr. Samuel Reece. Left an orphan at sixteen, he was sheltered by his eldest brother, who put him in the office of the ‘Plymouth Herald,’ where he was employed as junior reader to the press. In his seventeenth year he tried his fortunes in London, and became reader to the ‘Globe’ and the ‘Sun’ newspapers. Phelps had acquired theatrical tastes, had made the acquaintance of Douglas Jerrold, and of William Edward Love [q. v.] the ‘polyphonist,’ and was, with them, a member of an amateur theatrical company giving frequent performances at a private theatre in Rawstorne Street, Clerkenwell. At the Olympic he made, in his twenty-second year, an appearance as an amateur, playing Eustache de Saint Pierre in the ‘Surrender of Calais,’ and the Count of Valmont in the ‘Foundling of the Forest.’ His success induced him to take to the stage as an occupation, and having first married, 11 Aug. 1826, at St. George's Church, Queen Square, Bloomsbury, Sarah Cooper, aged sixteen, he accepted an engagement of eighteen shillings a week on the York circuit. In 1830 he acquired at Sheffield some popularity in parts so diverse as King John, Norval, and Goldfinch in the ‘Road to Ruin.’ In 1832 he enlisted under Watkin Burroughs for the Belfast, Preston, and Dundee theatres, and subsequently under Ryder for Aberdeen, Perth, and Inverness, playing in the northernmost towns the Dougal Creature to Ryder's Rob Roy and Sir Archy McSarcasm in ‘Love à la Mode.’ He was next heard of in Worthing, and then in Exeter and Plymouth. He was now announced as a tragedian, playing King Lear and Sir Giles Overreach, Virginius, Richard III, Iago, Sir Edward Mortimer in the ‘Iron Chest,’ and incurred the general fate of being advanced as a rival to Kean. This flattering comparison he supported by taking in Devonport, where he played, the lodgings previously occupied by Kean. Advances came from Bunn for Drury Lane, Webster for the Haymarket, and Macready for Covent Garden. In the end Phelps signed with Macready, who came to Southampton on 14 Aug. and saw him in the ‘Iron Chest.’ The engagement was to begin at Covent Garden in the following October.

In the interval Phelps played a short season at the Haymarket under Webster. On 28 Aug. 1837, as ‘Mr. Phelps from Exeter,’ he made at that playhouse, as Shylock, his first appearance in London. His reception was favourable, and he was credited by the press with judgment and experience, as well as a good face, figure, and voice. Sir Edward