Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/187

 was condemned to serve five years in a monastery, wearing ‘a fool's coat or San Benito’ of yellow cotton with red crosses on it.

When the five years came to an end he was allowed to go free, but not to quit the country. He bound himself for three years to a silk-weaver. Afterwards, on news of Drake having landed at Acapulco, he was sent there as interpreter, with a body of two hundred soldiers. After searching along the coast to Panama, and learning that Drake had certainly departed, they returned to Mexico, and, a month later, Philips succeeded in escaping to Vera Cruz, where he hoped to get on board a ship. He was, however, apprehended, but managed to escape to the woods, where he fell in with some Indians, who guided him to Puerto de Cavallos in Honduras, whence he obtained a passage to Havana. There he entered as a soldier, and was sent to Spain. At San Lucar he was denounced as an Englishman, but he got away to Seville, afterwards entered again as a soldier on board a galley bound to Majorca, and there found an English ship which carried him to England. He landed at Poole in February 1581–1582.

Such is the outline of the story told by Philips himself to Hakluyt; but beyond the facts that he was put on shore by Hawkyns, that the inquisition was established in Mexico in 1574, and that he returned to England, it is uncorroborated. The outlines of his story may however be true.

Having arrived in England in February 1581–2, Philips would seem to have sailed from Southampton with John Drake in the following May. On 29 Jan. 1586–7 he was rescued by Captain Lister of the Clifford near the Earl of Cumberland's watering-place on the River Plate, that is, close to where John Drake was wrecked in 1582. He appears to have returned to England in the Clifford.

[Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, iii. 469 et seq., 727, 772.] 

PHILIPS, NATHANIEL GEORGE (1795–1831), artist, was the youngest son of John Leigh Philips of Mayfield, Manchester, where he was born on 9 June 1795. His father, besides gaining great popularity as lieutenant-colonel commandant of the Manchester and Salford volunteers, formed a remarkable collection of books, pictures, and other works of art which, on his death in 1814, were dispersed at a sale that extended over nineteen days. Philips was educated at the Manchester grammar school, and afterwards entered the university of Edinburgh, with the intention of qualifying for the medical profession. While pursuing his medical studies he made the acquaintance, among many brilliant men then resident in Edinburgh, of Sir William Allan [q. v.] and other distinguished artists of the Scottish school. By their advice he ultimately adopted art as a profession.

The possession of a moderate competency enabled him to prepare himself thoroughly for his new vocation. In 1824 he went to Italy for three years, and so greatly was his talent appreciated in Rome that, on the death of Fuseli, he was, in 1825, elected to fill his place as a member of the academy of St. Luke. On his return to England he settled in Liverpool, where he worked industriously. He exhibited landscapes at the Liverpool Academy and the Royal Manchester Institution. The work by which he is best remembered is a series of twenty-eight engravings on copper, many of them beautifully executed by himself from his own drawings, of old halls in Lancashire and Cheshire. These were originally issued in 1822–4, and there is some doubt if more than twenty-five were then printed. All were reissued in book form in 1893, ‘with descriptive letterpress by twenty-four local contributors’ and a memoir of the artist. Philips, who also practised etching, died unmarried at his residence, Rodney Street, Liverpool, on 1 Aug. 1831. His work is remarkable for accuracy, and is bold and masterly. A drawing, in sepia, in the possession of the writer, depicts the Windmills at Bootle near Liverpool.

A portrait of Philips was introduced by Sir William Allan, P.R.S.A., in the principal group of his picture ‘The Circassian Slave.’

[Manchester School Register (Chetham Soc.); Mem. by W. Morton Philips in new edition of N. G. Philips's ‘Views,’ 1893.] 

PHILIPS, PEREGRINE (1623–1691), nonconformist preacher, was born at Amroth, Pembrokeshire, of which parish his father was vicar, in 1623. He was educated first at the grammar school, Haverfordwest, afterwards by Sir Edward Harley's private chaplain at Brampton-Bryan, Herefordshire, and then by Dr. William Thomas (afterwards bishop of St. David's). He proceeded to Oxford, but the outbreak of the civil war soon put an end to his studies. He now took orders, acted for some time as curate to his uncle, Dr. Collins, at Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire, and then received the rectory of Llangwm and Freystrop in his native county. His talents as a preacher in Welsh and English soon attracted the notice of the puritan