Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Vincent, Philip
VINCENT, PHILIP (fl. 1638), author, is probably identical with Philip Vincent, baptised on 23 Nov. 1600 at Frisby in the parish of Conisborough in Yorkshire. He was the second son of Richard Vincent (d. 1617), a student of Gray's Inn, and grandson of Richard Vincent who served in the French wars and was a younger son of the family of Vincent of Braywell, near Frisby. Philip's mother, Elizabeth, was a daughter of Thomas Rokeby of Hotham, and was married to Richard Vincent on 23 Sept. 1595. Philip was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1625 he was presented by Sir Francis Vincent to the rectory of Stoke D'Abernon in Surrey, which he resigned on 17 Aug. 1629.
Vincent was the author of ‘A True Relation of the late Battell fought in New-England between the English and the Pequet Salvages,’ London, 1638, 8vo. It was prefaced by some Latin verses by the author, signed P. Vincentius. The author states that he had previously visited Guiana, and, as his narrative of the troubles in New England bears many marks of being written by an eye-witness, he in all likelihood arrived in New England not later than 1632. His work was reprinted by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1836 in their ‘Collections’ (3rd ser. vol. vi.).
In 1638 appeared also ‘The Lamentations of Germany, wherein, as in a Glasse, we may behold her miserable condition. Composed by Dr. Vincent, Theol.,’ London, 4to, with a preface signed ‘P. Vincent.’ The author speaks of his travels in Southern Germany about 1633–5. He was besieged in Heidelberg by the Spaniards, and gives a horrible description of the extremities to which the town was reduced and the excesses of the soldiery engaged in the war. These two books bear traces of being by the same author. If this identification be accurate, Vincent probably proceeded from New England to Germany in 1636, and on his return to England in 1638 published the accounts of his travels. On 17 March 1624–5, at the Church of Great St. Bartholomew, London, Philip Vincent, gentleman, of London, bachelor, aged 24 (perhaps Vincent of Frisby), was married to Frances, daughter of Sir Christopher Heydon of Baconthorpe, Norfolk, and widow of Henry Draper of Bromley, Kent. By her he had three sons—Francis, John, and Henry. She died on 30 Nov. 1630. Vincent left a manuscript pedigree of his family, which was in the collection of Nathaniel Johnston [q. v.]
[Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 24490 f. 116, 12225 f. 226; Winsor's Hist. of America, iii. 348; Field's Essay on Indian Bibliogr. No. 1606; Manning and Bray's Hist. of Surrey, 1809, ii. 729.]