5 July he wished the house to discuss the question of impositions, and rebutted the king's claim to impose duties on merchandise at will. He also objected to the liberation of priests at the request of foreign ambassadors. In August, when parliament reassembled at Oxford, Phelips pursued his former policy. On 10 Aug., in a high strain of eloquence, he defined the position taken up by the commons, and laid down the lines on which the struggle was fought until the Long parliament (Forster, Life of Eliot, i. 239–241). Next day parliament was dissolved. ‘As far as the history of such an assembly can be summed up in the name of any single man, the history of the Parliament of 1625 is summed up in the name of Phelips. … At Oxford he virtually assumed that unacknowledged leadership which was all that the traditions of Parliament at that time permitted. It was Phelips who placed the true issue of want of confidence before the House’ (Gardiner, v. 432).
Another parliament was summoned for 6 Feb. 1625–6. Phelips was naturally one of those pricked for sheriff to prevent their election as members. Nevertheless he secured his election, and attempted in vain to take his seat (Forster). In the same year he was struck off the commission of the peace for Somerset, and refused to subscribe to the forced loan. In March 1627–8 he was once more returned for Somerset. He was present at a meeting of the leaders at Sir Robert Cotton's house a few days before the session began, and again took an active part in the proceedings of the house. He protested against the sermons of Sibthorpe and Mainwaring, and was prominent in the debates on the petition of right, but the informal position of leader was taken by Sir John Eliot.
From this time Phelips is said to have inclined more towards the court. In 1629 Charles wrote, urging him to look to the interest of the king rather than to the favour of the multitude, and in 1633 he sided with the court against the puritans on the question of suppressing wakes. In the same year he protested his devotion to the king, and was again put on the commission for the peace. But in 1635 he took part in resisting the collection of ship-money. He died ‘of a cold, choked with phlegm,’ and was buried at Montacute on 13 April 1638.
Phelips was an impetuous, ‘busy, active man, whose undoubted powers were not always under the control of prudence.’ According to Sir John Eliot, his oratory was ready and spirited, but was marred by ‘a redundancy and exuberance,’ and ‘an affected cadence and delivery;’ he had ‘a voice of much sweetness,’ and spoke extempore. A portrait by Vandyck, preserved at Montacute, represents him holding a paper which formed the ground of the impeachment of Bacon. He married Bridget, daughter of Sir Thomas Gorges, knt., of Longford, Wiltshire. By her he had four daughters and three sons, of whom the eldest, Edward (1613–1679), succeeded him, became a colonel in the royalist army, and had his estates sequestrated. The second son Robert also became a colonel in the royalist army, helped Charles II to escape after the battle of Worcester, was groom of the bedchamber to him, M.P. for Stockbridge 1660–1, and Andover 1684–5, and chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster from 25 May 1687 till 21 March 1689. He died in 1707, being buried in Bath Abbey. The notes he drew up of Charles's escape are in Addit. MS. 31955, f. 16.
[Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1603–35, passim; Hist. MSS. Comm. App. 1st and 3rd Rep. passim, 12th Rep. App. pt. i. p. 464; 13th Rep. App. pt. vii. passim; Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 31955 f. 16, 32093 f. 32, 34217 f. 15; Journals of House of Commons, passim; D'Ewes's Journals; Parl. Hist.; Official Return of Members of Parliament; Strafford Papers, i. 30–1, ii. 164; Nichols's Progresses of James I, i. 207, 213 n.; Archæologia, xxxv. 343; Spedding's Bacon, v. 61, 65, vii. passim; Forster's Life of Eliot, throughout; Gardiner's Hist. of England, passim; Metcalfe's Book of Knights; Genealogical Collections of Catholic Families, ed. Howard; Visitation of Somersetshire (Harl. Soc.); Burke's Landed Gentry.]
PHELPS, JOHN (fl. 1649), regicide, matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 20 May 1636, describing himself as aged 17, and the son of Robert Phelps of Salisbury (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1st ser. p. 1155). His first employment seems to have been that of clerk to the committee for plundered ministers. On 1 Jan. 1648–9 he was appointed clerk-assistant to Henry Elsing, clerk of the House of Commons, and on 8 Jan. was selected as one of the two clerks of the high court of justice which sat to try Charles I (Commons' Journals, vi. 107; Nalson, Trial of Charles I, 1682, pp. 7, 9). The original journal of the court, attested under the hand of Phelps, and presented by the judges to the House of Commons, was published by John Nalson in 1682 (ib. p. xiv; Commons' Journals, vi. 508). In 1650 Phelps was called to the bar at the Middle Temple. On 14 Oct. 1652 he was made clerk to the committee of parliament chosen to confer with the deputies of Scotland on the question of the union (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1651–2, p. 439). He was em-
