PHILIPS, FABIAN, the author of several books relating to ancient customs and privileges in England, was born at Prestbury in Gloucestershire, on the 28th of September 1601. When very young, he spent some time in one of the Inns of Chancery, and went from thence to the Middle Temple, where he became learned in the law. In the civil wars, he was a bold assertor of the king's prerogative, and so strongly attached to Charles I. that, two days before that monarch was beheaded, he wrote a protestation against the intended murder, and caused it to be printed, and affixed to posts in all the public places. He likewise published, in 1649, a quarto pamphlet entitled Veritas Inconcussa, or King Charles I. no Man of Blood, but a Martyr for his People, which was reprinted in 1660, 8vo. In 1663, when the courts of justice at Westminster, especially the chancery, were dissolved by Cromwell's parliament, he published Considerations against the dissolving and taking them away, for which he received the thanks of parliament. He was for some time filazer for London, Middlesex, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire; and spent much money in searching records, and writing in favour of the royal prerogative. The only advantage he received for this attachment to the royal cause was the place of commissioner for regulating the law, worth £200 per annum, but which only lasted two years. After the restoration of Charles II. when the bill for taking away the tenures was depending in parliament, Philips wrote and published a book to show the necessity of preserving them, entitled Tenenda non Tollenda, or, the Necessity of preserving Tenures in capite, and by Knight's Service, which, according to their first institution, were, and are yet, a great part of the salus populi, 1660, in 4to. In 1663 he published the Antiquity, Legality, Reason, Duty, and Necessity of Pre-emption and Purveyance for the King, in 4to; and afterwards many other pieces upon subjects of a similar kind. He assisted Dr Bates in his Elechus Motuum, especially in searching the records and offices for that work, and died on the 17th of November 1690, in his eighty-ninth year. He was a man well acquainted with records and antiquities; but his manner of writing is neither close nor well digested. He published a political pamphlet in 1681, entitled Ursa Major et Minor,
Philips. "showing that there is no such fear, as is fictitiously pretended, of popery and arbitrary power."