Henry Philips [Phillips] 

Henry Philips [Phillips] (1719-1789) served as minister of the Baptist congregation at Brown Street, Salisbury, 1766-89, and was a close friend of both the Attwater and Steele families of Bodenham and Broughton. G. A. Moore and R. J. Huckle, in The Story of Salisbury Baptist Church (Salisbury: Salisbury Baptist Church, 2000), 19-20, argue that Philips was twice married: his first wife died at the end of January 1769 and was buried in the church burial grounds at Salisbury; in December 1781 he married a Miss Williams of London, who, according to the Salisbury & Winchester Journal on 10 December, possessed ‘a handsome fortune’.  As Jane Attwater’s diary and letters reveal, however. Philips was married three times. He was remarried by 1773, but in 1774 this second Mrs Philips became ill. Jane Attwater writes to Mary Steele on 18 July 1774: ‘Poor Mrs Phillips is very poorly. Her disorder is much altered, her appetite is mended, her Stomach better, & she does not find so much of yt Inward weakness wch she used to complain of but her Legs & Stomach swells very much wch we imagine to be something of ye dropsy. Her blood must be extreemly poor--they say its common for people in a consumption thus to swell a little before they die but what may be ye result of this alteration is not to be determined by us finite creatures none but him yt ordereth all things can absolutely determine what the Event will be & with him all things are possible. That power that spoke us into being is Sufficient to raise from ye borders of ye grave--Mrs Philips’s spirits are much better I went to see her yesterday.  She very much affected me by her discourse by telling me she thought yt morning very much of our family particularly my dear & hond mother & was preposess’d with a notion she was Ill & would not live Long’ (Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, vol. 3, p. 246).  After her death, Rev. Philips apparently proposed to Mrs Peter Evans of Yeovil in November 1775, the widow of Peter Evans (1725-1771), Baptist minister at Yeovil from 1753 until 1771 (Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, vol. 3, p. 271). Both Philips and his new wife are mentioned in a letter by William Steele to Mary Steele, dated 3 September 1776 (vol. 3, p. 272).  This wife also died, resulting in his fourth marriage in December 1781 to the aforenamed Miss Williams of London.  After her death in 1784, he remarried one last time, and it is this wife who writes to Jane Attwater just days before Rev. Philips’s death. Henry Philips died on 20 August 1789. Attwater copied a brief obituary on Philips that appeared in the Salisbury Journal on 21 August (now in the Attwater Papers, Angus Library) and then enquired of the paper’s proprietor concerning the author of the account, which included a poetic tribute to Philips signed ‘Theodosia’. The ‘Theodosia’ is not Anne Steele (she had died in 1778), nor is the poem by her. Attwater agreed with the sentiments of the account and the poem, in which he was described as ‘a man of Irreproachable character & of great benevolence. In times of publick scarcity he bought provisions of various sorts on purpose to dispose of them to the poor at an under price so as not to make them Idle but only to help them by which & other means although of small fortune he was enabled to do much good’. Attwater, however, was clearly struck by the use of ‘Theodosia’ at the end of the poem, since she had been very close to the original poet of that name. Her final response is telling: ‘I cant learn who was ye author of these lines they are certainly very Characteristic of my much loved valued Friend tho deficient in poetry.’ For the Attwater material, see Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 8.