The Phelips family of Montacute, near Yeovil, were a very political family for several centuries, from the early 1500s. In the early period, the family tended to sit for various Dorset seats, such as Poole and Wareham. Later, however, the focus was then clearly on Somerset constituencies, both the county itself and the borough of Ilchester.
The golden age of the Phelips in the House of Commons was in the 17th century, especially Sir Edward and Sir Robert, through a period of huge constitutional upheaval.
Sir Edward Phelips, who built the fine Montacute House we know today, served in various late Elizabethan Parliaments from 1584 until 1597, sitting for a number of seats including Weymouth and Andover. However his political career really took off when he was returned for the county of Somerset in 1601. He was a lawyer by trade and had participated in various high profile trials such as that of Sir Walter Raleigh and in 1606 of the Gunpowder Plotters.
He was elected Speaker of the House of Commons in the 1604 Parliament of the new King, James, an office he held until 1611. His election was strongly opposed, and he won only because there was no obvious alternative candidate. He used his supposedly neutral position as Speaker to support the interests of the King in the House, so much so that one historian described him as “as useful an agent as the government possessed in the Commons.”
The Somerset Heritage Centre in Taunton has a number of letters and official documents of his time as Speaker, covering his dealings on behalf of the Crown. There is also a letter to him, dated 18 March 1609, from the magnificently-named MP, Sir Julius Caesar.
In March 1606 he fell ill and could not attend the House, throwing the business into confusion. In the era before Deputy Speakers, could the House sit without its Speaker? He was described as ‘very sick’, and his ‘Infirmity was a great Pain in his Neck and Head, so as he was no way able, without Danger, to attend.’ Thankfully he recovered a week later.
His son, Sir Robert, was a formidable MP, sitting for several constituencies including the county of Somerset. He was prominent during the growing constitutional crisis between the King and Parliament in the early 17th century, and one later writer concluded that ‘the history of the Parliament of 1625 is summed up in the name of Phelips’. He used his local prominence to influence Somerset elections, and was instrumental in reviving the borough constituency of Ilchester in 1621, which has lapsed as long ago as 1361.
In the last phase of Phelips’ parliamentarianism, the MPs all seemed to be called Edward. One such Edward (MP for Somerset 1774-1780) was dismissed by the journal, Public Ledger, in 1779 as follows: “Votes constantly with the ministry, and seems much fitter for parish or turnpike business, than to be the representative of a great county in Parliament.” His son, another Edward, who sat for Somerset from 1784 until his death in 1792, seemed to have been a rather more substantial MP, and was a strong supporter of the Prime Minister, William Pitt.
There are portraits of many of these Phelips MPs at Montacute House, which is a National Trust property.
© JB Seatrobe (Barry K Winetrobe & Janet Seaton) 2018. A version of this article was published originally in the June 2015 issue of the Somerset Leveller, #2.