Robert Needham Philips

Robert Needham Philips DL (1815 – 28 February 1890) was an English merchant and manufacturer in the Lancashire textiles business, a Liberal Party politician, and the grandfather of the Whig historian G. M. Trevelyan.

He lived in Manchester and in Warwickshire, and after holding at least three ceremonial appointments he was the Member of Parliament (MP) for the borough of Bury, a mill town which was then in Lancashire, for a total of 22 years between 1857 and 1885.

Philips was the youngest son Robert Philips, a merchant of The Park, Manchester, and his wife Anne née Needham. His older brother Mark (1800–1873) was one of the first two MPs to be elected for Manchester in 1832, after the Great Reform Act had given city parliamentary representation for the first time. The family's extensive estate on the boundary of Whitefield and Prestwich, in Greater Manchester (now within the Metropolitan Borough of Bury), is now Philips Park.

His father's business partnership, Philips, Wood & Co, was dissolved in 1844 after the death of both partners.

The younger Robert was educated at Rugby School and at Manchester College.

He married twice, firstly in 1845 to Anna Maria Yates from Liverpool, who died in 1851. He married again in 1856 to Mary Ellen Yates from London. His daughter Caroline was married in 1869 to George Otto Trevelyan (1838–1928), who was later a baronet; their youngest son was the historian G. M. Trevelyan (1876–1962), and their eldest son was the Liberal MP Sir Charles Trevelyan (1870–1958), who later joined the Labour Party and served in Ramsay Macdonald's cabinets as President of the Board of Education.

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