Thomas Phillips (priest)

Thomas Phillips (1708–1774) was an English Jesuit priest, known as the biographer of Cardinal Reginald Pole

He was born at Ickford, Buckinghamshire on 5 July 1708, son of a Catholic convert and a great-nephew of William Joyner; Joyner had a sister, Mary Phillips, in Ickford, who had married the attorney Thomas Phillips, and they had a daughter, and a son Thomas who was the convert. Thomas Phillips the younger married Elizabeth Crosse, daughter of Johnshall Crosse of Bledlow, and they had a family of eight sons and one daughter.

Phillips's early schooling was Protestant, after which he was sent to the College of St Omer. When he had completed his course of rhetoric he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Watten on 7 September 1726, and made the simple vows of the Society on 8 September 1728. He was then moved to the English College, Liège to study a three-year course of philosophy.

Soon after Phillip's admission to holy orders his father died, leaving him independently wealthy. He travelled through the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Italy, visiting universities, and forming friendships. During the third year of his philosophical course, on 17 July 1731, he made a voluntary renunciation of his property to the college at Liège and the provincial father, John Turberville. In the second year of his course of divinity, he sought permission to conduct a course of humanities at St. Omer, against the requirement of the Society to accept assignments, and he was turned down. On 4 July 1733 he withdrew from the Society.

Phillips then went to Rome, where Henry Sheldon, rector of the English College, Rome, introduced him to Charles Edward Stuart, who found for him an appointment as a canon at Tongres (1 September 1739), with a dispensation to serve on the English mission. Returning to England, he officiated as chaplain to George Talbot, 14th Earl of Shrewsbury, at Heythrop Park from 1739 to 1753. He then was chaplain to Sir Richard Acton, 5th Baronet at Aldenham Park, Shropshire; and subsequently (1763–5) to Robert Berkeley of Spetchley Park, Worcestershire.

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