Thomas Phillips

Thomas Phillips (5 July 1708, Ickford, Buckinghamshire – 16 June 1774, Liège) was an English Jesuit priest, known as the biographer of Reginald Cardinal Pole. Life Phillips was the great-nephew of William Joyner, a prominent Catholic convert, whose sister, Mary, married an attorney, Thomas Phillips; the couple had a daughter, and a son, Thomas, who converted to Roman Catholicism. He, in turn, married Elizabeth Crosse, daughter of Johnshall Crosse of Bledlow, and they had nine children (eight sons and one daughter), including Thomas Phillips, the Jesuit priest and biographer. 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 for his 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, the Rev John Turberville. In the second year of his course of theology 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.