Sir Robert Phillimore, 1st Baronet

Who was Sir Robert Phillimore, 1st Baronet?

Sir Robert Joseph Phillimore, 1st Baronet PC, was an English judge and politician.

Born in Whitehall, he was the third son of Joseph Phillimore, a well-known ecclesiastical lawyer. Educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, where a lifelong friendship with W. E. Gladstone began, his first appointment was to a clerkship in the board of control, where he remained from 1832 to 1835. Admitted as an advocate at Doctors' Commons in 1839, he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1841, and rose very rapidly in his profession. He was engaged as counsel in almost every case of importance that came before the admiralty, probate or divorce courts, and became successively master of faculties, commissary of the deans and chapters of St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Cathedral, official of the arch deaconries of Middlesex and London, and chancellor of the dioceses of Chichester and Salisbury.

In 1853, he entered the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for Tavistock. A moderate in politics, his energies were devoted to non-party measures, and in 1854 he introduced the bill for allowing viva voce evidence in the ecclesiastical courts.