Phips

Phips, or PHIPPS, SIR WILLIAM, governor of Massachusetts, was born at Pemnaquid (Bristol), Maine, on 2d February 1651, one of twenty-one boys in a family of twenty-six children. He was successively a shepherd, a carpenter, and a trader, and in 1687 recovered from a wrecked Spanish ship off the Bahamas bullion, plate, and treasure valued at £300,000; this gained him a knighthood and the appointment of sheriff of New England. In 1690 he captured Port Royal (now Annapolis) in Nova Scotia, but failed in the following year in a naval attack upon Quebec. In 1692, through the influence of Increase Mather (q.v.), he was appointed governor of Massachusetts. He changed the manner of the witchcraft persecutions by appointing a commission of seven magistrates to try all such cases. He died on 18th February 1695 in London, whither he had been summoned to answer certain charges of arbitrary conduct. See Life by F. Bowen in Sparks' American Biography (1834-37).