[1][2] His two most famous poems are perhaps The Sea Queen Wakes (1896)[3][4] and Coronation Hymn composed in honour of the coronation of George V.[5][1] Edward Clive Oldnall Long Phillipps was born in 1853 as the eldest son of a public schoolmaster Richard Augustus Long Phillipps, who was distantly related to Lord Robert Clive.

In 1877, as a legally entitled but distantly related male inheritor, he successfully petitioned to inherit his great-grandfather's Wolley estate with land covering about two hundred acres.

After inheriting the Wolley estate, Phillips-Wolley resigned from the British consular service and joined the fourth battalion of the South Wales Borderers, taught marksmanship, and attained the rank of captain.

In 1912, the family moved to "The Grange", a mansion located near Duncan, British Columbia and designed according to their requirements by the architect Samuel Maclure.

His only son, Lieutenant-Commander Clive Phillipps-Wolley, died,[4] along with 47 other crew members, on 22 September 1914 in the sinking of HMS Hogue by the German U-boat U-9.