Philips was with Captain John Hawkyns in his voyage of 1568, and was one of those who, to the number of 114, were put on shore near Panuco, after the disaster at San Juan de Lua.
After several months in Mexico as a domestic servant, Philips was appointed overseer at a silver mine, where in the course of three or four years he accumulated some four thousand pieces of eight.
Philips was condemned to serve five years in a monastery, wearing ‘a fool's coat or San Benito’ of yellow cotton with red crosses on it.
After searching along the coast to Panama, and learning that Drake had certainly departed, they returned to Mexico, and, a month later, Philips succeeded in escaping to Vera Cruz, where he hoped to get on board a ship.
At San Lucar he was denounced as an Englishman, but he got away to Seville, afterwards entered again as a soldier on board a galley bound to Majorca, and there found an English ship which carried him to England.
Such is the outline of the story told by Philips himself to Hakluyt; but beyond the facts that he was put on shore by Hawkyns, that the inquisition was established in Mexico in 1574, and that he returned to England, it is uncorroborated.