Robert Phillimore

Sir Robert Joseph Phillimore, 1st Baronet PC (5 November 1810 – 4 February 1885), was an English judge and politician.

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.

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.

His eldest son, Walter, also distinguished as an authority on ecclesiastical and admiralty law, became a judge of the high court in 1897 and was elevated to the peerage as Baron Phillimore in 1918.