On 4 November 1839, he was in charge of the town when John Frost, at the head of 7,000 Chartists, entered it with the intention of releasing Henry Vincent from gaol.

[10] The journey, via Venice, Greece, and Egypt, saw Dadd suffer a breakdown, and he returned to England, leaving Phillips in Paris, in May 1843.

Suffering from mental illness, Dadd subsequently stabbed his father to death and was confined to Bethlem Hospital as insane.

He was an active member of the governing bodies of King's College London, and the Church Institution, and president of the council of the Society of Arts.

[1][4] After addressing a committee of the House of Commons in 1867, Phillips was struck with paralysis and died five days later, on 26 May, at his London home, 77 Gloucester Place, Portman Square.

This work defended the Welsh people and language against the 1847 "Blue Books" – the Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the state of education in Wales.

Fluent in Welsh, Phillips exposed the lies of the "Blue Books", defended the Welsh people and their language, and proposed way to improve education in Wales;[11] a biographer described his work: "for lucidity of treatment, for fulness of information, for calm, judicial statement, for tender yet discriminating sympathy with his poor and neglected countrymen, no less than for the suggestion of remedies applicable to their case, very few publications of the kind can be compared to this one.