© OCCPA

Philips, a servitor at Exeter College, had been drinking all day in town on 4 October 1725, returning to college for evening prayers. At 10.15 p.m., after the college doors had been locked, Philips decided with a companion to go out drinking again. They attempted to get over the college wall between Convocation and the (old) Ashmolean. Philips went first, but slipped and landed on the iron-spiked railings below; one spike went clean through his thigh. Philips was thrown out of Exeter and entered himself into St Edmund Hall – the practice of swapping college or hall was common at the time.

He was not the luckiest: he had lost his brother who had drowned in the Cherwell near Christ Church Meadow a couple of years before. This drove him to excess. He slept with all who came his way and committed several robberies, among other things. Despite maintaining a demure exterior, Philips was expelled from St Edmund Hall in August 1728, whereupon his father, a Welshman and governor of the Cardiff gaol, came to collect him and dragged him off to Cambridge, intent on having him entered at that university instead.