Education
Robert Pugh was educated at the College of Saint Omer, under the name of Phillips. After its defeat he studied and became doctor of civil and canon law, probably at the University of Paris.
Robert Pugh was educated at the College of Saint Omer, under the name of Phillips. After its defeat he studied and became doctor of civil and canon law, probably at the University of Paris.
He was one of the several sons of Philip Pugh of Penrhyn, in the parish of Eglwys-Ross, Carnarvonshire. A younger brother, John, born 1620, who also used the alias of Phillips, was ordained priest at the English College at Rome, but died in 1645 before he left the college. Anthony à Wood says that he was dismissed the Society for accompanying the royalist army of the First English Civil War without the consent of his superiors.
In 1655 the pope made him protonotarius apostolicus and he became one of Queen Henrietta Maria"s chaplains.
He also wrote against the authority claimed by the Old Chapter. He had a better Latin style than Thomas White alias Blacklow, but had less ecclesiastical learning.
After the Restoration of 1660 he resided with the William Herbert, 1st Marquess of Powis, sometimes in London, and more frequently at Redcastle, in Wales. During the persecution of Catholics at the time of the Popish Plot, whilst paying a visit to some of the Catholic gentry confined in Newgate Prison, he was betrayed, and himself detained a prisoner.
He died of disease in Newgate on January 22, 1679, aged 69.
He was interred in the burial-ground attached to Christ Church, near Newgate. Henry Foley rather confuses him with the Scottish Oratorian, French Robert Phillip.