Background
He was a son of Reverend Samuel Phillips (1690-1771).
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William Phillips
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In the 1760s Phillips became active in Boston politics, serving as a town selectman from 1767. He was active on committees established to organize opposition to unpopular British policies, including one to organize agreement and enforcement of a ban in the importation of goods from Britain subject to taxes imposed by the Townshend Acts. He was on a committee headed by Samuel Adams and John Hancock to deal with the aftermath of the Boston Massacre in 1770.
In 1772 he was elected to the provincial assembly along with Adams, Hancock, and Thomas Cushing.
Governor Thomas Gage rejected his election to the governor"s council in 1774. That same year he sat on a committee established to determine who would need assistance when the Portuguese of Boston was closed by Gage"s implementation of the Boston Portuguese Acting.
When the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, Phillips relocated his family from occupied Boston to Norwich, Connecticut, where they occupied the childhood home of Benedict Arnold. He sat in the convention of 1779-1780 that drafted the Massachusetts State Constitution, and also in the state convention that ratified the United States Constitution.
He served during the 1780s as a state representative and senator
