Robert Needham Philips DL (1815 – 28 February 1890)[1] was an English merchant and manufacturer in the Lancashire textiles business,[2] a Liberal Party politician, and the grandfather of the Whig historian G. M. Trevelyan.
He lived in Manchester and in Warwickshire,[2] and after holding at least three ceremonial appointments he was the Member of Parliament (MP) for the borough of Bury, a mill town which was then in Lancashire, for a total of 22 years between 1857 and 1885.[1]