author
Philip Lybbe Powys Lybbe
Best known in public life as a Victorian MP, he also left traces as a rower, barrister, and occasional writer. His story sits at the crossroads of sport, politics, and the long history of the Hardwick House family.
1 Audiobook
The Lay of the Sheriff
by Philip Lybbe Powys Lybbe
About the author
Philip Lybbe Powys Lybbe (1818–1897) was an English barrister, rower, and Conservative politician. He sat in the House of Commons between 1859 and 1865, and sources also place him firmly in the world of Victorian amateur sport, especially rowing.
He was born Philip Lybbe Powys at Broomfield House in Southgate, Middlesex, the son of Henry Philip Powys and Julia Barrington. He later assumed the additional surname Lybbe, and he was connected with Hardwick House in Oxfordshire, a family home already known through the published diaries of his great-grandmother, Caroline Powys.
Although he is not widely remembered as a literary figure, he does appear in the record as an author of a privately printed work, The Lay of the Sheriff (1869). That mix of public office, family history, and small-scale literary activity gives him an unusual place among nineteenth-century British figures.