page_title: Philip Yorke (antiquary)
section_title: Marriages and career
hierarchical_section_title: Philip Yorke (antiquary) / Marriages and career
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Elizabeth Cust, wife of Philip Yorke (1743–1804), Welsh politician and antiquarian.
context_page_description: Philip Yorke was a Welsh politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1775 and 1792 and an antiquary who developed an interest in Welsh history and genealogy relatively late in life. He was the author of The Royal Tribes of Wales.
context_section_description: Yorke married his first wife, Elizabeth Cust, daughter of Sir John Cust on 2 July 1770 and had two daughters and five sons. At the 1774 British general election, Yorke and his brother-in-law Francis Cockayne-Cust stood as candidates at Helston and were returned on petition on 15 March 1775. Elizabeth died in February 1779. At the general election of 1780 he was again returned at Helston, after a petition, but vacated his seat at the end of the first session of Parliament in June 1781.  In 1782, Philip married his second wife DIan Meyrick, widow of Ridgeway Owen Meyrick of Bodorgan, Anglesey (died 1805), who was a daughter of Piers Wynne of Dyffryn Aled, Llansannan. They had two daughters and four sons.
  Hardwicke offered Yorke a Parliamentary seat at Reigate at the 1784, but he declined because he did not want to live regularly in London. He was a country gentleman, honest and independent, but less interested in politics than in agricultural and antiquarian pursuits. He was High Sheriff of Denbighshire in 1786–1787. On 17 January 1792 he was returned as MP for Grantham by his brother-in-law, on the united Brownlow and Rutland interest, as a seat-warmer until his son Simon Yorke came of age. The Gentleman's Magazine (1804, p. 280) wrote, "His constitutional diffidence would not allow him to speak in the House of Commons."
  His second marriage gave him a growing interest in Welsh history and genealogy. He began to study closely the ancestors of his wife, a descendant of Marchudd ap Cynan, lord of Uwch Dulas and said that he had come to "think the race of Cadwallon more glorious than the breed of Gimcrack," as he wrote in his Tracts of Powys, his first book on Welsh history and genealogy, which was published in 1795. He is remembered above all for a considerably longer work, The Royal Tribes of Wales, published in 1799 (see below).
  After suffering with spasms on his chest, Yorke died on 19 February 1804, followed by his wife Diana in 1805. His public performances in high-level politics are said to have been rather restrained and according to C. J. Apperley, he was "one of the worst-dressed men in the country" and an incompetent horseman. He was nevertheless a noted conversationalist and storyteller and achieved a measure of fame for his performances as an amateur actor at the Wynnstay Theatre.
caption: Elizabeth Yorke, first wife of Philip Yorke
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