John Philippart (ca. 1784–1875), author, was born in London and received a military education as a young man. After working for a time in a solicitor’s office, he served as private secretary to John Baker Holroyd, 1st Baron Sheffield, 1809–11, and briefly thereafter as a War Office clerk. Philippart became a knight of the Swedish orders of Gustavus Vasa and the Polar Star in 1809 and 1813, respectively. He was elected a knight of the order of the hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in 1830 and was the organization’s chancellor, 1831–75. One of the founders in 1856 of a dispensary that later became the West London Hospital, Philippart helped oversee its growth and development during his final decades. Although the work proposed above never apparently made its way into print, he was prolific as an author. Philippart wrote or compiled numerous pamphlets and reference works on the British army, including The Royal Military Calendar (London, 1815, and later eds.), Memoirs of Field-Marshal His Royal Highness Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (London, 1819), and The East India Military Calendar (London, 1823–26). He died near London (ODNB description begins H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, 60 vols. description ends ; Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography [1892–1921], 2:1494; The Knightage of Great Britain and Ireland [1841], xiv, 193; Illustrated London News 67 [1875]: 119).

Philippart sent almost identical letters to Henry Clay and John Adams on 30 Nov. and 7 Dec. 1818, respectively (Clay, Papers description begins James F. Hopkins and others, eds., The Papers of Henry Clay, 1959–92, 11 vols. description ends , 2:605–6; MHi: Adams Papers).