page_title: Mandell Creighton
section_title: Character
hierarchical_section_title: Mandell Creighton / Character
caption_attribution_description: English: Wood sculpture by Andrew Frost (b. 1973)[1] in Fulham Palace gardens, which is open to the public,[2] showing en:Mandell Creighton climbing up the Bishops' Tree
context_page_description: Mandell Creighton was a British historian and a bishop of the Church of England. A scholar of the Renaissance papacy, Creighton was the first occupant of the Dixie Chair of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Cambridge, a professorship established around the time that history was emerging as an independent academic discipline. He was also the first editor of the English Historical Review, the oldest English language academic journal in the field of history. Creighton had a second career as a cleric in the Church of England. He served as a parish priest in Embleton, Northumberland and later, successively, as a Canon Residentiary of Worcester Cathedral, the Bishop of Peterborough and the Bishop of London. His moderation and worldliness drew praise from Queen Victoria and won notice from politicians. It was widely thought at the time that Creighton would have become the Archbishop of Canterbury had his early death, at age 57, not supervened.
  Creighton's historical work received mixed reviews. He was praised for scrupulous even-handedness, but criticised for not taking a stand against historical excesses.
context_section_description: Creighton was a man of complex, sometimes baffling,  intelligence. The philosopher Edward Caird, a fellow at Merton during Creighton's student days there, said of him, "Creighton possesses common sense in a degree which amounts to genius." Later, at Cambridge, some colleagues were perplexed by his personality.  When teaching or transacting academic business, he displayed a shrewd, canny intelligence. However, at social gatherings, much to the delight of the students present, he was continually outrageous and flippant. His relationship with Louise was not easily characterised. In the months after the Peterborough appointment, husband and wife would frequently quarrel, sometimes bitterly, as a niece would later recall. But the couple could also be surprisingly demonstrative for their times: during this same period, a nephew caught sight of Louise locked in passionate embrace with the bishop in the latter's study. Creighton could be stern with his seven children, on one occasion tying a daughter to a table's leg with a rope to aid her in recognising her folly. However, he could also romp around the house with them, engage in horseplay, and make up nonsensical stories—all of which, many years later, they would consider the highlights of their childhood. He was the father of seven: Beatrice in 1872, Lucia in 1874, Cuthbert in 1876, Walter in 1878, Mary in 1880, Oswin in 1883 and, finally, Gemma, born in 1887.
  Throughout his life, Creighton went on long walks (his "rambles," as he liked to call them). When the children grew older, the family's outdoor pastime of choice became field hockey. Many visiting clergy at Fulham Palace found themselves unable to refuse Creighton's enthusiastic invitations to join in. The Creightons were inveterate travellers, spending many vacations in Italy. During their six years in Peterborough, for instance, they made nine foreign trips. Creighton was also a lifelong chain smoker. When author Samuel Butler, no sympathiser of churchmen, received a letter in 1893 inviting him to visit the Creighton family in Peterborough, he was immediately put at ease when he discovered some tobacco thoughtlessly left in the envelope by the Bishop of Peterborough.
  Controversy seemed to trail him during his prelacies. He loved pageantry, creating speculation that he had high church views.   However, when a high church priest protested that incense was needed for curing souls, Creighton burst out, "And you think that souls like herring cannot be cured without smoke?" His moderate views—equally opposed to radical evangelicals and conservative Anglo-Catholics—endeared him to Queen Victoria. Creighton's work ethic, though, was anything but moderate. He seldom refused offers of additional responsibility, confessing more than once to both an abiding fatalism about being saddled with more responsibility and guilt about shirking from it. Perhaps recognising this, a canon of St Paul's, while welcoming Creighton to the diocese of London in 1897, ominously remarked, "It is a frightful burden to lay on you: I hope you will use up everybody except yourself."
caption: Wood sculpture by Andrew Frost in Fulham Palace gardens showing Creighton climbing up the "Bishops' Tree"
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