Mandell Creighton

Mandell Creighton was born on 5 July 1843 in the border country city of Carlisle, Cumberland (now in Cumbria); he was the eldest child of Sarah (née Mandell) and Robert Creighton.^[1][2] His mother was a daughter of Thomas Mandell, a yeoman farmer from Bolton, Cumberland.^[1] His father, a carpenter, built a successful cabinet-making business in Carlisle. Mandell's younger siblings were James (born 1844), Mary (born and died in 1845) and Mary Ellen (Polly, born 1849). In 1850, when Mandell was seven, Sarah Creighton died unexpectedly.^[1] Robert, who never remarried, and seldom spoke of his wife again, raised the children with help from his unmarried sister who came to live with the family and was a kind mother-substitute to the children.^[3]

A self-made man, Robert Creighton continually exhorted his sons to work, imbuing them with a sense of independence. This later allowed Mandell to make career choices that were unorthodox for his background.^[a] The family living quarters, above the shop, were spacious but spartan, with little decoration and few books. As Robert was short-tempered, family life could be fraught. There was a strong sense of duty in the household but affection was rarely expressed openly.^[1]

Creighton's education began in a nearby dame school run by a stern headmistress. His restlessness and mischief led to frequent punishment.^[7] In 1852 he moved to the Carlisle Cathedral School. Under the influence of an inspirational headmaster, the Rev William Bell, he began to read voraciously and excel academically. In November 1857 he took the King's Scholarship examination for admission to Durham School located seventy miles (112 km) away. As his Carlisle teachers had not prepared him for translation of Latin verse, he left a portion of the exam unanswered and felt sure he had failed. The examiners assessed his overall performance as good and decided to accept him, offering him a scholarship.^[2] In February 1858 the 15-year-old Creighton left Carlisle for Durham.^[8]

Durham School required its students to attend services in Durham Cathedral on Sundays and holy days. The medieval cathedral's high church ceremony made a lasting impression on Creighton. It became a focus of his religious life and would later influence his choice of career.^[9] Durham's headmaster, Henry Holden, a classical scholar and an educational reformer, was soon taking an interest in the new student. With Holden's encouragement, Creighton began to win prizes in classical subjects, and also English and French. Other pupils came seeking his help in translating passages from their classical studies; they gave him the nickname "Homer" on account of his quickness at construing.^[1] During his last year at Durham, he was promoted to head boy of the school, a position that appealed to his great desire to influence people, especially younger boys.^[10] Although he aimed to do so by setting an example with his own morality, corporal punishment was then the norm in schools, and he did not hesitate to use it. In a solemn letter written to his successor as head boy he wrote of the punishment for drunkenness, beastliness,^[b] bullying and stealing: "I strongly recommend giving a fellow a thrashing ... and remember, never thrash a fellow a little, always hard".^[12]

Creighton was severely short-sighted; he also had double vision, which forced him to read with one eye closed, until a London oculist prescribed glasses to correct the fault.^[13] As his poor sight prevented his participation in sports he took with enthusiasm to walking.^[13] His tours of the countryside, often undertaken with companions, could cover more than twenty miles (32 km) a day and last several days. Walking gave him many opportunities to exercise his abiding curiosity about the local botany and architecture.^[13] The habit was to remain with him for the rest of his life.^{[1] [2]}

In the spring of 1862 Creighton applied unsuccessfully for a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. He applied next to Merton College, Oxford for a classical postmastership.^[c] The application was successful and Creighton arrived in Oxford in October 1862.^[2] He continued to take a keen interest in Durham School, and once walked there from Oxford in three days to hear speeches at a school function.^[15]

Creighton's annual postmastership grant of £70 (equivalent to £8,251 in 2023) was enough to cover his tuition at Merton, but little more. For his other expenses he had to apply to his father, who treated him with modest generosity.^[16] Creighton lived economically in college attic rooms for most of his time at Merton. In his last year he moved out of college to share rooms in the High with George Saintsbury, the future author and critic of English and French literature, and wine connoisseur, with whom he developed a shared liking for absinthe.^[17][18]

Merton was a small college, which Creighton later described as "a very cosmopolitan place, made up of all sorts of men, with all sorts of tastes. There were rich men, poor men, reading men, idle men, all meeting on terms of mutual respect and with perfect frankness".^[19] Merton was much favoured by undergraduates from public school backgrounds who had more inclination to sports than to serious study.^[2] Creighton was not one such, and his poor eyesight prevented him from playing cricket and football, but he was able to join the college rowing team. Walking continued to be his principal physical recreation.^[1] He recalled, "I used to take a train and go somewhere, and walk through the villages, see the churches, study the architecture, and speculate on the conditions of life which must have been the outcome of these surroundings".^[13]

Creighton read voraciously and widely. Among his Merton friends he was dubbed "The Professor", or "P".^[2] The writers and poets of whose works he became fond included Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson and Swinburne.^[20] He was becoming politically aware, embracing a moderate liberalism.^[21] He joined the Oxford Union, and although he seldom spoke in debates there he was elected Union president in 1867.^[22] He especially honed his skills in informal conversations, conducted anywhere and everywhere, about topics great and small, rising above what Gladstone later dubbed "Oxford's agony"—the habit of overestimating the importance of Oxford's everyday disputes.^[23][24]

In his second year, Creighton and three other students became inseparable, both during academic terms and vacations, forming a group called "The Quadrilateral".^[25] The group friendship was intense, like many such in that time.^[26] Although Creighton had a large circle of male friends, he did not form any close friendships with women during this time. In his final term, he wrote to a friend, "ladies in general are very unsatisfactory mental food: they seem to have no particular thoughts or ideas".^[27] About Creighton's religious practice during this time, the historian James Kirby notes that he "attended daily communion, observed fasts, and took an interest in liturgy, becoming, as his biographer—his wife Louise—later said, 'a decided High Churchman'".^[28]

Academically, Creighton's goal was an honours degree in literae humaniores, the study of Greek and Roman classical literature, philosophy, and ancient history.^[29] In the final examinations, in the spring of his fourth year, he received first-class honours.^[21] He was drawn from classical to medieval history by a lecture by W. W. Shirley, the Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History; the works of William Morris, John Ruskin, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti further enhanced this interest.^[30] Unlike historians of a generation earlier, such as William Stubbs and E. A. Freeman, students could now gain a supplementary degree in law and history.^[30] After six months' study Creighton took the examinations in that school in Autumn 1866.^[21] He had not allowed himself enough time to read all the relevant literature and achieved only a second class degree.^[31] His first in literae humaniores took precedence and the classics professor Benjamin Jowett suggested that Creighton apply for a teaching fellowship at Balliol. In the event he did not need to: his own college, Merton, elected him as a probationary fellow in December 1866.^[2]

At Merton, Creighton became a tutor in Modern History, which Kirby describes as "a relatively new subject which few were then prepared to teach".^[30] During the second half of the 19th century, many academic reforms were instituted at Oxford, beginning with the Oxford University Act 1854. By the 1860s the reforms had trickled down the colleges. Among the changes were the new responsibilities given to college tutors, whose primary job had hitherto been to give personalised instruction in their rooms to undergraduates. They were now tasked with the preparation of students for the university's examinations, previously the responsibility of university-wide instructors such as professors.^[32] As the tutors were chosen from distinguished recent graduates, the new instructional staff were more youthful than the old.^[33]

At this time there was discontent among the Merton students at what was seen as a lack of leadership in the teaching faculty.^[34][35] Many fellows, both resident and non-resident, had become distant presences.^[35] Creighton was popular with undergraduates and was looked upon as someone who would exercise the necessary leadership. According to his biographer James Covert he did so by appealing both to the students' reasoning and to their good sense, and by simultaneously immersing himself among them.^[35] He was given more responsibilities, which brought promotions and salary increases. After four years of teaching, his salary had more than doubled.^[36] With the college's approval he joined forces with another Merton tutor, William Esson, to open collegiate lectures to students of other colleges.^[37][38] Soon, the Association of Tutors was born, as well as an Oxford-wide series of lectures that any student could attend.^[39][40] The lectures were to influence his choice of future research. He wrote later:

Religious beliefs were also undergoing an upheaval. Many Victorian intellectuals, who had been raised in Christian households, had, in adult life, begun to experience religious doubt and were moving in a secular direction.^[41] Creighton, in contrast, was gradually consolidating his religious beliefs.^[42] Although his high church views had moderated, he was to remain devoted to the doctrines of the real presence and apostolic succession throughout his life, although he had little sympathy for ritualism.^[30] He never had any crisis of confidence.^[33] He had no interest in the new natural sciences and was not moved to read Darwin, regarding his writings as too speculative.^[33] Creighton's friend Henry Scott Holland wrote of him, "At the close of the sixties it seemed to us at Oxford almost incredible that a young don of any intellectual reputation for modernity should be on the Christian side".^[43] After some speculation by friends about whether Creighton would commit to taking holy orders, he was ordained deacon by John Mackarness, the Bishop of Oxford in 1870. He preached his first sermon in April 1871.^[44]

Creighton spent many vacations in Europe. He fell in love with Italy, its scenery, its culture, and its people. This led to a fascination with Renaissance Italy, which became his scholarly interest.^[45] He was an admirer of Walter Pater and the aesthetic movement. His rooms in Oxford were decorated with William Morris wallpaper and blue and white pottery. The furnishings brought admiration from friends and requests to view them from acquaintances. Creighton was now leading a life that was far removed from that of his frugal student days.^[46] According to Kirby:

After his return from a holiday in mainland Europe in early 1871 Creighton attended a lecture by the art critic John Ruskin at the Sheldonian Theatre. After the lecture, he noticed his friend, the future author Humphry Ward, talking to an unfamiliar young woman who was wearing a yellow scarf. Yellow was Creighton's favourite colour; the scarf aroused his interest enough for him to ask Ward about the woman, whose name was Louise von Glehn.^[47] Von Glehn was the youngest daughter of a London merchant, Robert von Glehn, a naturalised British citizen who was originally from Reval in the Russian Governorate of Estonia.^[48][2] Soon Ward was inviting Creighton and von Glehn to a Valentine's Day lunch hosted in his rooms in Brasenose College.^[49] In a few weeks von Glehn found herself won over by Creighton's charm, and before she left Oxford at the end of the month, the two were unofficially engaged.^[50] Their further courtship involved visiting the National Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum, and examining the early Italian engravings in the print room of the British Museum. Creighton undertook to teach his fiancée Italian; she helped him improve his German.^[48] They had agreed to be married the following winter, but as Christmas approached, it was still not certain whether Merton would waive its requirement of celibacy for its teaching fellows. On Christmas Eve the college passed a special statute enabling four fellows, including Creighton, to hold office after marrying.^[21] Von Glehn and Creighton were married on 8 January 1872 in her home town of Sydenham, Kent. They spent a week honeymooning in Paris before returning to Oxford for Creighton's new teaching term.^[51]

Like many Victorian scholars, Creighton assumed that his wife would be an accessory in his academic pursuits and that he would be the senior partner in their intellectual relationship.^[52] During their courtship, he had written to her:

In the summer of 1873 the couple took their first trip together to Italy. It was during this trip that Creighton made firm his intention to study the Renaissance popes for his life's research.^[53] During these years there were additions to the family: a daughter was born to the couple in the autumn of 1872, and another in the summer of 1874. With a growing family and a clear research plan, Creighton began to doubt the long-term viability of his Merton tutorial fellowship. He wanted to give more time to writing history than his college duties allowed.^[2] He was ordained priest in 1873,^[54] and the following year an opportunity arose of a rural living in a remote parish in coastal Northumberland to which Merton held the right of appointment. Creighton later said:

Although varying advice was offered by Louise, by Creighton's married colleagues, by his unmarried colleagues, and even by his students, his mind was made up. When, in late 1874, the college formally offered him the position of vicar of the parish of Embleton, Creighton accepted and the family moved there in December.^[55]

The village of Embleton lies close to the North Sea in Northumberland approximately midway between Edinburgh and Newcastle upon Tyne. The vicarage—then owned by Merton College and consisting of a fortified pele tower built in the 14th century along with adjoining later additions—was a large establishment with many rooms for Creighton's growing family, their guests, and servants. The parish consisted of a handful of villages and approximately 1700 inhabitants, among whom were farmers, whinstone quarrymen, herring and haddock fishermen, women workers in fish curing yards, and railwaymen.^[56]

Although the Creightons missed Oxford society and its stimulations they gradually adapted to their new surroundings. With the help of a curate paid from his own funds, Creighton established a routine that enabled him to both carry out pastoral duty and write history.^[57] Each weekday morning, he spent four hours reading in the vicarage library. In the afternoons, Mandell, and whenever possible, Louise, visited the homes of their parishioners, listening to them, giving advice, offering prayers, conducting services for the housebound, and, on occasion, handing out home-made medical remedies. They found their parishioners to be reserved, proud, and independent, but could not help seeing them as lacking in morals.^[57]

Although Creighton was not a teetotaller—he made a clear distinction between the suppression of drunkenness and the suppression of drink—he founded a local chapter of the Church of England Temperance Society, thereby displeasing some locals.^[58][d] Louise organised meetings of the Mothers' Union as well as The Girls' Friendly Society, which aimed to empower girls, encouraging them, for example, to stay in school until the age of fourteen.^[60]

Creighton's own family was growing: four more children were born during the Embleton years, and all were home schooled, mostly by Louise.^[61] Creighton, who took great interest in the parish schools, served as examiner for other schools in the region, and began to formulate some ideas on the education of children. He was elected to local government bodies such as the Board of Guardians, which administered the poor laws in the region, and to the local sanitary authority.^[62] In 1879 he accepted his first administrative position in the Church of England: he was appointed rural dean of the Alnwick area of the diocese, responsible—in addition to his parochial duties at Embleton—for supervising the clergy in neighbouring parishes.^[21] Later, he was appointed examining chaplain for the Bishop of Newcastle, Ernest Roland Wilberforce, and tasked with examining candidates for holy orders.^[21]

During their ten years in Embleton the Creightons—he in his 30s and she, for the most part, in her 20s—between them, wrote fifteen books.^[63] They both wrote history books for young people, Louise wrote an unsuccessful novel, and Mandell wrote the first two volumes of his magnum opus, The History of the Papacy in the Period of Reformation.^[64] The Papacy volumes, published in 1882, cover the period leading up the Reformation, and end twenty years before the birth of Luther. They were well received and were commended for their even-handed approach.^[65][66] Lord Acton, who reviewed them in The Academy and who was aware that they were written over a few years in a northern vicarage far from the centres of scholarship, wrote:

Creighton also wrote dozens of book-reviews and scholarly articles.^[68] Among them were his first forays into the role of the Church of England in the life of the nation. Throughout the 19th century, the Church had suffered erosion of membership. In the mid-century, many scholars such as the educator Thomas Arnold had asserted the identity of the Church and the nation; as the century entered its last two decades, Creighton was among a small minority continuing to do the same.^[69]

In 1884 Creighton was invited to apply for the newly created professorship of ecclesiastical history, the Dixie chair, at the University of Cambridge and a concurrent fellowship at Emmanuel College.^[21] His application was successful,^[70] and on 9 November 1884 Creighton preached his last sermon at Embleton church. Later, he said, "At Embleton I spent ten years, and I have no hesitation in saying that they were the ten happiest years of my life. There I got to know people, and to know English people: two things ... which one does not learn at a University".^[19] His parishioners found it difficult to express their feelings openly; one woman said, "Well, if you ain't done no good, you've done no harm", which coming from a Northumbrian he took as high praise.^[71]

The Creightons arrived in Cambridge in late November 1884 and were deluged with invitations to social engagements. Interaction with academic society after ten years led to new friendships, especially for Louise. One such new acquaintance, Beatrice Webb, who became Louise's firm lifelong friend,^[73] wrote of her, "She has, I think, a warmer heart and a larger mind than her husband's".^[74] Creighton had already corresponded with the historian Lord Acton and now met him in person, as he did other Cambridge notables, such as Robertson Smith, the Hebrew and Arabic scholar, and Alfred Marshall, the economist.^[75]

From his arrival in Cambridge, colleagues turned to Creighton for his advice. He contributed to changes in the historical tripos, moving it away from exclusively political history and widening its scope.^[2] Crowder writes, "As a historian he was concerned with what the past had to tell about the character of the actors and their times rather than with the accumulation of information".^[2]

Creighton lectured twice a week at the university, preparing extensively, but lecturing without notes.^[76] He also preached in the Emmanuel College chapel. A colleague said of his preaching style, "He did not care for eloquence, indeed he despised it; what he aimed at was instruction, and for this he always looked more to principles than facts".^[77] He lectured more informally to undergraduates at Emmanuel College once a week. He supported Cambridge's two new women's colleges, Newnham and Girton, and taught informal weekly classes at Newnham. Two students from those classes, Mary Bateson and Alice Gardner, later became professional historians; both were mentored by Creighton.^[78][79]

Creighton was given to undertaking any work he was asked to do. In 1885 he accepted two appointments that added substantially to his workload. A long-planned journal of history, The English Historical Review was launched with Creighton as its editor, and he became a residentiary canon of Worcester Cathedral. Crowder writes that Creighton had no illusions about the work editing the journal would entail: "he accepted out of duty, before any editorial policy had been framed, quite apart from his goal of promoting interest in the discipline and improving research".^[2]

The canonry at Worcester required the holder to be in residence there for a total of three months every year. Creighton fitted this into his academic schedule: he and his household lived in the close there during university vacations. During the weeks of his residence he preached in the cathedral every Sunday evening to large congregations.^[21] He contributed to the cathedral's intellectual and liturgical life, giving lectures and bringing visiting scholars to lecture to the clergy of diocese.^[2]

Creighton's experiences at Worcester led him to consider how a relationship of competition between a cathedral and the parish churches of the diocese could be turned into one of cooperation, a subject on which he would write scholarly articles.^[80] He did not overlook the grim side of city life. He joined the Worcester Diocesan Penitentiary Association and was moved by the plight of prison inmates.^[80] In a sermon at the Sanitary Congress of Worcester in 1889 he spoke about the effect of harsh physical life on the moral life:

Emmanuel College was the alma mater of the Rev John Harvard, after whom Harvard College in the United States is named. That college marked its 250th anniversary in November 1886 and Creighton, accompanied by Louise, attended the celebrations, representing Emmanuel. During the extended visit, they met prominent American men of letters, including the historian of the American West, Francis Parkman; the future supreme court justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.; and the poet and critic James Russell Lowell.^[82] Creighton received an honorary Harvard doctorate.^[54]

In February 1887 volumes III and IV of Creighton's History of the Papacy were published by Longmans. These volumes narrowed the focus to specific popes, chiefly, Sixtus IV, Alexander VI and Julius II, and covered a period of a little over half a century, bringing the narrative to 1518 and the effective start of the Reformation.^[83] In his approach of maintaining historiographical balance and considering individuals as products of their historical eras, Creighton did not single out anyone for special condemnation, even the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, whose "exceptional infamy", Creighton felt, was "largely due to the fact that he did not add hypocrisy to his other vices".^[84]

Creighton invited Acton to review the two volumes for the English Historical Review. Acton had by this time developed what the historian J. P. Kenyon has called "his hatred of the papacy, [which] inflamed by his historical studies, knew no bounds".^[85] Acton's review was largely hostile, implying that Creighton's methods were not those of a "scrupulous and self-respecting writer", and commenting adversely about "the economy of evidence, and the severity with which the raw material is repressed".^[86] In the following weeks there were contentious exchanges between the two men, polarising eventually into their two views of history, Acton's normative approach versus Creighton's more relativist one.^[e] Acton's strictures led Creighton to reconsider his own position and become slightly more judgmental. In an 1895 paper he would write that the papacy, "which had been established for the promotion of morality" had in fact "provided the means for the utmost immorality".^[89]

In December 1890 Creighton received a letter from Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, asking whether he would be willing to exchange the Canonry of Worcester for the Canonry of Windsor, which had become vacant.^[90] After some hesitation, Creighton accepted, but before he could take up the new appointment it was forestalled by another letter from Salisbury, in February. This offered appointment as Bishop of Peterborough, an office that had become available upon the translation of its incumbent William Connor Magee to York.^[91] Creighton was chosen partly because his love for ritual had created an impression among others that he had a high church outlook. The Peterborough diocese had many high churchmen, and it was felt that Creighton would be a good fit.^[92] In fact, Creighton was doctrinally quite broad church; his moderate views would later make him popular with Queen Victoria.^[92]

For Creighton, the Peterborough appointment, which he felt duty-bound to accept, meant the effective end of his academic life. The Creightons, particularly Louise, were evidently depressed at the prospect of leaving Cambridge.^[93] In a letter to an old college friend, Creighton wrote, "No man could have less desire than I for the office of bishop. Nothing save the cowardliness of shirking from responsibility and the dread of selfishness led me to submit".^[92]

A few weeks before Creighton's consecration as bishop at Westminster Abbey in late April 1891, he fell ill with muscular rheumatism.^[94] Soon after his enthronement at Peterborough Cathedral in mid-May 1891 he was taken ill again, this time with influenza. Each time, the recovery was prolonged.^[95] The Peterborough diocese, then comprising 676 parishes and including Leicester and Northampton, offered a vast ecclesiastical challenge. Creighton met it in the manner he had employed in Embleton: he proceeded to visit every corner. Travelling by train to distant parishes, staying overnight with the parish priests, and conducting services in their churches, Creighton spent very little time at home with his family during the first year.^[96] His immersion among the clergy, treatment of them as equals, and dispatch in attending to their concerns, gradually increased his popularity. The experience also helped him to work out his doctrinal stance. Although he was personally liberal, he came firmly to believe that to be English was to be Anglican, and led him to regard dissenters as having lost their way, and Roman Catholics as disloyal.^[97]

Creighton also became determined to better understand the working-classes of his diocese.^[97] The Leicester boot-and-shoe trade strike of 1895, which began in March as a lock-out of 120,000 workers by employers, gave him just such an opportunity. Creighton wrote an open letter to his clergy, impressed them with the gravity of the situation, and urged them to work impartially to facilitate communication between the opposing sides. According to Covert, "Creighton's tactic was to serve as conduit for all bargaining parties, sharing information and feelings derived from his local clergy, who, being on the spot, possessed insights and sympathies that needed to be known and expressed".^[98] By late April, a compromise was reached for which Creighton reaped much praise as well as a growing reputation as a statesman.^[98]

A year earlier, in 1894, the fifth and last volume of Creighton's History of Papacy in the Period of Reformation was published by Longman. The book was subtitled The German Revolt, 1517–1527 and covered the history up to the Sack of Rome in 1527. Creighton had found little time to devote to its writing, and critics generally expressed disappointment in the outcome. Although he had originally planned to continue the history up to the final session of the Council of Trent in 1563, Creighton did not now feel up to the task. As the volumes did not cover the period claimed in their title, the publisher, in 1897, brought out a second edition titled, A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, 1378–1527 reflecting the reduced scope. Creighton, nonetheless, remained a popular lecturer. During his Peterborough years, he gave many lectures, most published later in book form, their titles reflecting his diverse intellectual interests. Among his addresses were the Hulsean Lectures at Cambridge in the winter of 1893–94 on "Persecution and Tolerance", the 1895 Rede Lecture at Cambridge on "The Early Renaissance in England", the 1896 Romanes Lecture at Oxford on "The English National Character", and his 1896 address at Westminster Abbey on "Saint Edward the Confessor".^[99]

In June 1896 Creighton represented the Church of England at the coronation of Czar Nicholas II in Moscow, deputising for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, who was ill, as was Randall Davidson, the Bishop of Winchester, who as Prelate of the Order of the Garter would have been the official stand-in.^[f] A lover of pageantry, Creighton wore a bishop's cope and mitre of white and gold, rather than the plainer episcopal attire more familiar in England at the time.^[101] On his return he wrote a twenty-page account of the coronation for the Cornhill Magazine,^[100] which gained the attention of Queen Victoria, who sent Creighton a letter requesting several copies for the royal family.^[102]

In October 1896 Archbishop Benson died.^[103] Three possible successors were considered: Frederick Temple (Bishop of London), Davidson and Creighton. Queen Victoria wanted Davidson to be offered the archbishopric; the Archbishop of York (William Maclagan) and the Prince of Wales favoured Creighton, but the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, with whom the decision effectively rested, preferred to move Temple to Canterbury and replace him in London with Creighton.^[104] The Times commented, "Considerable doubt has been felt as to the fitness of the appointment to the Archbishopric of Canterbury of a man as advanced in life as Dr Temple",^[g] but expressed great confidence in Creighton.^[106] He was not then, any more than he had ever been, eager for ecclesiastical advancement, which he felt had been thrust upon him and disrupted his academic career. Nonetheless he considered it his duty to undertake what was asked of him, though hoping for a return to scholarly endeavours at the end.^[107]

Creighton was enthroned as Bishop of London on 30 January 1897.^[2] At first his subordinate clergy were unsure about him. According to one commentator:

The same (anonymous) commentator said that Creighton's liking for vestments should not lead people to suppose he was sympathetic to ritualism or would tolerate any practices not authorised by the Book of Common Prayer.^[59]

One of Creighton's first efforts after becoming Bishop of London was to support the passage of the Voluntary School Bill of 1897. Almost thirty years earlier, the Elementary Education Act 1870 had established non-denominational elementary schools, also called board schools, which were funded by local taxes. Religious schools, also called "voluntary schools" had not received this support. The bill asked for extension of taxpayer support to the voluntary schools. In March 1897 Creighton addressed the House of Lords in support of the bill,^[109] which was eventually passed by both Houses of Parliament. Creighton felt strongly that all religious instruction be denominational.^[110] In a letter to the London district school boards, he wrote, "We only ask that the wishes of the parents be consulted about [religious] education of their children, and that every child in England should receive instruction in the religious beliefs of the denomination to which his parents belong".^[110] Creighton also succeeded Frederic Leighton as President of the Committee commissioning the Survey of London which documented the capital's principal buildings and public art.^[111]

By 1898 Creighton was increasingly occupied with a debate over ritual practice in the Diocese of London, and, more generally, in the Church of England. On his arrival in London, he had discovered that low church clergy in his diocese were taking exception to the ritual practices of some high churchmen, practices thought by some to show Roman Catholic influence. The controversy had begun in the wake of the Oxford Movement, which had created an Anglo-Catholic revival within the Church. An evangelical agitator, John Kensit, had protested that Creighton himself had on occasion worn a cope and mitre. Kensit called for Creighton to take a firmer public stance against high church rituals, such as the use of candles and incense.^[112] Although Creighton seemed to subscribe to a broad branch theory, that the real Catholic Church was a collection of national churches which included the Church of England, the Church of Rome, and the Eastern Orthodox Church, he was firm about asserting Anglican doctrine—that liturgical practice, beyond that involving what he termed "permissible liberty", must conform to that in the Book of Common Prayer.^[113] In a circular letter to his clergy, he wrote:

This was not enough to satisfy Kensit and his more vocal evangelical supporters, who threatened to create more public disruption. Eventually the archbishops of Canterbury and York held a hearing in Lambeth Palace, and in August 1899 ruled against the use of candles and incense, a seeming victory for the low church forces. The wider doctrinal conflict, though, was to continue beyond both the Victorian and Edwardian eras.^[115][h]

Throughout this time, Creighton conducted the endless business that came with his large diocese. In one year, he was recorded to have given 294 formal sermons and addresses. He made trips to Windsor Castle and Sandringham to conduct services for Queen Victoria. In 1897 he organised a special service of thanksgiving outside St Paul's in commemoration of her Diamond Jubilee.^[117] His prominent office, moreover, brought other responsibilities. He was appointed to the Privy Council; he became a trustee of the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and many other organisations.^[118]

Creighton's health became a cause for concern to his family and friends. Starting in 1898, he had begun to experience bouts of stomach pain. By 1899 these had increased in severity, and by the summer of 1900 his doctors were suspecting a stomach tumour. He was operated on twice in December of that year, but the surgeries were unsuccessful. In early January he experienced two severe stomach haemorrhages and his condition rapidly declined. He died on 14 January 1901, aged 57.^[119]

On 17 January 1901, after a funeral in St Paul's Cathedral attended by archbishops, bishops and other clergy, politicians, academics, representatives of other churches and faiths, and numerous members of the general public,^[120][121] Archbishop Temple presided over the interment of Creighton's body in the crypt.^[122] It was the first time that a Bishop of London had been buried in Wren's St Paul's, which replaced Old St Paul's after the Great Fire of London in 1666.^[120][121]

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".^[123] Later, at Cambridge, some colleagues were perplexed by his personality. When teaching or transacting academic business, he displayed a shrewd, canny intelligence. But at social gatherings, much to the delight of the students present, he was continually outrageous and flippant.^[124] His relationship with Louise is 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 and her husband locked in passionate embrace.^[125] The Creightons had seven children,^[21] and he could be stern with them, on one occasion tying a daughter to a table leg to aid her in recognising her folly.^[126] Yet 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 highlights of their childhood.^[127]

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 hockey.^[128] Many clergy visiting him at his London residence, Fulham Palace, found themselves unable to refuse Creighton's enthusiastic invitations to join in.^[110]

Although sparing with alcohol, Creighton was a lifelong chain smoker. An interviewer recalled seeing him rolling and smoking "cigarettes innumerable".^[59] When the author Samuel Butler received an invitation to visit the Creightons in Peterborough in 1894, he was dubious about accepting until his secretary noticed in the letter a flake of tobacco inadvertently left by Creighton.^[129]

Creighton loved pageantry, creating speculation that he had high church views.^[59] However, when a high church priest protested that incense was needed for curing souls, Creighton responded, "And you think that souls like herring cannot be cured without smoke?"^[130] His moderate views—equally opposed to radical evangelicals and conservative Anglo-Catholics—endeared him to Queen Victoria.^[131] His work ethic, on the other hand, was far from 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 it.^[107] His old friend Scott Holland, by then a canon of St Paul's, welcoming Creighton to the diocese of London in 1897, remarked, "I hope you will use up everybody except yourself. We want our Bishop to have his head above water—not to be loaded down by the tremendous grind".^[132]

Obituaries in contemporary newspapers and scholarly journals hailed Creighton as one of England's great historians and a prelate of remarkable integrity.^[133] The Quarterly Review remarked, "It is certainly rare to find so much intellectual force and so high a standard of conduct combined in one man".^[134]

Today, Creighton is better known as a historian than as a cleric.^[136] His work is seen as part of an era in British historiography. Many of the milestones of Creighton's academic life, such as founding of the English Historical Review in 1885, with himself as the first editor, are those of the era as well.^[137] According to the historian Philippa Levine:

Creighton is considered to be one of the first British historians with a distinctly European outlook. Of his magnum opus, History of the Papacy in the Period of the Reformation, R. J. W. Evans writes, "[It] constitutes one of the first great attempts to introduce the British to explicitly modern and European history".^[138]

Creighton and his peers left a heterogeneous legacy. On the one hand, Creighton was a painstakingly balanced scholar; even his critic Lord Acton described Creighton's strength as "sovereign impartiality".^[139] Creighton saw himself as someone interested in actions, in contrast to Acton, whom he considered to be interested in ideas. Although Creighton did not personally consider the popes to be guiltless (for example, amidst writing the third papacy volume, he wrote, in a letter to a friend, that working on the Borgias was like "spending one's day in a low police court"), Creighton was emphatic that public men be judged for their public and not private actions. In a lecture on "Historical Ethics" he gave in the wake of his dispute with Acton, he said, "I like to stand upon clear grounds which can be proved and estimated. I do not like to wrap myself in the garb of outraged dignity because men in the past did things contrary to the principles which I think soundest in the present".^[140]

On the other hand, Creighton's historical outlook, as well as that of his historian peers, bore the cultural and social stamp of their position.^[141] According to the historians Robert Harrison, Aled Jones and Peter Lambert, "Their emphasis on the Englishness of Britain's key institutions, for instance, effectively excluded non-English ethnic groups from the 'chief part', as Creighton had put it, of history's subject".^[141]

In the words of the historian John Wolffe:

The emphasis on concreteness and reality would remain a feature of Creighton's episcopates. He saw the Church of England not as an abstract entity existing independently in space and time, but as rooted in England, its people, and their history. In Robbins's words, "It was an unashamed acknowledgment on his part that the form, structure, ethos and doctrine of that church had been fashioned in the circumstances of English history".^[143] Similarly, Creighton saw the living church as an embodiment of the contemporary yearnings of the English people. "(The) general trend of the Church", he wrote, "must be regulated by (the English people's) wishes. The Church cannot go too far from them".^[144] Consequently Creighton could imbue the church with Victorian self-assessments and aspirations: "The function of the Church of England was to be a church of free men. The Church of Rome was the church of decadent peoples: it lives only in the past, and has no future ... The Church of England has before it the conquest of the world".^[144]

As a corollary of this outlook, Creighton was explicitly against the separation of church and state. In his way of thinking, church and state were two aspects of the nation as seen from two vantage points. Any attempt at legislating a separation would, in addition, have caused social disruptions in late-Victorian Britain: many higher clergy had ties of education and friendship with prominent public men.^[145]

In Wolffe's summary:

During his lifetime Creighton received honorary doctorates from many institutions, among them the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Glasgow and Trinity College, Dublin. A few years after his death, the Creighton lecture was established at King's College, London. The lecture series celebrated its centenary in 2007.^[136]

Creighton was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1897.^[146] He was a corresponding member of the Massachusetts Historical Society and of the American Church History Society, and a fellow of the Societa Romana di Storia Patria.^[54]

There is a memorial to Creighton in Peterborough Cathedral just north of the sanctuary in the form of a substantial mosaic depicting his effigy, details of his life and the mottos "I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ" and "He tried to write true history". The memorial to Creighton in St Paul's bears the same two inscriptions.^[2]

In his Who's Who article Creighton chose to list fifteen of his books (marked † below).^[54] Those, and others of his books, are:^[21][54]

After his death many of Creighton's lectures, speeches and sermons were collected and published in book form:^[21][54]

• Historical Essays and Reviews, 1902
• Thoughts on Education: Speeches and Sermons, 1902
• Historical Lectures and Addresses, 1903
• University and Other Sermons, 1903
• Persecution and Tolerance: The Hulsean Lectures Preached Before the University of Cambridge in 1893–94

In addition, Creighton contributed reviews and articles to many publications, including nine biographical studies in the early volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography beginning with Saint Aidan and Pope Adrian IV and ending with Lady Mary Keyes.^[21] Two of his articles remain, with later revisions, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2024)—on Charles Baring and John Hodgson.^[147][148]

• "Archival material relating to Mandell Creighton". UK National Archives.  
• "Archival material relating to Louise Creighton (collected family letters)". UK National Archives.
• Works by Mandell Creighton at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)