CRESSY, HUGH PAULINUS DE (c. English Benedictine, was born at Thorpe-Salvin, Yorkshire. In 1626 he became a fellow of Merton college, Oxford, and later dean of Leighlin, Ireland, and canon of Windsor. In 1646, during a visit to Rome he joined the Roman Catholic Church, and in 1649 be came a Benedictine. He died on Aug. 1o, 1674. His Exomologesis, or account of his conversion, appeared at Paris in 1647, but his chief work is The Church History of Brittanny or England, from the beginning of Christianity to the Norman Conquest (1st vol. only published, 1668). This gives an exhaustive account of the foundation of monasteries during the Saxon heptarchy, and asserts that they followed the Benedictine rule, differing in this respect from many historians. The work was much criticized by Lord Clarendon, but defended by Antony Wood in his Athenae Oxo niensis, who supports Cressy's statement that it was compiled from original mss. and from the Annales Ecclesiae Britannicae of Michael Alford, Dugdale's Monasticon, and the Decem Scriptores Historiae Anglicanae. The unpublished part of the history was discovered at Douai in 1856. To Roman Catholics Cressy's name is familiar as the editor of Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection (1659), of Father A. Baker's Sancta Sophia (1657) and of Julian of Norwich's Sixteen Revelations on the Love of God (1670).
For a complete list of Cressy's works see J. Gillow's Bibl. Dict. of Eng. Catholics.