CREIGHTON, MANDELL (1843-1901), English historian and bishop of London, was born at Carlisle on July 5 1843. He was educated at Durham grammar school and at Merton College, Oxford. where in 1866 he became tutor and fellow. He was or dained priest in 1873 ; and during 1872 he had married Louise von Glehn, herself a writer of several text books of history. In 1875 he became vicar of Embleton, Northumberland, with an ancient and beautiful church and a fortified parsonage house, and within reach of the fine library in Bamburgh Keep. Here he planned and wrote the first two volumes of his chief historical work, the History of the Papacy; and in 1884 he was appointed to the newly-founded Dixie professorship of ecclesiastical history at Cambridge, where he went into residence early in 1885. At Cam bridge his influence at once made itself felt, especially in the reorganization of the historical school. In 1886 he combined with other leading historians to found the English Historical Review, of which he was editor for five years. Meanwhile the vacations were spent at Worcester, where he had been nominated a canon residentiary in 1885. In 1891 he was made canon of Windsor; but he never went into residence, being appointed in the same year to the see of Peterborough. He became the first president of the Church Historical Society (1894), and continued in that office till his death.
In 1897, on the translation of Dr. Temple to Canterbury, Bishop Creighton was transferred to London. During Dr. Tem ple's episcopate ritual irregularities of all kinds had grown up, which left a very difficult task to his successor. His studied fairness did not satisfy partisans on either side ; and his efforts towards conciliation laid him open to much misunderstanding. He strained every nerve to induce his clergy to accept his ruling on the questions of the reservation of the Sacrament and of the ceremonial use of incense in accordance with the archbishop's judgment in the Lincoln case ; but when, during his last illness, a prosecutor brought proceedings against the clergy of five recalcitrant churches, the bishop, on the advice of his arch deacons, interposed his veto. In accordance with a vote of the diocesan conference, the bishop arranged the "Round Table Conference" between representative members of various parties, held at Fulham in October 1900, on "the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist and its expression in ritual," and a report of its pro ceedings was published with a preface written by him. As he was a historian before he became a bishop, so it was his historical sense which determined his general attitude as a bishop. It was this, together with a certain native taste for ecclesiastical pomp, which made him—while condemning the unhistorical extrava gances of the ultra-ritualists—himself a ritualist. He was the first bishop of London, since the Reformation, to "pontificate" in a mitre as well as the cope, and though no man could have been less essentially "sacerdotal" he was always careful of correct ceremonial usage. He died on Jan. 14 1901, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.
Bishop Creighton's principal published works are: History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation (5 vols., 1882– 97, new ed.) ; History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome (6 vols. 1897) ; The Early Renaissance in England (1895) ; Cardinal Wolsey (1895) ; Life of Simon de Montfort (1876, new ed. 1895); Queen Elizabeth (1896). He also edited the series of Epochs of English History, for which he wrote "The Age of Elizabeth" (13th ed., 1897) ; Historical Lec tures and Addresses by Mandell Creighton, etc., edited by Mrs. Creighton, were published in 1903.
See Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, etc., by his wife (2 vols., 1904) ; and the article "Creighton and Stubbs" in Church Quarterly Review for Oct. 1905.