British historian and bishop
Mandell Creighton (; 5 July 1843 – 14 January 1901) was a British historian, Anglican priest and bishop. The son of a stern but successful carpenter, Creighton studied at University of Oxford, focusing his scholarship on the Renaissance Papacy. He was appointed the first occupant of the Dixie Chair of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Cambridge in 1884. The following year, he also was engaged as the first editor of the "English Historical Review", the oldest English language academic journal in its field. In these posts, he helped to establish history as an independent academic discipline in England.
Creighton had a parallel career in the clergy of the Church of England from the mid-1870s until his death. He served as a parish priest in Embleton, Northumberland and later, successively, as a Canon Residentiary of Worcester Cathedral (1885), Bishop of Peterborough (1891) and Bishop of London (1897). His moderation and practicality drew praise from Queen Victoria and won notice from politicians. In later years, he was appointed to various positions of trust, including the Privy Council, and it was widely thought that he would have become Archbishop of Canterbury had his death, at the age of 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. He was firm in asserting that public figures be judged for their public acts, not private ones. His preference for the concrete to the abstract is seen in his writings about the Church of England. He believed that the Church was uniquely shaped by its particular English circumstances, and he saw it as the soul of the nation.
Creighton was married to the author and future women's suffrage activist Louise Creighton, and the couple had seven children. A man of complex intelligence and exceptional vigour, Creighton was emblematic of the Victorian era both in his strengths and in his failings.
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Early childhood, 1843–1857.
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. His mother was a daughter of Thomas Mandell, a yeoman farmer from Bolton, Cumberland. 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. 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.
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. 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. 
Creighton's education began in a nearby dame school run by a stern headmistress. His restlessness and mischief led to frequent punishment. 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. In February 1858 the 15-year-old Creighton left Carlisle for Durham.
Durham School, 1858–1862.
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. 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. 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. 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, bullying and stealing: "I strongly recommend giving a fellow a thrashing ... and remember, never thrash a fellow a "little", always "hard"".
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. As his poor sight prevented his participation in sports he took with enthusiasm to walking. 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. The habit was to remain with him for the rest of his life. 
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. The application was successful and Creighton arrived in Oxford in October 1862. 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.
Oxford undergraduate, 1862–1866.
Creighton's annual postmastership grant of ) 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. 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.
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". Merton was much favoured by undergraduates from public school backgrounds who had more inclination to sports than to serious study. 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. 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".
Creighton read voraciously and widely. Among his Merton friends he was dubbed "The Professor", or "P". The writers and poets of whose works he became fond included Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson and Swinburne. He was becoming politically aware, embracing a moderate liberalism. He joined the Oxford Union, and although he seldom spoke in debates there he was elected Union president in 1867. 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.
In his second year, Creighton and three other students became inseparable, both during academic terms and vacations, forming a group called "The Quadrilateral". The group friendship was intense, like many such in that time. 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". 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'".
Academically, Creighton's goal was an honours degree in "literae humaniores", the study of Greek and Roman classical literature, philosophy, and ancient history. In the final examinations, in the spring of his fourth year, he received first-class honours. 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. 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. After six months' study Creighton took the examinations in that school in Autumn 1866. He had not allowed himself enough time to read all the relevant literature and achieved only a second class degree. 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.
Teaching and marriage, 1867–1874.
At Merton, Creighton became a tutor in Modern History, which Kirby describes as "a relatively new subject which few were then prepared to teach". 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. As the tutors were chosen from distinguished recent graduates, the new instructional staff were more youthful than the old. 
At this time there was discontent among the Merton students at what was seen as a lack of leadership in the teaching faculty. Many fellows, both resident and non-resident, had become distant presences. 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. He was given more responsibilities, which brought promotions and salary increases. After four years of teaching, his salary had more than doubled. With the college's approval he joined forces with another Merton tutor, William Esson, to open collegiate lectures to students of other colleges. Soon, the Association of Tutors was born, as well as an Oxford-wide series of lectures that any student could attend. The lectures were to influence his choice of future research. He wrote later:
 ;templatestyles src="Block indent/styles.css"/ ;We worked out among us a scheme of lectures covering the whole field (of history), and were the pioneers of the "Intercollegiate Lectures" which now prevail at both universities. The needs of this scheme threw upon me the ecclesiastical, and especially papal history, which no one else took.
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. Creighton, in contrast, was gradually consolidating his religious beliefs. 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. He never had any crisis of confidence. He had no interest in the new natural sciences and was not moved to read Darwin, regarding his