Mandell Creighton - Bishop of Peterborough, 1891–1896

Bishop of Peterborough, 1891–1896

In December 1890, Creighton received a letter from Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, offering an appointment to a residentiary canonry of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle in exchange for his appointment at Worcester. Since a Windsor appointment indicated the personal preference of the British sovereign, and since the Creightons were wary of court culture, the letter gave them pause. However, after some hesitation, Creighton accepted. No sooner had he and his family reconciled to moving back and forth between their Cambridge home and Windsor Castle six times a year than Creighton received another letter from Salisbury. The new letter offered appointment as Bishop of Peterborough, an office that had become available upon the translation of its incumbent William Connor Magee to York. Creighton was chosen 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. In fact, Creighton was doctrinally quite broad church; his moderate views would later make him popular with Queen Victoria.

"The tolerant man has decided opinions, but recognises the process by which he reaches them, and keeps before himself the truth that they can only be profitably spread by repeating in the case of others a similar process to that through which he passed himself. He always keeps in view the hope of spreading his own opinions, but he endeavours to do so by producing conviction. He is virtuous, not because he puts his own opinions out of sight, nor because he thinks that other opinions are as good as his own, but because his opinions are so real to him that he would not anyone else hold them with less reality"

For Creighton, the Peterborough appointment, which he felt duty-bound to accept, meant the effective end of his academic life. There is indication that the Creightons were depressed at the prospect of leaving Cambridge. In the case of Louise, the depression was to last long. Creighton felt that his life from then on would become one of offering easy comfort to others. In a letter to an old college friend, he 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"

A few weeks before Creighton's consecration as bishop at Westminster Abbey in late April 1891, he fell ill with muscular rheumatism. Soon after his enthronement at Peterborough Cathedral in mid-May 1891, he fell ill again, this time with influenza. Each time, the recovery was prolonged. The Peterborough diocese, then comprising 676 parishes and including the cities of 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. However, 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.

Creighton also became determined to better understand the working-classes of his diocese. 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 of the gravity of the situation, and urged them to work impartially to facilitate communication between the opposing sides. According to biographer James 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." By late April, a compromise was reached for which Creighton reaped much praise as well as a growing reputation as a statesman.

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 a number of 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."

In 1896, Creighton represented the Church of England at the coronation of Czar Nicholas II in Moscow. He was chosen after the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, begged off going to the event citing ill-health, and after the same excuse was offered for Randall Davidson, the Bishop of Winchester, who as Prelate of the Order of the Garter was the official stand in. Creighton's selection as ostensible third in line led to much speculation and controversy in church circles. A lover of pageantry, Creighton wore a bishop's coronation cope, borrowed from Westminster Abbey, and carried his own mitre and pastoral staff for the event. On his return, he wrote a glowing account of the coronation in Cornhill Magazine, which, after gaining the attention of Queen Victoria, elicited a letter from her requesting several copies for the royal family.