[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.

[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'".

[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".

[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.

[47] She 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.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

[19] Louise Creighton recalled that his parishioners found it difficult to express their feelings openly; she recorded one woman as saying, "Well, if you ain't done no good, you've done no harm", which coming from a Northumbrian he took as high praise.

[74] Creighton had already corresponded with 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.

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] 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.

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 start of the Reformation.

[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".

[92] In fact, Creighton was quite broad church in terms of doctrine and belief (as opposed to his taste for vestments and high-church trappings); his moderate views would later make him popular with Queen Victoria.

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".

[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.

[e] 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.

[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",[f] but expressed great confidence in Creighton.

I wish to induce people to see themselves as others see them, to regard what they are doing in reference to its far-off effects on the consciences of others, to cultivate a truer sense of proportion of things, to deal more with ideas than with the clothing of ideas; to pay more attention to the reason of a thing than to its antiquity; to remember that the chief danger that besets those who are pursuing a high object is to confuse means with ends; to examine themselves very fully, lest they confuse Christian zeal with the desire to have their own way" One of Creighton's first efforts after becoming Bishop of London was to support the passage of the Voluntary School Bill of 1897.

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.

He was appointed to the Privy Council; he became a trustee of the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and many other organisations,[117] and succeeded Frederic Leighton as president of the committee commissioning the Survey of London which documented the capital's principal buildings and public art.

[148] 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".

In the words of the historian Keith Robbins, "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".

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.

[155] 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".