About the age of twenty-five, a providential escape from shipwreck led him to embrace a religious life, and after some years of seminary study abroad, he was ordained a priest.

Archbishop Creagh has left us the following description of his cell in Dublin Castle, "a hole where without candle there is no light in the world, and with candle, when I had it, it was so filled with the smoke thereof, chiefly in summer, that, had there not been a little hole in the next door to draw in breath with my mouth set upon it, I had been perhaps, shortly undone.

But the two gentlemen who elected me to go out, (i.e.) escape with themselves and the said keeper, thought I should be much sooner undone in the second lodgings with cold, being thereto towards winter, removed, where scant was light as could be, and no fire.

"[3] His steadfast refusal, however, to Abjure the Catholic Faith or embrace the subservience of the Irish Church to control by the State, and his great popularity throughout Ireland were considered high treason in consequence, he was sent to London and committed to the Tower.

[4] Twice he escaped, but he was retaken and in 1567 lodged in the Tower of London, according to the Queen's officials, solely for, "his hindering the Archbishop of Dublin's godly efforts to promote the Reformation.

"[3] From his repeated examinations before the Privy Council his enmity for Shane O'Neill and his unwavering loyalty to the Queen of England in all purely non-religious matters were made plain.

Poley, who was a fellow prisoner in the Tower during Creagh's last years there, is said to have visited him several times, but the suspicion seems to be based on his general bad character, rather than on any direct evidence of his guilt.

He was imprisoned for two years on suspicion of treason and attempted regicide during the Popish Plot in consequence of the false accusations of Titus Oates, but he was acquitted (1682).

Bishop Creagh was appointed Archbishop of Dublin in 1693, but was unable to return to Ireland and take over command of his still illegal and underground archdiocese.