Thomas Creevey (March 17685 February 1838) was an English politician. He is best known for his insight into social conditions as revealed by his writings, which were published in 1903.
Life
Creevey was the son of William Creevey, a
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
merchant, and was born in that city.
He went to
Queens' College
Queens' College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Queens' is one of the oldest colleges of the university, founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou. The college spans the River Cam, colloquially referred to as the "light s ...
,
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, and graduated as seventh
Wrangler in 1789. The same year he became a student at the
Inner Temple
The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional associations for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wal ...
, and was called to the
bar
Bar or BAR may refer to:
Food and drink
* Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages
* Candy bar
* Chocolate bar
Science and technology
* Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment
* Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud
* Bar (u ...
in 1794. In 1802 he entered
Parliament
In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
through the
Duke of Norfolk
Duke of Norfolk is a title in the peerage of England. The seat of the Duke of Norfolk is Arundel Castle in Sussex, although the title refers to the county of Norfolk. The current duke is Edward Fitzalan-Howard, 18th Duke of Norfolk. The dukes ...
's nomination as member for
Thetford
Thetford is a market town and civil parish in the Breckland District of Norfolk, England. It is on the A11 road between Norwich and London, just east of Thetford Forest. The civil parish, covering an area of , in 2015 had a population of 24,340 ...
, and married a widow with six children, Mrs Ord, who had a life interest in a comfortable income.
Creevey was a
Whig and a follower of
Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox (24 January 1749 – 13 September 1806), styled ''The Honourable'' from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned 38 years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was the arch-riv ...
, and his active intellect and social qualities procured him a considerable intimacy with the leaders of this political circle. In 1806, when the brief "
All the Talents" ministry was formed, he was given the office of secretary to the
Board of Control; in 1830, when next his party came into power, Creevey, who had lost his seat in parliament, was appointed by Lord Grey
Treasurer of the Ordnance
The Treasurer of the Ordnance was a subordinate of the Master-General of the Ordnance in the United Kingdom, the office being created in 1670. The office was abolished in 1836 and its duties merged with that of several others to form the office ...
; and subsequently
Lord Melbourne
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, (15 March 177924 November 1848), in some sources called Henry William Lamb, was a British Whig politician who served as Home Secretary (1830–1834) and Prime Minister (1834 and 1835–1841). His first pre ...
made him treasurer of
Greenwich Hospital.
Creevey is also known for being the first civilian to interview the
Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of ...
after the
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo, Belgium, Waterloo (at that time in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, now in Belgium). A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by two of the armie ...
in June 1815. He and his wife, who was ill at the time, were vacationing in Brussels when Napoleon was defeated by British and Prussian forces near the Belgian border. At their meeting in Wellington's headquarters, Creevey recorded the Duke's famous quote about the battle ("It was a near run thing. The nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.")
After 1818, when his wife died, he had very slender means of his own, but he was popular with his friends and was well looked after by them; his close association with
Lord Sefton, led to speculation that they were biological half-brothers—a rumour which Creevey himself appeared to abet.
Charles Greville, writing of him in 1829, remarks that "old Creevey is a living proof that a man may be perfectly happy and exceedingly poor. I think he is the only man I know in society who possesses nothing."
[Charles C. F. Greville, ''A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV'', volume I (Longmans Green & Co, London, 1874), at page 235]
He is remembered through the ''Creevey Papers'', published in 1903 under the editorship of
Sir Herbert Maxwell, which, consisting partly of Creevey's own journals and partly of correspondence, give a lively and valuable picture of the political and social life of the late
Georgian era
The Georgian era was a period in British history from 1714 to , named after the Hanoverian Kings George I, George II, George III and George IV. The definition of the Georgian era is often extended to include the relatively short reign of Willi ...
, and are characterized by an almost
Pepysian outspokenness. They are a useful addition and correction to the ''Croker Papers'', written from a
Tory
A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. Th ...
point of view.
For thirty-six years Creevey had kept a "copious diary", and had preserved a vast miscellaneous correspondence with such people as
Lord Brougham
Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux, (; 19 September 1778 – 7 May 1868) was a British statesman who became Lord High Chancellor and played a prominent role in passing the 1832 Reform Act and 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. ...
, and his stepdaughter,
Elizabeth Ord, had assisted him, by keeping his letters to her, in compiling material avowedly for a collection of ''Creevey Papers'' in the future.
At his death it was found that he had left his mistress, with whom he had lived for four years, his sole executrix and legatee, and Greville notes in his ''Memoirs'' the anxiety of Brougham and others to get the papers into their hands and suppress them. The diary, mentioned above, did not survive, perhaps through Brougham's success, and the papers from which Sir Herbert Maxwell made his selection came into his hands from Mrs
Blackett Ord
Blackett or Blacket is a surname of English derivation.
People
* Andrea Blackett (born 1976), Barbadian athlete
* Basil Phillott Blackett (1882–1935), British civil servant and finance expert
* Basil Blackett (1886–1920), British WW1 flying ...
, whose husband was the grandson of Creevey's eldest stepdaughter.
References
Further reading
* Gore, John. "Thomas Creevy: A Later Reappraisal" ''History Today'' (Oct 1958) 8#10 pp. 690–697.
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Creevey, Thomas
1768 births
1838 deaths
Whig (British political party) MPs
Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies
UK MPs 1802–1806
UK MPs 1807–1812
UK MPs 1812–1818
UK MPs 1820–1826
UK MPs 1831–1832
Alumni of Queens' College, Cambridge