Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/79

 self a strong and learned judge. In January 1858, when the probate and divorce court was created, Sir Cresswell Cresswell was appointed the first judge in ordinary, and received but declined the offer of a peerage. He was, however, sworn of the privy council. It was by his exertions that the experiment of the divorce court was successful. He reformed the old ecclesiastical rules of evidence in matrimonial causes, and did for this branch of law what Mansfield did for mercantile law. A less self-reliant man would have shrunk from the task. The work proved in the first year fifteen times as great as had been anticipated, and was always heavy. He disposed of causes very rapidly and sat daily from November to August; in all he adjudicated upon a thousand cases, and his judgment was but once reversed. On 11 July 1863 he was riding down Constitution Hill when he was knocked down by Lord Aveland's horses, which were frightened by the breakdown of the carriage they were drawing. His kneecap was broken, and he was removed to St. George's Hospital, and thence to his house in Prince's Gate. Although he was recovering from the fracture, the shock proved too strong for his constitution, and he died of heart disease on the evening of 29 July. He was unmarried and left a large fortune. He had a keen and tenacious memory and a quick and logical understanding. His industry was great and his knowledge of common law profound. He was an excellent advocate in mercantile and navigation cases, and was also employed in great will cases, for example Hopwood v. Sefton at Liverpool, and Bather v. Braine at Shrewsbury. His speaking was, however, inanimate. As a judge he was somewhat overbearing, but his summing-up was always wonderfully clear. In person he was tall, slim, and pale. He was very charitable.

[Foss's Lives of the Judges; Law Times, 22 Aug. 1863; Ann. Reg. 11 July 1863.] 

CRESSWELL, DANIEL, D.D. (1776–1844), divine and mathematician, was son of Daniel Cresswell, a native of Crowden-le-Booth, in Edale, Derbyshire, who resided for many years at Newton, near Wakefield, Yorkshire. He was born at Wakefield in 1776 and educated in the grammar school there and at Hull. He proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow (B.A. 1797, M.A. 1800, D.D. per literas regias, 1823). At the university, where he resided many years, he took private pupils. In December 1822 he was presented to the vicarage of Enfield, one of the most valuable livings in the gift of his college, and in the following year he was appointed a justice of the peace for Middlesex and elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He died at Enfield on 21 March 1844.

He published ‘The Elements of Linear Perspective,’ Cambridge, 1811, 8vo; a translation of Giuseppe Venturoli's ‘Elements of Mechanics,’ Cambridge, 1822; 2nd edit., 1823, 8vo; several mathematical works, chiefly geometrical; ‘Sermons on Domestic Duties,’ Lond. 1829, 8vo; and some occasional discourses.

[Lupton's Wakefield Worthies, p. 215; Gent. Mag. new ser. xxi. 655; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.; Graduati Cantab. (1856), p. 95; Biog. Dict. of Living Authors (1816), p. 80.] 

CRESSWELL, JOSEPH (1557–1623?), jesuit, was born in London in 1557, and entered the Society of Jesus in Rome on 11 Oct. 1583. It has been stated that on joining the order he took the name of Arthur instead of Joseph, and Lord Coke says this is the only instance of a man changing his christian name (, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 147 n.) The statement is unfounded, and perhaps originated in the circumstance that there was an Arthur Cresswell, probably Joseph's elder brother, who was also admitted into the Society of Jesus in 1583. Joseph was professed of the four vows in 1599. His mother becoming a widow married William Lacey, esq., who after her death was ordained priest, and was executed at York in 1582.

He was rector of the English college at Rome, in succession to Father Parsons, from 1589 to 1592, and subsequently spent most of his life in Spain (, Records, vi. 124). When Parsons quitted that country he left Cresswell at Madrid to manage the concerns of the English jesuits. Sir Charles Cornwallis, the resident minister of James I in the Spanish capital, describes him, in a letter written to the Earl of Salisbury in 1606, as being desirous to conciliate those whom the turbulence of Parsons had alienated, and as wishing to ‘take hold of the advantage of the tyme, and build the foundation of his greatness in preaching and perswading of obedience and temperance, and becomeing a meanes to combyne the two great monarchs of Great Britaine and Spaine’ (, Memorials, ii. 226). Cresswell, however, was viewed by James and his ministers with so evil an eye that they directed the ambassador to hold no correspondence with him. For some time Cornwallis disregarded this injunction, but eventually he came to an open rupture with the jesuit, whom he describes as a vain-glorious man, observing that ‘he played on