Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Creed, William
CREED, WILLIAM (1614?–1663), divine, the son of John Creed, was a native of Reading, Berkshire. He was elected a scholar of St. John's College, Oxford, in 1631, proceeded B.A., was elected a fellow of his college, commenced M. A. in 1639, and graduated B.D. in 1646. During the civil war he adhered to the royalist cause, and preached several sermons before the king and parliament at Oxford. He was expelled from his fellowship and from the university in 1648, but in the time of the usurpation he held the rectory of Codford St. Mary, Wiltshire. At the Restoration he was created D.D., and appointed in June 1660 to the regius professorship of divinity at Oxford, to which office a canonry of Christ Church is annexed. In July 1660 he became archdeacon of Wiltshire, and on 13 Sept. in the same year prebendary of Lyme and Halstock in the church of Salisbury. He was also rector of Stockton, Wiltshire. William Derham, in his manuscript 'Catalogue of the Fellows of St. John's College,' says ' he was in the worst of times a staunch defender of the church of England, an acute divine, especially skilled in scholastic theology, and a subtle disputant.' Creed died at Oxford on 19 July 1663.
Besides several sermons, he published: 'The Refuter refuted; or Dr Hen. Hammond's Ἐκτενέστερον defended against the impertinent cavils of Mr Hen. Jeanes,' London, 1660, 4to.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 638; Wood's Annals (Gutch), ii. 508, 588, 846; Wood's Colleges and Halls (Gutch), p. 491; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.; Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy), ii. 525, 631, 657, iii. 493, 510.]