Creevey was the son of William Creevey, a
Liverpool merchant, and was born in that city. He went to
Queens' College,
Cambridge, and graduated as seventh
Wrangler in 1789. The same year he became a student at the
Inner Temple, and was called to the
bar in 1794. In 1802 he entered
Parliament through the
Duke of Norfolk's nomination as member for
Thetford, 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, 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; and subsequently
Lord Melbourne made him treasurer of
Greenwich Hospital.
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." 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, and are characterized by an almost
Pepysian outspokenness. They are a useful addition and correction to the
Croker Papers, written from a
Tory 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, 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, whose husband was the grandson of Creevey's eldest stepdaughter. ==References==