CRESSY, HUGH PAULINUS DE (c. 1605-1674), English Benedictine monk, whose religious name was Serenus, was born at Wakefield, Yorkshire, about 1605. He went to Oxford at the age of fourteen, and in 1626 became a fellow of Merton College. Having taken orders, he rose to the dignity of dean of Leighlin, Ireland, and canon of Windsor. He also acted as chaplain to Lord Wentworth, afterwards the celebrated earl of Strafford. For some time he travelled abroad as tutor to Lord Falmouth, and in 1646, during a visit to Rome, joined the Roman Catholic Church. In the following year he published his Exomologesis (Paris, 1647), or account of his conversion, which was highly valued by Roman Catholics as an answer to William Chillingworth’s attacks. Cressy entered the Benedictine Order in 1649, and for four years resided at Somerset House as chaplain to Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II. He died at West Grinstead on the 10th of August 1674. Cressy’s chief work, The Church History of Brittanny or England, from the beginning of Christianity to the Norman Conquest (1st vol. only published, Rouen, 1668), gives an exhaustive account of the foundation of monasteries during the Saxon heptarchy, and asserts that they followed the Benedictine rule, differing in this respect from many historians. The work was much criticized by Lord Clarendon, but defended by Antony à Wood in his Athenae Oxoniensis, who supports Cressy’s statement that it was compiled from original MSS. and from the Annales Ecclesiae Britannicae of Michael Alford, Dugdale’s Monasticon, and the Decem Scriptores Historiae Anglicanae. The second part of the history, which has never been printed, was discovered at Douai in 1856. To Roman Catholics Cressy’s name is familiar as the editor of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection (London, 1659); of Father A. Baker’s Sancta Sophia (2 vols., Douai, 1657); and of Juliana of Norwich’s Sixteen Revelations on the Love of God (1670). These books, which would have been lost but for Cressy’s zeal, have been frequently reprinted, and have been favourably regarded by a section of the Anglican Church.
For a complete list of Cressy’s works see J. Gillow’s Bibl. Dict. of Eng. Catholics, vol. i.
CREST, a town of south-eastern France, in the department of Drôme, on the right bank of the Drôme, 20 m. S.S.E. of Valence by rail. Pop. (1906) town, 3971; commune, 5660. It carries on silk-worm breeding, silk-spinning, and the manufacture of woollens, paper, leather and cement. There is trade in truffles. On the rock which commands the town stands a huge keep, the sole survival of a castle (12th century) to which Crest was indebted for its importance in the middle ages and the Religious Wars. The rest of the castle was destroyed in the first half of the 17th century, after which the keep was used as a state prison. Crest ranked for a time as the capital of the duchy of Valentinois, and in that capacity belonged before the Revolution to the prince of Monaco. The communal charter, graven on stone and dating from the 12th century, is preserved in the public archives. Ten miles south-east of Crest lies the picturesque Forest of Saon.
CREST (Lat. crista, a plume or tuft), the “comb” on an animal’s head, and so any feathery tuft or excrescence, the “cone” of a helmet (by transference, the helmet itself), and the top or summit of anything. In heraldry (q.v.) a crest is a device, originally borne as a cognizance on a knight’s helmet, placed on a wreath above helmet and shield in armorial bearings, and used separately on a seal or on articles of property.
Cresting, in architecture, is an ornamental finish in the wall or ridge of a building, which is common on the continent of Europe. An example occurs at Exeter cathedral, the ridge of which is ornamented with a range of small fleurs-de-lis in lead.
CRESTON, a city and the county-seat of Union county, Iowa, U.S.A., about 60 m. S.W. of Des Moines, at the crossing of the main line and two branches of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railway. Pop. (1890) 7200; (1900) 7752; (1905, state census) 8382 (753 foreign-born); (1910) 6924. The city is on the crest of the divide between the Mississippi and the Missouri basins at an altitude of about 1310 ft.—whence its name. It is situated in a fine farming and stock-raising region, for which it is a shipping point. The site was chosen in 1869 by the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad Company (subsequently merged in the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company) for the location of its shops. Creston was incorporated as a town in 1869, and was chartered as a city in 1871.