Thomas Creech

Thomas Creech (1659–found dead 19 July 1700) was an English translator of classical works, and headmaster of Sherborne School. Creech translated Lucretius into verse in 1682, for which he received a Fellowship at Oxford. He also produced English versions of Manilius, Horace, Theocritus, and other classics.

He was born at Blandford Forum, Dorset. His father, also called Thomas Creech, died in 1720, and his mother, Jane Creech, died in 1693; they had two children, Thomas the translator and one daughter Bridget, who married Thomas Bastard, an architect of Blandford, and had issue six sons and four daughters. Creech's parents were not rich. His classical training was due to Thomas Curgenven, rector of Folke in Dorset, but best known as master of Sherborne school, to whom Creech afterwards dedicated his translation of the seventh idyll of Theocritus, and to whom he acknowledged his debt in the preface to his translation of Horace. His education was supported from Colonel Strangways, a member of a well-known county family.

In Lent term 1675 Creech was admitted as a commoner at Wadham College, Oxford, and placed under the tuition of Robert Pitt. Creech's translation of one of the idyls of Theocritus is inscribed to his "chum Mr. Hody of Wadham College", and another is dedicated to Robert Balch, who at a later date was his "friend and tutor". Two of his letters are printed in Evelyn's Diary. He was elected a scholar of his college 28 September 1676, and took degrees: B.A. 27 October 1680, M.A. 13 June 1683, and B.D. 18 March 1696. He was a reputed scholar, and one of the first to benefit by William Sancroft's reforms in the elections for fellowships at All Souls' College, where he was elected a fellow in 1683.

For two years (1694–6) he was the headmaster of Sherborne School, but he then returned to Oxford, where a strangeness of manner was noticed in 1698. He accepted the college living of Welwyn, to which he was instituted 25 April 1699, but never entered into residence. After he had been missing for five days he was discovered (in July 1700) to have committed suicide in a garret in the house of Mr. Ives, an apothecary, with whom he lodged. He had wished to marry Miss Philadelphia Playdell of St. Giles, Oxford, but her friends would not consent to the marriage. In his will, dated 18 January 1699, and proved 28 June 1700, he divided his means into two parts, one of which he left to his sister Bridget Bastard for the use of his father during his lifetime and afterwards for herself, while he left the other moiety to Miss Playdell and appointed her sole executrix. She later married Ralph Hobson, butler of Christ Church, Oxford, and died in 1706, aged 34. He was also short of money.

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