CRESSY, HUGH (PAULINUS SERENUS). – English Benedictine theologian, b. at Thorpe-Salvin (Yorkshire) around 1605; d. at East Grinstead (Sussex) on 10 August 1674. Having arrived at Oxford in 1619, he became a fellow of Merton College in 1627. After receiving Anglican Orders, he was chaplain first to Lord Wentworth, then to Lord Falkland, and visited Ireland in 1658. With Charles Berkeley, later Lord Falmouth, he travelled on the Continent, and became a Catholic in Rome in 1646, subsequently publishing in Paris (1647), where he received further instruction from Henry Holden, doctor of the Sorbonne, Exomologesis, in which he set forth the reasons for his conversion. At the monastery of S. Gregorio in Douai he became a Benedictine (1649), taking the name Serenus. In 1660 he was sent to London as chaplain to Catherine of Braganza, the Catholic consort of King Charles II, and from 1669 to East Grinstead as chaplain to the Caryll family.
He published: Church History of Brittany or England, from the Beginning of Christianity to the Norman Conquest (Rouen 1668); the second part, From the Conquest Downwards, was discovered in manuscript at Douai in 1856. He also published, under various titles, the writings of English medieval mystics (W. Hilton, the Cloud of Unknowing) and Sancta Sophia by the ven. A. Baker; Certain Patterns of Devout Exercises (Douai 1657); Roman Catholic Doctrines and Novelties (London 1663); A Non Est Inventus (ibid. 1662), and various apologetic and controversial pamphlets. Of particular importance are his refutations of the anti-Catholic writings of Dr. Stillingfleet (1672–74). C.’s writings are learned and inspired by fervour and zeal. In controversy he is courteous, while always striking accurately.