He returned to Ireland. He and Shane O’Neill disagreed on many things. The Primate was dissatisfied at the hardships which the king inflicted on clergy and violation of privileges and immunities of the churches. The Primate excommunicated him.

Creagh was seized by Myler Hussey and surrendered by him. Upon capture he was sent to Dublin & from there to London. He had escaped from the Tower in 1565, and died there October 14th, 1585.

The Bishop of Clogher visited Creagh to offer him high dignity, wealth, and honours, if he would renounce obedience to the Holy See, and take the oath. But he bade him begone.

A jailer accused him of having offered violence to his daughter. He had to undergo examination before 12 jurors. He disproved the crimes. The jury pronounced him innocent. Even the girl declared that she had been suborned.

An order was issued to bring imprisoned priests to the Tower chapel to hear a heretical sermon. Creagh declared he would not go. The Knight ordered his servants to drag him by force, to the chapel. When he heard the thundering against Catholics, and blasphemies against the Saints and their Queen etc, he interrupted the sermon and took the preacher to task. 

They used great violence and forced him to desist. 

He adjured all not to believe the lying preacher, a seducer of souls, and he declared that whosoever would hold by his lies and errors would perish for ever.

He was taken back to the prison, and as there was no hope of shaking his constancy in the faith, one Culligius, an under-warder of the Tower, put poison in some cheese and gave a mouthful of it to the venerable Prelate, knowing well it was a kind of food which he would accept readily. 

He, suspecting no harm, ate it, and presently felt great pains in his stomach. Then his throat swelled, and his whole body became affected. 

The next day he sent a boy with an account of his symptoms to a Catholic physician in the city named Arclous. 

When he learned the cause of the illness, he was roused to indignation, and he cast a bottle containing a lotion over the wall; he declared that the Bishop was poisoned, and that as the poison had already penetrated the vital parts, no human aid could be of any avail to him. 

Feeling himself growing worse, and bearing in mind his duty as a Christian, he had a confessor called in to him from a neighbouring chamber, F. Crighton, of the Society of Jesus, who was a prisoner there for the faith. 

Father Crighton heard his confession, gave him absolution, and did everything that the difficulty of their position allowed. 

He died October 14th, 1585.

Mr Froude says he died in exile. 

The Propaganda, in the Rescript appointing his successor, dated July 1587, says he died the preceding year in prison in England.’

Stanihurst and White say he was poisoned by means of a cheese.

He is alluded to by Sander:

‘The Elizabethan prelates finding no duly consecrated bishop willing to impart Episcopal ordination to them, importuned an Irish Archbishop, then a prisoner in London, to succour them in the straits they were in. 

They promised to set him at liberty and to reward him for his services if he would preside at their ordination. But the good man would not be persuaded to lay hallowed hands on heretics or take any part in the sins of others.’

He wrote several works; including On the Origin of the Irish Language, Controversies on Faith against the Heretics, these two in Latin; An Irish Catechism. 

Please pray for final perseverance for all of us!
May the martyrs of old inspire us all.