credencyn.

1620 N. Brent tr. P. Sarpi Hist. Councel of Trent iv. 318 After this Iacobus Amiotus..appeared in the name of the French King, with letters of his Maiesty, which he presented to the Legate, desiring they might be read, and his credency heard [It. & vdita la sua credenza].

1648 T. Gage Eng.-Amer. xix. 146 Credency to what any base Spaniard shall inform against them.

1654 J. Yorke Let. 28 Nov. in Cal. State Papers (1886) 402 Gen. Blake has taken 30 sail of Turks, belonging to Tripoly, with their prizes, which seems to gain the better credency in regard of our peace with Algiers.

1797 Evangelical Mag. Dec. 495 Unconscious of any such credency in themselves, they presume to deny the same in others.

1820 New Monthly Mag. Oct. 364/2 We think the following lines rather tend to shake our implicit credency in the thinking faculty of this intellectual nag.

1858 J. W. Jackson Mesmerism iii. 26 He of the triple ti[a]ra had placed his foot on the neck of antecedent credencies, and incense and holy water were now used, not for the invocation but the expulsion of the diabolic powers of the ante-Christian world.

1871 W. Whitcher in Trans. Amer. Fish Cultural Assoc. (1878) 47 This ingenious but traditional theory of annual migration having gained local credency among some of the Nova Scotia fishermen engaged in United States fishing-vessels, has been sagaciously indorsed and circulated by American authors.

1904 B. Willard-Archer Characteristics Romish Church ii. 28 The uncertain and contentious state of divergent credencies for many years after Nicæa had named one set of fluctuating opinions or haireseis universal (catholic).

1950 Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc. 94 364/2 This story was given credency by the famous Morgagni..but the anatomist, John Bell, later scoffed at him for doing so.

2009 G. Ward Politics Discipleship i. ii. 84 The imaginative strengths that create credencies, enjoin belief, and capture hopes, dreams, and desires.