CRAIG, Sir Thomas (c. 1538-1608), of Riccarton, one of the earliest and one of the ablest writers on the law of Scotland, and a poet of some note, was born about the year 1538. It is probable that he was the eldest son of William Craig of Craigfintray, or Craigston, in Aberdeenshire, but beyond the fact that he was in some way related to the Craigfintray family nothing regarding his birth is known with certainty. He is first heard of as a student at St Andrews, where he was entered at St Leonard’s College in 1552, and where he took the B.A. degree in 1555. From St Andrews he went to France, like most of his countrymen of that day who were destined for the bar, to study the canon and the civil law. He himself makes more than one allusion in his works to what he had learned at Paris, but as the civil law was not at that time publicly taught there, it is more than probable that he attended the lectures of the great civilians of some of the other French schools. He returned to Scotland about 1561, and, after spending some time in acquiring a practical acquaintance with, the forms of court procedure, was admitted advocate in February 1563. In 1564 he was appointed justice-depute by the justicegeneral, Archibald, earl of Argyll; and in this capacity he presided at many of the criminal trials of the period. He is not mentioned as deputy of the justice-general after 1573; and in the course of the following year he appears as sheriff of Edinburgh, so that he probably resigned the one office on being nominated to the other. In 1606 he is described as procurator for the church; and this completes the list of his regular preferments, although his name is found in more than one commission of importance. He never became a Lord of Session, a circumstance that was unquestionably due to his own choice. His extensive practice, added to the emoluments of his various offices, no doubt, much exceeded what he would have had as a judge; but in truth he probably felt that his studious and retiring disposition unfitted him for the rough work, diplomatic and military as well as judicial, that was in those days expected of a Scotch judge. In this respect he presents a striking contrast to his contemporary Balfour, who was implicated in every conspiracy of his time, and to whom no office, judicial, ecclesiastical, or military, came amiss. Craig even, it is said, refused the honour of knighthood which the king wished to confer on him in 1604, when he came to London as one of the Scottish commissioners regarding the union between the kingdoms—the only political object he seems to have cared about; but in accordance with James’s commands he has always been styled and reputed a knight. Craig was married to Helen, daughter of Heriot of Trabroun in Haddingtonshire, by whom he had four sons and three daughters. His eldest son, Sir Lewis Craig, was raised to the bench in 1604, and among his other descendants are several well-known names in the list of Scotch lawyers. He died on the 26th February 1608.

The greatest of Craig’s literary labours is his treatise on the feudal law. The object of the Jus Feudale was to assimilate the laws of England and Scotland, but instead of this, it is the first, and by no means the least, in the series of works which has built up and solidified that of Scotland into a separate system. Craig’s anxiety to promote the union of the kingdoms led him to prepare two other elaborate treatises,—the De Unione Regnorum Britannice Tradatus i and the De Jure Successionis Regni Anglioe. But while he was alive to the benefits of union, his De Hominio Disputatio, in which he combats the assertion that Scotland was a fief of the English crown, shows that he was no less determined to maintain the historical independence of his country. Craig’s first poem appeared in 1565. It is an Epithalamium in honour of the ill-fated marriage of the Queen and Darnley. It contains passages of real poetic feeling, but as a whole it is laboured and heavy; and this fault, as perhaps might be expected of a learned feudal lawyer, more or less disfigures all Craig’s subsequent efforts.

..,⅛ ce Pt h⅛ poems, none of Craig’s works appeared during his lifetime, and some of them exist even now only in manuscript. 1 ne first edition of the Jus Feudale was not published until 1655, nearly fifty years after its author’s death. It was edited by Robert Burnet of Crimond, afterwards a judge in the Court of Session, who had married Craig’s granddaughter, and was the father of the famous bishop of Salisbury. A second edition, edited by Menckenius, was published at Leipsic, in 1716; while the last and best edition appeared at Edinburgh in 1732, with a short life by the editor, James Baillie. Manuscripts of the De Jure Successionis belong to the Advocates’ Library and to the Edinburgh University Library, but the book itself has never been published. A translation of it by James Gatherer, afterwards a Scotch bishop, appeared in 1703. The De Unione exists only in manuscript, in the Advocates’ Library; and the same is true of the De Hominio, although a translation of it, under the title Scotland's Sovereignty asserted, was published by George Ridpath, London, 1695. Most of the poems have been reprinted in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum. There is an excellent life of Craig by Mr Fraser Tytler, Edinburgh, 1823.