Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/451

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

sible, Sicily could be successfully held against the French. In spite, therefore, of the queen and Elliot, he left Castellamare on 19 Jan. 1806, and disembarked at Messina on the 22nd. Subsequent experience showed how wise Craig had been, for Sicily became the headquarters of the English in the Mediterranean, and was successfully defended against all the attacks of the French. Craig's health, however, became worse and worse, and in March 1806 he left Sicily, and handed over the command to Major-general John Stuart, afterwards to be known as the Count of Maida. The voyage to England did him good, and on 21 Aug. 1807 he was made a local general in America, and on 29 Aug. appointed captain-general and governor-general of Canada. Here too he had a difficult post to fill. The discontent of the United States at the naval policy of England was growing to a height that threatened war, and the population of Canada was too French in its origin to be well affected to the government. Nevertheless, here, as everywhere else, Craig proved himself to be an able administrator, he avoided a collision with the United States, and made himself loved and respected by the Canadians. He resigned his government in October 1811, and on his return to England was promoted general on 1 Jan. 1812. He did not long survive this last promotion, and died at his house in London on 12 Jan. 1812.

Craig was a general who showed his ability in many places and many commands, but his fame has been overshadowed by that of the Duke of Wellington and of the duke's lieutenants in the Peninsula. ‘Sir James Craig was a man who had made his way by varied and meritorious services to a high position in our army. He had improved a naturally quick and clear understanding by study, and he had a practical and intimate acquaintance with every branch of his profession. In person he was very short, broad, and muscular, a pocket Hercules, but with sharp, neat features, as if chiselled in ivory. Not popular, for he was hot, peremptory, and pompous, yet extremely beloved by those whom he allowed to live in intimacy with him; clever, generous to a fault, and a warm and unflinching friend to those whom he liked’ (Bunbury, Narrative, p. 182).

[Scots Mag. for March 1813, pp. 165–7, which makes no mention of his having served as a trooper, a mistake adopted from the Gentleman's Magazine by Ross, the editor of the Cornwallis Correspondence, and others; for the expedition to the Cape see Allardyce's Life of Lord Keith, and for his command in the Mediterranean Sir Henry Bunbury's Narrative of some Passages in the Great War against France.]

H. M. S.

CRAIG, JAMES THOMSON GIBSON (1799–1886), antiquary, was the second son of Sir James Gibson Craig [q. v.], the first baronet of Riccarton. He received his education at the high school and the university of Edinburgh, and afterwards became a writer to the signet. He was the friend of Scott and Jeffrey, of Cockburn and Macaulay, of antiquaries from the time of Kirkpatrick Sharpe and David Laing to the time of George Scharf, of artists from the days of Sir Henry Raeburn and the elder Nasmyth to those of Sir William Fettes Douglas. An original member of the Bannatyne Club he was known for his literary and antiquarian tastes, and for his extensive collection of works in various languages. In 1882 he issued in an edition of twenty-five copies a sumptuous series of facsimiles of historic and artistic bookbindings in his collection, and in 1883 a facsimile reprint of the ‘Shorte Summe of the whole Catechisme,’ by his ancestor, John Craig, accompanied with a memoir of the author by Thomas Graves Law. He died at Edinburgh on 18 July 1886. A first part of his valuable library was sold in London in June 1887.

[Academy, 24 July 1886; Times, 26 July 1886; Lockhart's Life of Scott.]

T. C.

CRAIG, JOHN (1512?–1600), Scottish divine, was born about 1512, and next year lost his father, one of the Aberdeenshire family of Craigs of Craigston, at Flodden. Educated at St. Andrews, and dependent on his own exertions for his support, Craig became tutor of the children of Lord Darcy, the well-known English warden of the north. Returning to St. Andrews after two years, he joined the Dominican order, but soon fell under suspicion of heresy and was imprisoned. On his release he went in 1536 to England, where he hoped to get a place at Cambridge through Lord Darcy's influence. Failing in this he proceeded to Rome, where the patronage of Cardinal Pole obtained his admission to the Dominican convent at Bologna as master of novices. He was employed in various missions on behalf of his order in Italy and the island of Chios, and on returning to Bologna became rector, an office he held for several years. Chance having thrown in his way a copy of the ‘Institutes of Calvin,’ it was said in the library of the Inquisition, his attention was again directed to the tenets of the reformed church, and this becoming