1552, and where he took the B.A. degree iti 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 justice- general, Archibald, earl of Argyll ; and in this capacity he presided at many of the criminal trials of the period. He 13 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 com pletes 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 moans 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 Reynorum Britannia Tractatus, and the De Jure Successions Rejni Anglice. Bat 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 inde pendence of his country. Craig s first poem appeared in 1565. It is an EpitJialamiuin 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.
Except his poems, none of Craig s works appeared during his lifetime, and some of them exist even now only in manuscript. Ihe first edition of the Jus Feudale was not published until 1655, nearly fifty years after its author s death. It was edited by Robert liurnet 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 trans lation of it, under the title Scotland s Sovereignty asserted, was published by George Eidpath, London, 1695. Most of the poems have been reprinted in the Delitice Poetarum Scotorum. There is an excellent life of Craig by Mr Fraser Tytler, Edinburgh, 1823.
CRAIK, George Lillie (1799-1866), professor of English literature at Queen s College, Belfast, was the son of a Schoolmaster in Fifeshire. He studied at the uni versity of St Andrews with the intention of entering the church, but altering his plans, removed to London, at the age of twenty-five, to devote himself to literature. He became connected with a short-lived literary paper called the Verulam ; in 1831 he published his Pursuit o/ Knowledge under Difficulties among the works of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge ; he contributed a consi derable number of biographical and historical articles to the Penny Cyclopaedia; and he edited the Pictorial History of England, himself writing much of the work. In 1844 he published his History of Literature and Learning in England from the Norman Conquest to the Present Time, illustrated by extracts, and in the same year his History of British Commerce from the Earliest Times. In the next year appeared his Spenser and his Poetry, an abstract of Spenser s poems, with historical and biographical notes and frequent quotations; and in 1847 his Bacon, his Writings and his Philosophy, a work of a similar kind. The four last-mentioned works appeared among Knight s Weekly Volumes. Two years later Craik obtained the chair of history and English literature at Queen s College, Belfast, a position which he held till his death, which took place on the 23d February 1866. Besides the works already noticed, Craig published the Romance of the Peerage, Out line of the History of the English Language, and The English of Shakespeare.
CRAIL, formerly Carrail, a royal and parliamentary burgh and seaport of Scotland, in the county of Fife, nine miles south-east of St Andrews. It is said to have been a town of some note as early as the 9th century ; and its castle, of which there are hardly any remains, was the resi dence of David I. and others of the early Scottish kings. It was constituted a royal burgh by a charter of Robert Bruce in 1306, and had its privileges confirmed by Robert II. in 1371, by Mary in 1553, and by Charles I. in 1635. Of its priory, dedicated to St Rufus, a few ruins are to be seen below the east end of the town ; its principal chinch is of great antiquity, and was raised to the collegiate rank in 1517 ; and many of the ordinary houses are of a massive and antique description. It unites with St Andrews and other burghs in returning a member to Parliament. Popula tion of borough, 1112.
of which the Corn Crake (Ortygcmdra crcx) is the most familiar example. This bird is a summer visitor to Britain and to Northern Europe generally, where its migrations extend as far north as Iceland. It reaches Britain in April, and leaves in October, having meanwhile raised a brood of young. It frequents rich meadows and green corn-fields in the neighbourhood of water, where its presence is made known by the peculiar creaking sound emitted by the male as a call note to the female. After mating their crek-crek, not unlike the noise made by pass ing the nail of the finger over the teeth of a small comb, is much seldomer heard, and the work of building the nest,
which is a simple structure formed of dried plants placed