Except his poems, the only one of Craig’s works which appeared during his lifetime was his Jus feudale (1603; ed. R. Burnet, 1655; Leipzig, 1716; ed. J. Baillie 1732). The object of this treatise was to assimilate the laws of England and Scotland, but, instead of this, it was an important factor in building up and solidifying the law of Scotland into a separate system. Other works were De unione regnorum Britanniae tractatus, De jure successionis regni Angliae and De hominio disputatio. Translations of the last two have been published, and in 1910 an edition of the De Unione appeared, with translation and notes by C. S. Terry. Craig’s first poem, an Epithalamium in honour of the marriage of Mary queen of Scots and Darnley, appeared in 1565. Most of his poems have been reprinted in the Delitiae poëtarum Scotorum.
See P. F. Tytler, Life of Craig (1823); Life prefixed to Baillie’s edition of the Jus feudale.
CRAIGIE, PEARL MARY TERESA (1867-1906), Anglo-American novelist and dramatist, who wrote under the pen-name of “John Oliver Hobbes,” was born at Boston, U.S.A., on the 3rd of November 1867. She was the elder daughter of John Morgan Richards, and was educated in London and Paris. When she was nineteen she married Reginald Walpole Craigie, by whom she had one son, John Churchill Craigie: but the marriage proved an unhappy one, and was dissolved on her petition in July 1895. She was brought up as a Nonconformist, but in 1892 was received into the Roman Catholic Church, of which she remained a devout and serious member. Her first little book, the brilliant and epigrammatic Some Emotions and a Moral, was published in 1891 in Mr Fisher Unwin’s “Pseudonym Library,” and was followed by The Sinner’s Comedy (1892), A Study in Temptations (1893), A Bundle of Life (1894), The Gods, Some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham. The Herb Moon (1896), a country love story, was followed by The School for Saints (1897), with a sequel, Robert Orange (1900). Mrs Craigie had already written a one-act “proverb,” Journeys end in Lovers Meeting, produced by Ellen Terry in 1894, and a three-act tragedy, “Osbern and Ursyne,” printed in the Anglo-Saxon Review (1899), when her successful piece, The Ambassador, was produced at the St James’s Theatre in 1898. A Repentance (one act, 1899) and The Wisdom of the Wise (1900) were produced at the same theatre, and The Flute of Pan (1904) first at Manchester and then at the Shaftesbury theatre; she was also part author of The Bishop’s Move (Garrick Theatre, 1902). Later books are The Serious Wooing (1901), Love and the Soul Hunters (1902), Tales about Temperament (1902), The Vineyard (1904). Mrs Craigie died suddenly of heart failure in London on the 13th of August 1906.
CRAIK, DINAH MARIA (1826-1887), English novelist, better known by her maiden name of Mulock, and still better as “the author of John Halifax, Gentleman,” was the daughter of Thomas Mulock, an eccentric religious enthusiast of Irish extraction, and was born on the 20th of April 1826 at Stoke-upon-Trent, in Staffordshire, where her father was the minister of a small congregation. She settled in London about 1846, determined to obtain a livelihood by her pen, and, beginning with fiction for children, advanced steadily until John Halifax, Gentleman (1857), placed her in the front rank of the women novelists of her day. A Life for a Life (1859), though inferior, maintained a high position, but she afterwards wrote little of importance except some very charming tales for children. Her most remarkable novels, after those mentioned above, were The Ogilvies (1849), Olive (1850), The Head of the Family (1851), Agatha’s Husband (1853). There is much passion and power in these early works, and all that Mrs Craik wrote was characterized by high principle and deep feeling. Some of the short stories in Avillion and other Tales also exhibit a fine imagination. She published some poems distinguished by genuine lyrical spirit, narratives of tours in Ireland and Cornwall, and A Woman’s Thoughts about Women. She married Mr G. L. Craik, a partner in the house of Macmillan & Company, in 1864, and died at Shortlands, near Bromley, Kent, on the 12th of October 1887.
CRAIK, GEORGE LILLIE (1798-1866), English man of letters, the son of a schoolmaster, was born at Kennoway, Fifeshire, in 1798. He studied at the university of St Andrews with the intention of entering the church, but, altering his plans, became the editor of a local newspaper, and went to London in 1824 to devote himself to literature. He became connected with a short-lived literary paper called the Verulam; in 1831 he published his Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties among the works of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; he contributed a considerable 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. Craik is best known for his abridged version of this work, The History of English Literature and the English Language (1861), which passed through several editions. 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 two 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 25th of June 1866. He had married Miss Jeannette Dempster (d. 1856) in 1826, and his daughter, Georgiana Marion Craik (Mrs A. W. May), wrote over thirty novels, of which Lost and Won (1859) was the best. Besides the works already noticed, Craik published the History of British Commerce from the Earliest Times (1844), Romance of the Peerage (1848-1850) and The English of Shakespeare (1856).
CRAIL (formerly Karel), a royal and police burgh of Fifeshire, Scotland, 2 m. from Fife Ness, the most easterly point of the county, and 11 m. S.E. of St Andrews by the North British railway, but 2 m. nearer by road. Pop. (1901) 1077. 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 residence of David I. and other 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 still exist. The church of Maelrubha, the patron saint of Crail, is an edifice of great antiquity. Many of the ordinary houses are massive and quaint. The public buildings include a library and reading-room and town hall. The chief industries comprise fisheries, especially for crabs, shipping and brewing. It is growing in favour as a summer resort. It unites with St Andrews, the two Anstruthers, Kilrenny, Pittenweem and Cupar in returning one member to parliament.