The Author

Craig Paterson

OStJ, LLB, MA, MLIS, PhD, FSAScot, AFRHistS

Craig Paterson is a Scottish legal and heraldic historian. He took his LLB with Distinction at the University of Edinburgh, an MA in political philosophy at the University of York, and his PhD in Ethics at Saint Louis University. He taught philosophy at Providence College, Rhode Island, and earlier worked as an antiquarian bibliographer at the Faculty of Advocates' Library in Edinburgh and at Abbotsford House.

His research ranges across Scots private law, Scottish heraldic jurisprudence, the history of the orders of chivalry and of the lesser nobility of Scotland, and natural law ethics. Since 2012 he has been section editor for Death and Dying at Philosophical Papers.

He is an Officer of the Order of St John and belongs to its Priory in the United States of America. An armiger of both England and Scotland, he is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Freeman and Liveryman of the City of London. In Malta he is an Honorary Officer of the St John Rescue Corps, which has awarded him its Medal of Merit.