William Theodore Heard was born on 24 February 1884 in Edinburgh, and died at Rome in the clinic at S. Stefano Rotondo run by the Blue Nuns, on the morning of Sunday, 16 September 1973. He was a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. In 1970 he was elevated to Cardinal Priest of San Teodoro, as is customary for Cardinal Deacons after serving for ten years in that capacity. That his funeral did not take place at the Scots College certainly speaks silent volumes about a private pain of which neither he nor any of his contemporaries have left any public record.