904 FREDERIC WILLIAM MAITLAND. 



FREDERIC WILLIAM MAITLAND (1850-1906). 



Foreign Honorary Member in Class III, Section 1, 1897. 



Frederic William Maitland was born in London 28 May 1850 and 

 died at Las Palmas, Canaries, 19 December 1906. The grandson of 

 Samuel R. Maitland, the historian of the "Dark Ages," he was 

 educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he came 

 under the influence of Henry Sidgwick and won high distinction in 

 philosophy. He entered Lincoln's Inn in 1872 and was called to the 

 bar in 1876. His interests, however, soon began to turn from the 

 practice of law to its history, and in 1884 he was appointed Reader 

 of English Law in the University of Cambridge, and in 1888 Downing 

 Professor of the Laws of England, a chair which he held until his 

 death. It is, however, characteristic of the English university system 

 that the duties of his professorship consisted of general lectures to 

 undergraduates on the elements of law rather than of the training of 

 scholars in his special field, so that he formed no school of disciples who 

 could develop or continue his work. His professorship, however, gave 

 him considerable leisure for writing, and in spite of the ill health which 

 soon drove him southward in the winter and finally cut him off in the 

 fulness of his activity, he accomplished an astonishing amount of 

 productive labor. 



It is a curious fact that Maitland owed to a Russian historian, Paul 

 Vinogradoff, his introduction to the original records of English legal 

 history. The acquaintance ripened speedily into his first important 

 publication, a roll of " Pleas of the Crown for the County of Gloucester" 

 in 1884, followed in 1887 by " Bracton's Note-book." Then came 

 "Select Pleas of the Crown" (1888); "Select Pleas in Manorial 

 Courts" (1889); "Three Rolls of the King's Court, 1194-5" (1891); 

 'Records of the Parliament of 1305" (1893); "The Mirror of Jus- 

 tices" (1895); " Select Passages from Bracton and Azo" (1895); and 

 the "Year Books of Edward II," as far as 1310 (1903-06). Merely 

 as an editor of records and as the prime mover in inaugurating the 

 publications of the Selden Society, he would hold a high place among 

 those who have advanced the cause of English history. He shrank 

 from no editorial labor, such as the difficult problems of the Law- 

 French of the Year Books, but his introductions also show the wide 

 learning, the luminous view, and the brilliant style which characterize 

 all his writings. Besides these editions and a number of scattered 



