Recent from talks
Frederic William Maitland
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Frederic William Maitland
Frederic William Maitland FBA (28 May 1850 – c. 19 December 1906) was an English historian of medieval England and jurist who is regarded as the modern father of English legal history. From 1884 until he died in 1906, he was Reader in English Law at Cambridge. He was Downing Professor of the Laws of England. He came from a distinguished intellectual family. Maitland was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. Leaving for the bar after an initial failure to obtain a fellowship at Cambridge, he returned to academia in 1884 and quickly became one of the most distinguished historians of his generation.
Frederic William Maitland was born on 28 May 1850 at 53 Guilford Street in London. He was the only son and second of three children of John Gorham Maitland and Emma, daughter of John Frederic Daniell. His grandfather was Samuel Roffey Maitland. Maitland's father was a barrister but, having little practice, became a civil servant, serving as secretary to the Civil Service Commission.
Maitland was educated at a preparatory school in Brighton before entering Eton College in 1863, where Edward Daniel Stone was his private tutor. At Eton, Maitland was not prominent either academically or athletically, although a close school friend thought he would become "a kind of philosophic Charles Lamb". He then matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1869 as a commoner. A dislike of classics acquired at Eton initially led him to read mathematics, with little success. Then, inspired by Henry Sidgwick, he switched to the relatively new moral sciences tripos in 1870, and took first-class honours in 1872, being bracketed senior with his friend William Cunningham; he was elected a scholar of his college the same year. The following year, he took his degree and won the Whewell Scholarship in international law.
Popular among his contemporaries, Maitland was elected secretary, then president, of the Cambridge Union. He was also, like his father before him, a Cambridge Apostle. A lover of exercise since his Eton days, he rowed for Trinity and ran for the university, winning a blue for representing the university in three-mile races.
Maitland's mother had died in 1851, shortly after the birth of his younger sister. Then, both his father and grandfather died when he was still at school. From his grandfather, he inherited a manor house and some land in Brookthorpe, Gloucestershire. The estate provided him with an income until the agricultural depression in the 1880s.
After Cambridge, Maitland tried to gain a fellowship in philosophy at Trinity College in 1875 with a dissertation entitled A Historical Sketch of Liberty and Equality: As Ideals of English Political Philosophy from the Time of Hobbes to the Time of Coleridge, but was beaten out by fellow Apostle James Ward. Having joined Lincoln's Inn as a student in 1872, he was called to the bar there in 1876, and became a competent equity lawyer and conveyancer.
Meanwhile, encouraged by Sidgwick, he began a book on property law, but abandoned it out of frustration at certain features of English property law; he expressed these sentiments in an anonymous article in the Westminster Review in 1879, described as "a bold, eloquent, and humorous plea for a sweeping change in the English law of Real Property". It was followed by three further articles in the Law Magazine and Review between 1881 and 1883.
In 1880, Maitland was introduced by Frederick Pollock, who had been to Eton and Cambridge with him, to the Sunday Tramps, a walking club founded by Leslie Stephen. Through Pollock, Maitland was introduced in 1884 to Paul Vinogradoff, a Russian medievalist who was in England to study records lodged in the Public Record Office.
Hub AI
Frederic William Maitland AI simulator
(@Frederic William Maitland_simulator)
Frederic William Maitland
Frederic William Maitland FBA (28 May 1850 – c. 19 December 1906) was an English historian of medieval England and jurist who is regarded as the modern father of English legal history. From 1884 until he died in 1906, he was Reader in English Law at Cambridge. He was Downing Professor of the Laws of England. He came from a distinguished intellectual family. Maitland was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. Leaving for the bar after an initial failure to obtain a fellowship at Cambridge, he returned to academia in 1884 and quickly became one of the most distinguished historians of his generation.
Frederic William Maitland was born on 28 May 1850 at 53 Guilford Street in London. He was the only son and second of three children of John Gorham Maitland and Emma, daughter of John Frederic Daniell. His grandfather was Samuel Roffey Maitland. Maitland's father was a barrister but, having little practice, became a civil servant, serving as secretary to the Civil Service Commission.
Maitland was educated at a preparatory school in Brighton before entering Eton College in 1863, where Edward Daniel Stone was his private tutor. At Eton, Maitland was not prominent either academically or athletically, although a close school friend thought he would become "a kind of philosophic Charles Lamb". He then matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1869 as a commoner. A dislike of classics acquired at Eton initially led him to read mathematics, with little success. Then, inspired by Henry Sidgwick, he switched to the relatively new moral sciences tripos in 1870, and took first-class honours in 1872, being bracketed senior with his friend William Cunningham; he was elected a scholar of his college the same year. The following year, he took his degree and won the Whewell Scholarship in international law.
Popular among his contemporaries, Maitland was elected secretary, then president, of the Cambridge Union. He was also, like his father before him, a Cambridge Apostle. A lover of exercise since his Eton days, he rowed for Trinity and ran for the university, winning a blue for representing the university in three-mile races.
Maitland's mother had died in 1851, shortly after the birth of his younger sister. Then, both his father and grandfather died when he was still at school. From his grandfather, he inherited a manor house and some land in Brookthorpe, Gloucestershire. The estate provided him with an income until the agricultural depression in the 1880s.
After Cambridge, Maitland tried to gain a fellowship in philosophy at Trinity College in 1875 with a dissertation entitled A Historical Sketch of Liberty and Equality: As Ideals of English Political Philosophy from the Time of Hobbes to the Time of Coleridge, but was beaten out by fellow Apostle James Ward. Having joined Lincoln's Inn as a student in 1872, he was called to the bar there in 1876, and became a competent equity lawyer and conveyancer.
Meanwhile, encouraged by Sidgwick, he began a book on property law, but abandoned it out of frustration at certain features of English property law; he expressed these sentiments in an anonymous article in the Westminster Review in 1879, described as "a bold, eloquent, and humorous plea for a sweeping change in the English law of Real Property". It was followed by three further articles in the Law Magazine and Review between 1881 and 1883.
In 1880, Maitland was introduced by Frederick Pollock, who had been to Eton and Cambridge with him, to the Sunday Tramps, a walking club founded by Leslie Stephen. Through Pollock, Maitland was introduced in 1884 to Paul Vinogradoff, a Russian medievalist who was in England to study records lodged in the Public Record Office.
Recent media