training), she preserved the undenominational atmosphere of the college.
To Miss Maitland the college owes the erection of its library, which contains 15,000 volumes and was opened in 1894 by Mr. John (afterwards Viscount) Morley. At Lord Morley's suggestion Helen Taylor [q. v. Suppl. II] presented to Somerville the library of John Stuart Mill, free of conditions.
She died after some two years' illness, on 19 Aug. 1906, at 12 Norham Road, Oxford, and was buried in Holywell cemetery, Oxford.
A portrait, a chalk drawing in three colours, made by William Strang, A.R.A., in 1905, is in the library at Somerville College. A memorial dining-hall, to be called after her, and panelled and furnished by the Maitland Memorial Fund, is in course of erection.
Besides the works cited. Miss Maitland published:
- 'Elsie, a Lowland Sketch,' 1875.
- 'Madge Hilton, or left to themselves,' 1884; 2nd edit. 1890.
- 'Rhoda,' a novel, 2 vols. 1886.
- 'Cookery Primer for School and Home Use,' 1888.
- 'Cottage Lectures,' 1889.
- 'Nellie O'Neil,' 1889; 2nd edit. 1910.
[The Times, 20, 23 Aug. 1906, not accurate in all details; Who's Who, 1906; private information.]
MAITLAND, FREDERIC WILLIAM (1850–1906), Downing professor of the laws of England, Cambridge, born on 28 May 1850 at 53 Guilford Street, London, was only son in a family of three children of John Gorham Maitland [q. v.] by his wife Emma, daughter of John Frederic Daniell, F.R.S. [q. v.]. From his grandfather, Samuel Roffey Maitland [q. v.], he received not only a small manorial estate at Brookthorpe in Gloucestershire, but also a love of historical research. His mother died in 1851, and his father, a scholar and a linguist, in 1863. Frederic's youth was mainly passed in charge of his aunt, Charlotte Louisa Daniell. After education at home, where German governesses gave him early command of that language, and at a preparatory school at Brighton, he passed in 1863 to Eton, where E. D. Stone was his private tutor. In 1869 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a commoner. Abandoning, in 1870, mathematics for moral and mental science, he came under the influence of Henry Sidgwick [q. v. Suppl. I]. In 1872 he was elected a scholar and was bracketed senior in moral sciences tripos. He became Whewell international law scholar in 1873. A fluent, caustic, and persuasive speaker, he was successively secretary and president of the Cambridge Union Society; he was also a good runner, and represented the university in the three-mile race. He graduated B. A. in 1873, and proceeded M.A. in 1876, being made hon. LL.D. in 1891.
Maitland joined Lincoln's Inn as a student on 6 June 1872, and was called to the bar on 17 Nov. 1876, and for the next eight years practised as conveyancer and equity draftsman, mainly as ' devil ' for Mr. Benjamin 'Bickley Rogers, a scholar as well as a lawyer of repute. Although Maitland received at Lincoln's Inn a thorough training in practical law, his bent was for scientific, theoretical, historical law. His knowledge of German introduced him early to Savigny's 'Geschichte des Romischen Rechts' (of which he began a translation never completed or published) and to the works of Brunner on Anglo-Norman law. Through Stubbs's 'Constitutional History' he was led to study the publications of the Record Commission, and the vast materials for the original study of English law. He soon formed the aim of doing for English law what Savigny had done for Roman law, that is, to produce, after due investigation and collation of the undigested and scattered materials, a scientific and philosophical history of English law from the earliest times in all its bearings upon the economic, political, constitutional, social and religious life of the English people. He rapidly trained himself by his unaided endeavours in palæography and diplomatic. Both training and character, in which quick wit and wide sympathies were combined with singular independence of mind, fitted him admirably for his task.
In 1884 Maitland was elected to the newly established readership in English law in the university of Cambridge, and there he mainly resided till his death. In 1888 he was elected Downing professor of English law, and moved to West Lodge, his official residence in Downing College. His inaugural lecture as professor, 'Why the History of English Law is not Written,' was a popular exposition of his aims and an appeal for fellow workers. As professor, while he lectured regularly to the students, he corresponded with or entertained the leading lawyers, jurists, and historians of England, Europe, and America. By lecture, review, and essay he was always pressing upon English readers, and acknowledging his own debt to, the labour of foreign writers, and was always generous in help and encouragement to fellow-workers.
