he was gazetted a K.C.S.I. In 1869 Maine was appointed to the chair of historical and comparative jurisprudence newly founded in the university of Oxford by Corpus Christi College. Residence at Oxford was not required, and the election amounted to an invitation to the new professor to resume and continue in his own way the work he had begun in Ancient Law. During the succeeding years he published the principal matters of his lectures in a carefully revised literary form: Village Communities in the East and the West (1871); Early History of Institutions (1875); Early Law and Custom (1883). In all these works the phenomena of societies in an archaic stage, whether still capable of observation or surviving in a fragmentary manner among more modern surroundings or preserved in contemporary records, are brought into line, often with singular felicity, to establish and illustrate the normal process of development in legal and political ideas.
In 1877 the mastership of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where Maine had formerly been tutor, became vacant. There were two strong candidates whose claims were so nearly equal that it was difficult to elect either; the difficulty was solved by a unanimous invitation to Maine to accept the post. His acceptance entailed the resignation of the Oxford chair, though not continuous residence at Cambridge. Ten years later considerations of a somewhat similar kind led to his election to succeed Sir William Harcourt as Whewell professor of international law at Cambridge. His all too short performance in this office is represented by a posthumous volume which had not received his own final revision, International Law (1888).
Meanwhile Maine had published in 1885 his one work of speculative politics, a volume of essays on Popular Government, designed to show that democracy is not in itself more stable than any other form of government, and that there is no necessary connexion between democracy and progress. The book was deliberately unpopular in tone; it excited much controversial comment and some serious and useful discussion.
In 1886 there appeared in the Quarterly Review (clxii. 181) an article on the posthumous work of J. F. M’Lennan, edited and completed by his brother, entitled “The Patriarchal Theory.” The article, though necessarily unsigned (in accordance with the rule of the Quarterly as it then stood), was Maine’s reply to the M‘Lennan brothers’ attack on the historical reconstruction of the Indo-European family system put forward in Ancient Law and supplemented in Early Law and Custom. Maine was generally averse from controversy, but showed on this occasion that it was not for want of controversial power. He carried the war back into the invader’s country, and charged J. F. M‘Lennan’s theory of primitive society with owing its plausible appearance of universal validity to general neglect of the Indo-European evidence and misapprehension of such portions of it as M‘Lennan did attempt to handle.
Maine’s health, which had never been strong, gave way towards the end of 1887. He went to the Riviera under medical advice, and died at Cannes on the 3rd of February 1888. He left a wife and two sons, of whom the elder died soon afterwards.
An excellent summary of Maine’s principal writings may be seen in Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff’s memoir. The prompt and full recognition of Maine’s genius by continental publicists must not pass unmentioned even in the briefest notice. France, Germany, Italy, Russia have all contributed to do him honour; this is the more remarkable as one or two English publicists of an older school signally failed to appreciate him. Maine warned his countrymen against the insularity which results from ignorance of all law and institutions save one’s own; his example has shown the benefit of the contrary habit. His prominent use of Roman law and the wide range of his observation have made his works as intelligible abroad as at home, and thereby much valuable information—for example, concerning the nature of British supremacy in India, and the position of native institutions there—has been made the property of the world of letters instead of the peculiar and obscure possession of a limited class of British public servants. Foreign readers of Maine have perhaps understood even better than English ones that he is not the propounder of a system but the pioneer of a method, and that detailed criticism, profitable as it may be and necessary as in time it must be, will not leave the method itself less valid or diminish the worth of the master’s lessons in its use. The rather small bulk of Maine’s published and avowed work may be explained partly by a fine literary sense which would let nothing go out under his name unfinished, partly by the drawbacks incident to precarious health. Maine’s temperament was averse from the labour of minute criticism, and his avoidance of it was no less a matter of prudence. But it has to be remembered that Maine also wrote much which was never publicly acknowledged. Before he went to India he was one of the original contributors to the Saturday Review, founded in 1855, and the inventor of its name. Like his intimate friend Fitzjames Stephen, he was an accomplished journalist, enjoyed occasional article-writing as a diversion from official duties, and never quite abandoned it. The practice of such writing probably counted for something in the freedom and clearness of Maine’s style and the effectiveness of his dialectic. His books are a model of scientific exposition which never ceases to be literature.
See Sir A. Lyall and others, in Law Quart. Rev. iv. 129 seq. (1888); Sir F. Pollock, “Sir Henry Maine and his Work,” in Oxford Lectures, &c. (1890); “Sir H. Maine as a Jurist,” Edin. Rev. (July 1893); Introduction and Notes to new ed. of Ancient Law (1906); Sir M. E. Grant Duff, Sir Henry Maine: a brief Memoir of his Life, &c. (1892); Notes from a Diary, passim; L. Stephen, “Maine” in Dict. Nat. Biog. (1893); Paul Vinogradoff, The Teaching of Sir Henry Maine (1904). (F. Po.)
MAINE, an old French province, bounded N. by Normandy, E. by Orléanais, S. by Touraine and Anjou, and W. by Brittany. Before the Roman Conquest the region occupied by this province was inhabited by the Aulerci Cenomanni and the Aulerci Diablintes; under the Roman empire it consisted of two civitates comprised in the Provincia Lugdunensis Tertia—the Civitas Cenomannorum and the Civitas Diablintum, whose chief towns were Le Mans and Jublains. These two civitates were united during the barbarian period and formed a single bishopric, that of Le Mans, suffragan to the metropolitan see of Tours. Under the Merovingians and Carolingians the diocese of Le Mans corresponded to the Pagus Cenomanensis, and in the feudal period to the county of Maine. In the 16th century the county of Maine, with the addition of Perche, formed a military government—the province of Maine. Since 1790 this province has been represented approximately by the departments of Sarthe and Mayenne, the respective capitals of which are Le Mans and Laval. In 1855 the bishopric of Laval was separated from that of Le Mans. Maine was evangelized in the 3rd century by St Julian. After forming part of the kingdom of Syagrius, it was conquered by Clovis at the end of the 5th century. Owing to the scarcity of documents the history of Maine until the end of the 9th century is merged in the history of the bishops of Le Mans, which has come down to us in the Actus pontificum Cenomannis in urbe degentium (ed. Busson-Ledru, Le Mans, 1901), composed under the direction of Bishop Aldric (832–857). Roger (c. 892–c. 898) was perhaps the first hereditary count of Maine; the counts whose existence is certain are Hugh I. (c. 939–before 992), Hugh II. (before 992–1015), Herbert I. (1015–1032 to 1036), Hugh III. (1032 to 1036–1051), Herbert II. (1051–1062), William the Bastard (1063–1087), Robert Curthose (1087–1091), Hugh IV. (1091–1092) and Helias (1092–1110). Maine, which was in the vassalage of Anjou as early as the 9th century, was united to Anjou in 1110 by the marriage of Count Helias’s daughter to Fulk V., count of Anjou, and passed to the English crown in 1154, when Henry Plantagenet (who was born at Le Mans) became king of England. In 1204, after the confiscation of the estates of John of England, Maine was united to France; in 1246 it was separated from France by Louis IX., who handed it over to his brother Charles, count of Provence. Again united to France in 1328, it was given in 1356 as an apanage to Louis, second son of King John II., and did not
