MAITLAND, William (1528?-73). A Scotch statesman, better known as ‘Secretary Lethington.’ He was the eldest son of Sir Richard Maitland (q.v.), of Lethington. He was educated at Saint Andrews and on the Continent, and quickly displayed great aptitude for a political career. He became a convert to the Reformed doctrines about 1555, but could not have been a violent partisan, since in 1558 he was appointed Secretary of State by Mary of Guise. In the tollowing year, however, he openly joined the lords of the congregation, and was one of the Scotch commissioners who met the Duke of Norfolk at Berwick to arrange the conditions on which Queen Elizabeth would give them assistance. In 1561, after the arrival of Queen Mary from France, he was made an extraordinary Lord of Session. He strongly objected to the ratification of Knox’s Book of Discipline, and in 1563 conducted the prosecution raised against Knox for treason; from this time he appears to have split with the Reformers. In 1564 he held a long debate with Knox on the claims of the Reformed Church to be independent of the State In 1566 he took part in the plot against Rizzo, after whose assassination he was proscribed and obliged to seek shelter for some months in obscurity. He was cognizant of Bothwell’s scheme for the murder of Darnley; yet when he saw the hopeless nature of Bothwell’s designs, he immediately joined the confederacy of the lords. While Mary was still a prisoner at Lochleven he is said to have written to her offering his services, yet he was present at the coronation of King James VI., 1567; and although he secretly aided in the escape of the Queen, he fought against her on the field of Langside. In 1568 he accompanied the regent Murray to the conferences held at York regarding the Scottish Queen; but even here he tried to further her interests, and is said to have been the first to propose to the Duke of Norfolk a union between him and Mary. The Scottish lords felt that he was a dangerous enemy to the commonwealth, and in 1569 he was arrested at Stirling for complicity in Darnley’s murder, but was liberated shortly after by an artifice of Kirkaldy of Grange. After the murder of the regent Murray he and Kirkaldy became the leaders of the Queen’s party, in consequence of which he was declared a rebel, deprived of his offices and hands by the regent Morton, and besieged, along with Kirkaldy, in Edinburg Castle. After a long resistance, the castle surrendered, and Maitland was imprisoned in Leith, where he died (1573). Buchanan drew his character with a severe pen in The Chameleon. Consult: Chalmers, Life of Mary, Queen of Scots (3 vols., London, 1822); Skelton, Maitland of Lethington (London, 1887-88).
MAÎTRE D'ARMES, mā̇′tr’ därm (Fr., master of arms). A fencing master. In the French Army a maître d’armes is assigned to each regiment. See Fencing.
MAÎTRE DE FORGES, de fôrzh, Le (The Iron-Founder). A romance, by Georges Ohnet (1882). The heroine, Claire de Beaulieu, loves her cousin, who marries another when Claire’s fortune is suddenly lost without her knowledge. In pique she marries Derblay, but makes no effort to conceal her repugnance for him. He endures the false situation until his duel with his wife’s cousin reveals the delicacy of his conduct and earns her love. This mediocre romance had a phenomenal success in many translations as well as in the original. It was dramatized by the author and presented at the Gymnase in 1883.
MAITREYA, mī̇-trā′yȧ, A proper name derived from Sanskrit mitra, ‘friend,’ and designating in its Pali form Metteyya, the future Buddha, the Buddha of Friendship, who will appear 5000 years after Gautama. At present he is believed to be in the Tushita Heaven of the Blest. He is known in Tibet as Jampa (Tib. Byams-pa, pronounced Jam-pa or Cham-pa) and is believed to be of gigantic size, so that colossal statues are used to represent him. Consult: Rhys, David, Buddhism (London, 1900); Schlagintweit, Buddhism in Thibet (ib., 1868); Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet (ib., 1895).
MAIZE (Sp. maíz, from Haytian mahiz, mahis, the native name), or Indian Corn (Zea Mays). An annual grass with erect stems and spreading leaves; male or staminate flowers borne upon the summit of the stem, which is commonly designated the tassel; and the female flowers upon the ear, which rises from the axils of the leaves. The protruding styles of the female flowers are called the silk, and the united pistillate spikes the cob. Fertilization of the pistillate flowers is accomplished by the wind or other agencies, which carry pollen from the staminate flowers to the silk. The botanical relationship of maize is shown in the discussion of grasses. Its nearest relative is probably the Mexican teosinte (Euchlæna luxurians), a plant of the same general habit of growth. Experiments conducted by Harshberger and others have seemed to show that the wild form (which is unknown), or the plant from which maize was derived, is the teosinte. Maize differs from most grasses in having solid instead of hollow stems. Adventitious roots are often developed from the nodes near the ground which serve to brace the plant against winds. The plant varies in height from less than two feet in dwarf varieties to more than thirty feet, reported for some forms in the West Indies. Specimens more than twenty feet tall are not infrequent in the rich river valleys in the United States. The size of the ear and size, color, and hardness of the grain show marked variation. Ears vary in length from an inch in varieties of popcorn to fifteen inches or more in the dent varieties. White, black, yellow, and red, with numerous variants, are the colors of the grain. In some the grain is no lorger than rice grains; in a South American variety, cuzco, the individual grains often weigh thirty-five times as much as the small popcorn grains. All degrees of hardness are shown, ranging from the flint varieties (so called from their extreme hardness) to the squaw corn and flour corn, the grains of which are so starchy and soft as to be readily broken between the fingers. The season required for nurturing varies from one month in a Paraguayan variety to seven months in others. Maize shows a remarkable tendency to ‘mix,’ as the blending of varieties is called, the pollen of one variety showing its effect upon the grain of another. This may be seen in the common occurrence of variegated grains and in the deterioration of sweet corn and popcorn when planted near field varieties. Abnormal forms are of frequent occurrence, as cobs with staminate
