Frederick William Maitland

The Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen appeared in the autumn of 1906, and reviews were steadily flowing in when the Downing household began to make preparations for its annual pilgrimage across the sea. Maitland, who was greatly relieved at the publication of his book, and at its friendly reception in the press, seemed to have recovered something of his old buoyancy. He pushed on an edition of Sir Thomas Smith's De Republica Anglorum, which a pupil was undertaking at his instigation and under his supervision, and renewed his attack upon the Year Books. For some years past he had been concerned with the prospect of finding a trained scholar who would be capable of carrying on the work when he was no longer there to direct it. In a foreign university a man of Maitland's power would have created a school; young men from all parts of the country would have clustered round him to learn paleography and law French, and the elements of social and legal history, and the zeal of the class would have atoned for any deficiency in numbers. But the climate of the English University is not favourable to the production of finished historical technique. We are an economical race, and since advanced work does not pay in the Tripos, or in the careers to which the Tripos serves as a portal, it is left to the casual patronage of amateurs. Maitland thoroughly understood the practical limitations under which an English professor must work. He gave courses of lectures which were expressly adapted to the general needs of the undergraduates, and were attended by all the law students in the University, but interspersed these general courses with others of a more special character, designed to interest the real historical student. Thus, in 1892 and 1894, he held classes for the study of English Medieval Charters, and this instruction in paleography and diplomatic was repeated in 1903, 1904 and 1905. In sixty hours spent over facsimiles Maitland contended that he could turn out a man who would be able to read medieval documents with fluency and exactitude.

But with two exceptions the contributors to the volumes of the Selden Society were not drawn from the ranks of Maitland's Cambridge pupils, and the completion of the fourth volume of the Year Books was undertaken by a distinguished scholar, who, though he would be the first to admit that he had learnt much of his craft from Maitland, was never an academical pupil in the strict sense of the term.

One Cambridge disciple there was, who, under Maitland's guidance, attained to rare distinction. Miss Mary Bateson was writing essays for Maitland while he was Reader in English Law, and at that early period impressed him with the thoroughness and grasp of her knowledge. Under Maitland's direction Miss Bateson became one of the best medievalists in England. Her industry rivalled that of her master; her judgments were sane and level, and in the art of historical editing she acquired almost all that Maitland could teach her. Articles and volumes flowed from her pen, all of them good, but best of all the two volumes upon Borough customs, published by the Selden Society in 1904 and 1906, and owing much "to the counsel and direction of Professor Maitland." Then very suddenly, in the late autumn of 1906, Miss Bateson died. Maitland was already preparing to sail for the Canaries, whither his wife and elder daughter had preceded him. The loss of Miss Bateson affected him deeply. He found time to write two short notices for the Press, speaking of qualities which had impressed him, "the hunger and thirst for knowledge, the keen delight in the chase, the good-humoured willingness to admit that the scent was false, the eager desire to get on with the work, the cheerful resolution to go back and begin again, the broad good sense and the unaffected modesty," and then embarked for Southampton. Friends who saw him upon the eve of his departure spoke of him hopefully: for judged by his own frail standard he seemed to be well. Then came a telegram announcing his death. On the voyage out he had developed or contracted pneumonia, and being alone and ill-cared for, arrived at Las Palmas desperately ill. His wife flew down from the villa which she had prepared against his coming, but the malady had obtained too firm a hold, and he died on December 19, 1906, at Quiney's Hotel. His body lies in the English cemetery at Las Palmas. At the time of his death he was fifty-six years of age.

He was not without honour in his own generation. In that inclement December five invitations travelled out to Las Palmas, – from the University of Oxford that he should deliver the Romanes lecture, and from the United States of America that he should lecture at the Lowell Institute, at Harvard, and at the Universities of Columbia and Chicago. Academic honours had come to him in plenty. Cambridge and Oxford, Glasgow, Moscow and Cracow gave him their honorary degrees. He was corresponding member of the Royal Prussian and of the Royal Bavarian Academies, distinctions rarely conferred upon English scholars, an honorary Fellow of his old College, Trinity, an honorary Bencher of Lincoln's Inn, an original Fellow of the British Academy. The newly established bronze medal of the Harvard Law School was awarded to him in the last days of his life, and on the news of his death movements were set on foot at each of the great English Universities to do honour to his memory. At a public meeting held in the Hall of Trinity College, Cambridge, on June 1, 1907, and addressed by some of the most eminent representatives of English learning it was resolved that "a Frederic William Maitland Memorial Fund should be established for the promotion of research and instruction in the history of law and legal language and institutions, and that this should be supplemented by a personal memorial to be placed in the Squire Library of the University33." At Oxford some students of law and history contributed to form a library of legal and social history to be called the Maitland Library, and to be connected with the Corpus Chair of Jurisprudence now held by Professor Vinogradoff. By the kindness of the Warden and Fellows of All Souls a room was lent to the Maitland Library in the front quadrangle of the College, and there the student may find Maitland's own copy of Domesday Book, together with many other volumes which had been in his possession and which bear the traces of his usage. As a token of his respect for Maitland's memory, and to further the skilled editing of a valuable repertory of knowledge, Mr Seebohm has presented to the Maitland Library his famous manuscript of the Denbigh Cartulary, one of the cardinal authorities for the history of Welsh land-tenures, and an edition of this collection of documents, executed by the pupils of the Corpus professor, will be the most appropriate tribute to Maitland's example in a University in which he might have been, but was not, an adopted son.

Lord Acton once spoke of "our three Cambridge historians, Maine, Lightfoot, Maitland," each a pioneer in his own region of research, and each a name of significance for universal history. Maitland was not a Conservative like Maine, or a Churchman like Lightfoot; he was simply a scientific historian, with a singularly open and candid mind, and with a detachment almost unique from the prejudice of sect or party. In politics he would have ranked himself as a Liberal Unionist, though his mind was far too independent to bear the strain of party allegiance and led him to differ upon some important questions from the principles upheld by the Unionist government. Thus he was in favour of what is called "the secular solution" in education, and tried, but without success, to think well of the policy which brought about the South African War. The Protectionist reaction excited his disapproval, and he joined a Free Trade Committee in Cambridge: but he rarely spoke of politics, and like all men of the scientific temperament had small interest in the party game, and no little diffidence as to his power of reaching solid conclusions upon questions which he had not the leisure thoroughly to explore. But upon matters which affected the interests of knowledge and education his views were firm and clear-cut.

His place in the history of English law has been summarized by Professor Dicey with an authority to which I can make no pretence. "Maitland's services to law were at least threefold. He demonstrated in the first place what many lawyers must have suspected, that law could contribute at least as much to history as history could contribute to law. Now that the truth of this assertion has been proved it seems a commonplace to insist upon it. But if one looks at the works of our best historians, even of so great an historian as Macaulay, who had rare legal capacity, and who had extensive knowledge from some points of view of English law, one is astonished to observe how small a part law was made to play in the development of the English nation, which had been, above all, a legal-minded nation. The doctrine that law was an essential part of history needed not only asserting – we could all probably have done this – but demonstrating. The needed demonstration has been made by Maitland, and will not be forgotten. Maitland's second achievement is this: law ought to be, but hitherto in England has not been, a part of the literature of England. Among Maitland's predecessors two men living in different ages have done their best to make law a part of the literature of England. You will forgive me for commemorating, as in my case is almost a matter of private duty, the noble effort made by Blackstone to give law its rightful position in the world of letters. Blackstone failed, not by any weakness of his own, but because he left no successors. He did as much as a man could achieve in Blackstone's time. Maitland himself, I believe, shared this opinion. The next man who took in hand a book somewhat similar to that undertaken by Blackstone was Sir Henry Maine. He achieved a great measure of success. He stimulated in a way which it was difficult for anyone to realise who had not read Maine's Ancient Law when it first appeared, public interest in law and jurisprudence. He gave to the English world a new view of the possibilities of interest possessed by the study of law. But his success is not complete. He did not show, as did Maitland, that even the most crabbed details of English law might be made part of English literature. The reason why Maine cannot in this matter stand on the same level with Maitland is that he did not possess the qualifications for the third and last of Maitland's great achievements. No one can say that profound learning was possessed by either Blackstone or Sir Henry Maine. But Maitland was a learned historian as well as a learned lawyer. He therefore could and did demonstrate that extraordinary learning and research have no connection whatever with dullness and pedantry, and that learning may be combined with the most philosophic and the profoundest views of law which the mind of man can form34."

This sketch will have been written in vain if it fails to suggest that the world lost in Maitland not only a great and original scholar but also a nature of singular charm and beauty. The life of severe scholarship may, and perhaps often does, dry up the fountains of sympathy, but this was not the case with Maitland. The current of his affections ran deep and strong, and so easily was his enthusiasm fired that he would praise the books of young authors with a delight which seemed almost unqualified if they happened to contain any real merit. No one was more entirely free from self-importance or from any desire to defend, after they had become untenable, positions which he had once been inclined to maintain. He possessed a gift which is far rarer than it is generally supposed to be, and is often very imperfectly possessed by learned men, an intense and disinterested passion for truth, a passion so pure that he would speak with genuine enthusiasm of such criticisms of his own work as he judged to be well founded and to constitute a positive addition to knowledge. His modesty, both in speech and writing, was so extreme that it might have been put down to affectation; but it was an integral part of the temper which made him great in scholarship. He saw the vast hive of science and the infinite garden of things, and knew how little the most busy life could add to the store; and so, living always in the company of large projects and measuring himself by the highest standard of that which is obtainable in knowledge, he viewed his own acquisitions as a small thing – a fragment of light won from a shoreless ocean of darkness.

His peculiar genius lay in discovery. He thought for himself, wrote a pure nervous English of his own, and even in the ordinary converse of life gave the impression of a being to whom everything was fresh and alive. His style was very characteristic of his vivid and elastic mind, ranging as it did from grave eloquence to colloquial fun, and using only the simplest vocabulary to produce its effects. Conscious theory or method of style he neither claimed nor cared to possess; he wrote as the spirit moved him, finding with astonishing ease the vestment most appropriate to his thought, and composing with such fluency that his manuscript went to press almost free of erasures. The literary and artistic conventions of the hour did not appeal to him. He never went to picture galleries; in later life he seldom read poetry, though as a boy he had been fond of it; and he would profess to be unable to distinguish a good sonnet when he saw one. Knowing the thing which he could do best, and judging that it was worthy of a life, he stripped himself of all superfluous tastes and inclinations that his whole time and strength might be dedicated to the work. Even music had to give way. And yet, though he laboured under the spur of a most exacting conscience and with every discouragement which illness and harrowing physical pain could oppose, it was with a certain blithe alacrity, as if work, however protracted and monotonous, was always a delightful pastime. He would sit in an armchair with a pipe in his mouth and some ponderous folio propped against his knees, steadily reading and smoking far into the night, thinking closely, taking no note, but apparently retaining everything. For a man who wrote and taught so much his knowledge was amazing both in range and accuracy; but his panoply might have been of gossamer so lightly did he bear it, and those who saw him a few times only may remember him chiefly for his irrepressible gift of humour, or for some external features, the fine steady brown eye, the rich flexible voice, the pale clear cut face seamed with innumerable lines, which lit up so quickly in the play of talk. Mr S. H. Butcher, who was in the same year at Cambridge and of the same college, has spoken the mind of those who knew him best. "When they think of him they recall, in the first instance, the delightful companion, the friend who had himself the genius of friendship. They think of his humour, overflowing from his talk and his speeches into what seems to many the driest regions of legal or antiquarian learning, and they recall his modesty, his quiet charm and his essential courtesy of soul35." And there was withal that high spiritual power of abnegation and of purpose in which the lover of hard won truth attains to his beatitude. Res severa est verum gaudium.

1

"The Cambridge Apostles," by W. D. Christie. Macmillan's Magazine, Nov. 1864.

2

A Biographical Notice by Mrs Reynell (privately printed).

3

Cambridge University Reporter, Dec. 17, 1904.

4

A punning squib, very spirited and amusing, entitled "A solemn Mystery," and contributed to The Adventurer, June 4, 1869, seems to have been Maitland's first appearance in print.

5

Cambridge University Reporter, Dec. 7, 1900.

6

There were four candidates for the Fellowship: W. Cunningham, Arthur Lyttelton, F. W. Maitland, and James Ward, every one of them distinguished in after life. With so strong a competition the College might have done well to elect more Fellows than one in Moral and Mental Science.

7

Such for instance as: —

"The love of simplicity has done vast harm to English Political Philosophy."

"No history of the British Constitution would be complete which did not point out how much its growth has been affected by ideas derived from Aristotle."

"The idea of a social compact did not become really active till it was allied with the doctrine that all men are equal."

"In Hume we see the first beginnings of a scientific use of History."

8

For a good instance of Maitland's trained insight see Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 232.

9

Maitland once conducted an argument before Jessel, M. R. Re Morton v. Hallett (Feb. & May, 1880, Ch. 15, D. 143).

10

Browning, Ring and the Book. See Maitland, Bracton's Note Book, vol. 1.

11

An account of Maitland's "valuable" lectures "On the Cause of High and Low Wages," given to an average class of some twenty workmen in the Artizan's Institute, Upper St Martin's Lane, in 1874, and "followed by a very useful discussion in which the students asked and Mr Maitland answered many knotty questions" may be read in H. Solly, These Eighty Years, vol. II. p. 440.

12

The note shows a knowledge of 18 Bracton MSS.

13

The Russian edition of Studies in Villeinage.

14

Law Quarterly Review.

15

Announcing Maitland's election to the Downing Chair.

16

Professor Sidgwick's Elements of Politics was published in 1891.

17

Of the English edition of Vinogradoff's Studies in Villainage.

18

"Frederick William Maitland," by B. F. L., Solicitor's Journal, Jan. 5, 1907. See also The Year Books of Edward II (Selden Society), vol. iv., Preface.

19

I.e. as Domesmen.

20

Political Science Quarterly, vol. xxii., No. 2, p. 287.

21

Cambridge University Reporter, July 22, 1907, p. 1313.

22

Cambridge University Reporter, June 22, 1907, p. 1303.

23

Maitland was probably drawn too far on the path of scepticism. See Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, pp. 135-40, and Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, 2nd ed., vol. 1., pp. 110 ff.

24

The leading characteristics of the system had been pointed out as early as 1821 by the Danish scholar, O. C. Olufsen, and received much further illustration from the labours of Georg Hanssen of Göttingen, whose papers [collected in 1880-4 under the title Agrarhistorische Abhandlungen] date back to 1835.

25

Middle Ages. In 1900 Maitland published a translation of part of Otto Gierke's (O.G.) Das deutsche Genossenschaftrecht under the title Political Theories of the Middle Ages.

26

The B. G. B. is the Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch. Maitland was reading Mugdan's Die Gesammten Materialien zum Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuch. The Y. B. B. are the Year-books.

27

The Cambridge Modern History.

28

Otto Gierke's monograph on Johannes Althusius, published 1880.

29

To the Cambridge Modern History.

30

Maitland was invited to succeed Lord Acton in the Chair of Modern History at Cambridge.

31

Mire Vd! No verá cada día el condicional de subjunctivo.

32

The Duke of Devonshire, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, had criticised Mr Joseph Chamberlain's fiscal proposals.

33

A bronze bust, executed by Mr S. Nicholson Babb, has, in pursuance of this resolution, been presented to the University by the subscribers to the fund and is placed in the Squire Law Library.

34

Cambridge University Reporter, July 22, 1907, p. 1308.

35

Cambridge University Reporter, July 22, 1907, p. 1306.