Frederic William Maitland

Frederic William Maitland 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.