Frederic William Maitland
Frederick W. Maitland | |
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Photogravure by Annan & Sons | |
| Born | 28 May 1850 |
| Died | c. 19 December 1906 (aged 56) Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain |
| Education | Trinity College, Cambridge |
| Occupation | Historian |
| Title | Downing Professor of the Laws of England |
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Frederic William Maitland FBA (28 May 1850 – c. 19 December 1906) was an English historian and jurist who is regarded as the modern father of English legal history. From 1884 until his death in 1906, he was reader in English law, then Downing Professor of the Laws of England at the University of Cambridge.
Born into 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.