MAITLAND, EDWARD (1824-1897), English humanitarian writer, was born at Ipswich on the 27th of October 1824, and was educated at Caius College, Cambridge. The son of Charles David Maitland, perpetual curate of St James's Chapel, Brighton, he was intended for the Church, but his religious views did not permit him to take holy orders. For some years he lived abroad, first in California and then as a commissioner of Crownlands in Australia. After his return to England in 1857 he took up an advanced humanitarian position, and claimed to have acquired a new sense by which he was able to discern the spiritual condition of other people. He was associated with Mrs Anna Kingsford (1846-1888), the lady-doctor and supporter of vegetarianism and anti-vivisectionism, who, besides being one of the pioneers of higher education for women, had become a devotee of mystical theosophy; with her he brought out _Keys of the Creeds_ (1875), _The Perfect Way: or the Finding of Christ_ (1882), and founded the Hermetic Society in 1884. After her death he founded the Esoteric Christian Union in 1891, and wrote her _Life and Letters_ (1896). He died on the 2nd of October 1897. MAITLAND, FREDERIC WILLIAM (1850-1906), English jurist and historian, son of John Gorham Maitland, was born on the 28th of May 1850, and educated at Eton and Trinity, Cambridge, being bracketed at the head of the moral sciences tripos of 1872, and winning a Whewell scholarship for international law. He was called to the bar (Lincoln's Inn) in 1876, and made himself a thoroughly competent equity lawyer and conveyancer, but finally devoted himself to comparative jurisprudence and especially the history of English law. In 1884 he was appointed reader in English law at Cambridge, and in 1888 became Downing professor of the laws of England. Though handicapped in his later years by delicate health, his intellectual grasp and wide knowledge and research gradually made him famous as a jurist and historian. He edited numerous volumes for the Selden Society, including _Select Pleas for the Crown, 1200-1225_, _Select Pleas in Manorial Courts_ and _The Court Baron_; and among his principal works were _Gloucester Pleas_ (1884), _Justice and Police_ (1885), _Bracton's Note-Book_ (1887), _History of English Law_ (with Sir F. Pollock, 1895; new ed. 1898; see also his article ENGLISH LAW in this encyclopaedia), _Domesday Book and Beyond_ (1897), _Township and Borough_ (1898), _Canon Law in England_ (1898), _English Law and the Renaissance_ (1901), the _Life of Leslie Stephen_ (1906), besides important contributions to the _Cambridge Modern History_, the _English Historical Review_, the _Law Quarterly Review_, _Harvard Law Review_ and other publications. His writings are marked by vigour and vitality of style, as well as by the highest qualities of the historian who recreates the past from the original sources; he had no sympathy with either legal or historical pedantry; and his death at Grand Canary on