F. W. Maitland

Extract

At the beginning of the '70s there were two Maitlands at Trinity. One of them took a first class in Law—the other took a first class in Moral Sciences. The latter was our Maitland, and thereby hangs a tale. It was natural, when in later years he became a distinguished man, for people to look up the academic records, and equally natural for them to fall into the error of supposing that the Maitland who was the distinguished legal historian was the Maitland who “went out” in Law. Even the then editors of the University Calendar fell into the trap, and in the Calendars from 1898 to 1901 there is a note to the name Maitland in the Law Tripos, 1873, describing him as Downing Professor of Law. Other people were misled. Whittaker, of Trinity, whom many of us know to have been an old pupil and intimate friend of Maitland, told me that not long ago he met one of the men who were classed above the Maitland of the Law Tripos. Both being Cambridge men and lawyers they talked, of course, of Cambridge and Law and Maitland. The other man observed, “After all, it will always be a feather in my cap that I once beat Maitland in examination”; and Whittaker had not the heart to undeceive him.