FREDERIC WILLIAM MAITLAND ment, using part of Stephen's Commentaries as his text-book. It may be said here, for the benefit of those familiar with the meth ods of the American Law School where the case system is held in honor and the text book frowned upon, that the conditions in Cambridge are very different. The fact that the Law Tripos has to serve the double purpose of education and professional train ing, and that it leads to an academic degree and not license to practice, makes the case system, in the judgment of those who have the best right to an opinion, impracticable. At any rate most of Maitland's teaching, with some exceptions which will be duly noted, was by lecturing and the use of a text-book. The year 1887 is marked by two important events in Maitland's career. One of them, the foundation of the Selden Society, needs no comment for lawyers, either in America or England. But the other may detain us a moment. This was the publication of the now famous docu ment known as Bracton's Note Book, the first considerable piece of scholarly work with which Maitland's name is associated. Readers of the History of English Law know to what an extent that book centers about Bracton's great treatise. Those who have examined the critical apparatus of Brac ton's Note Book and the volume on Bracton and Azo in the Selden Society, know further how profoundly Maitland had penetrated Bracton's thinking by acquainting himself with the sources of the great jurist's knowl edge. This important piece of work had occupied Maitland for three years. The manuscript in the British Museum had been brought under Professor Vinogradoff 's notice in 1884. In the summer of that year he announced the discovery in the Athenaeum, and at the same time engaged Maitland's interest in the task of editing the document. A phrase in the preface has its significance. "Perhaps," wrote Maitland, "I was not the man for the work, but I have liked it well." He)had taken a long step backward, into the thirteenth century in fact, and he foind
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himself in a congenial atmosphere. This year, too, saw the publication of the first volume put forward by the Selden Society, Select Pleas of tlw Crown, edited by Mait land. His work continued to grow more historical in character. In 1888 he was lecturing on constitutional history and par liament, beside teaching a class in advanced real property. At the same time he brought out another volume of records for the Selden Society, the Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, the introduction to which put the history of the manorial courts in a new light. Here was one lawyer at least who was not content to accept without verification the traditions of institutional history, which had satisfied generations of his professional brothers. And when he came to verify the tradition it was found to rest upon an insufficient basis of fact, and so, in the history of the ■ manor, room has to be found for the halmote before the leet and the courts baron and customary are introduced. In 1889 he was lecturing on constitutional law and history, and expounding cases on the law of contract. He had announced a course on the history of the English manor, but it was not given until the next year. Meanwhile he was busy editing the prece dents of pleading in manorial courts which the Selden Society published in 1890 under the title of The Court Baron. In the same year he was teaching the law of real prop erty, using Challis as a text-book, and giving, for the last time as it turned out, his lectures on constitutional law and history. Five new courses of great significance were given in 1891, the history of English law in the thirteenth century and English land law in and before 1086. Meanwhile he had edited for the Pipe Roll Society the earliest curia regis roll (1194) together with two eyre rolls for 1194 and 1195 respectively. These appeared in 1891 under the title Three Rolls of the King's Court. Already, it will be seen, he was rapidly assembling the elements out of. which the great History of English Law was to be composed. In 1892
