F. W. Maitland: faithful dissenter

Such is the worth and unity of Maitland’s works that anyone who endeavours to tell a piece of it must feel that his first sentence tears a seamless web. Variably hailed as a ‘patron saint’ and ‘the master’, with revisions to his views regarded as ‘heresies’, it is clear that Maitland was and is a classic: he is one of those rare figures who ‘still speak to us in a voice which is held to be relevant’ and with whom ‘a continuing dialogue is carried on’. As Milsom has eulogised, Maitland’s work remains ‘a still living authority’ providing ‘the foundation of all we know about the history of common law’: Maitland’s work ‘established both the subject and the assumptions on which historians have worked ever since’ so much so that those interested in the history of English law still invariably begin with Maitland: ‘Their questions still take the form: was Maitland right?’ This chapter will contend that this is as true in relation to the history of ecclesiastical law as it is for the history of the common law. It will argue that Maitland’s picture of the historical development of the relations between Church and State, as found mainly in his essays collected in Roman Canon Law in the Church of England, continue to provide the starting point for studies today