When we consider that some five thousand pages of detailed findings, written about a hundred years ago, have been modified in only a few minor emphases and one or two facts, and that the bulk of Maitland's edifice still stands, we can begin to understand why he has an almost god-like status among historians who know the problems he faced and the elegance of his solutions.

The great legal historian Vinogradoff disagreed with Maitland on some specific points, but shortly after Maitland's death wrote of him as 'the greatest legal historian of the...