Samuel Roffey Maitland

Samuel Rofi Maitland (1792-1866) was an English historian and various religious writer. He was qualified as an Anglican priest, and also worked as a librarian, lawyer, and editor. Maitland was born in London on Kings Road (now Theobalds Road), Bedford Row, on January 7, 1792. His father, who was of Scottish descent, was Alexander Maitland, a London merchant; his mother was Caroline Busby, a descendant of Richard Busby. She brought her husband an estate in Gloucestershire. Alexander Maitland was a Presbyterian attached to the Congregationalists in London, and only gradually Samuel Maitland moved to the Church of England. Samuel Maitland left school in 1807, and was later given to the training of Rev. Lancelot Sharpe, one of the masters at the Taylors Merchants School; and on October 7, 1809, Maitland was admitted to St. John’s College in Cambridge, and at about the same time he entered the Inner Temple with the intention of going to the bar. The following year, he moved to Trinity College, where his friend William Hodge Mill was located. He left Cambridge in 1811, not receiving a degree, not wanting to sign thirty-nine articles. In 1812, Maxwell Gartshorn died, leaving Maitland's father and uncle of his performers. There was a large library on his estate, and Maitland committed to cataloging it, provided that duplicates were received as a reward. From 1811 to 1815 he lived with his father, omnivorous read, preparing for the bar. When he applied for the call, he found that difficulties arose because he did not comply with his conditions at Cambridge. So, on October 10, 1815, he returned to the university, again enrolling in St. John. He retained three more conditions, and at that time met Samuel Lee, who had recently become a professor of Arabic. In the first half of 1816, Maitland occupied chambers in the Temple and studied. On November 19, 1816, he married. He was drafted into the bar during the Easter semester of 1816, but his literary tastes increasingly took possession of him.