The year which brought Maitland to Downing witnessed the appearance of a new volume from his pen entitled Select Pleas of the Crown 1200-1255. It was a handsome quarto, bound in dark blue cloth, and the first publication of a Society called after the name of John Selden. The Selden Society, planned in the autumn of 1886 and founded in the following year "to encourage the study and advance the knowledge of English law," was the creature of Maitland's enthusiasm, and of all his achievements stood nearest to his heart. Indeed, without disparagement to accomplished help-mates and contributors, it may be said that without Maitland's genius, learning and devotion the Selden Society would have been unthinkable. Eight of the twenty-one volumes issued by the Society during his lifetime came from his pen; a ninth was almost completed at his death. "Of the rest every sheet passed under his supervision either in manuscript or in proof, and often in both[18]." He set the standard, planned the programme, trained many of the contributors. It is difficult to recall an instance in the annals of English scholarship in which so large an undertaking has owed so much to the diligence and genius of a single man.

Both in conception and execution it is a noble series of volumes. Maitland's interest in law was not bounded by a province, a period, or a country; and the thirteen good and lawful men who on November 24, 1886, signed the letter from which the Selden Society sprang did not make their appeal to the Bar and Bench of England in the cause of any narrow or pedantic antiquarian curiosity. The Common law of England ruled two vast continents, and was the concern of Americans, Canadians, and Australians as well as of Englishmen and Irishmen. Its history had never been written; few of the materials for its exploration had been given to the world. There was no scientific grammar or glossary of the Anglo-French language; there was no accurate dictionary of law terms; a great province, that of Anglo-Saxon law, had fallen into the occupation of the Germans. A short account of some of the principal classes of Records which might be dealt with by the Society was appended to the first two volumes and exhibited a prospect of great breadth, richness and variety. The state of the Criminal law in early times might be shown from the Eyre rolls and Assize rolls. The records of the Court of the Exchequer and the Court of Chancery, the Privy Council Registers, the proceedings before the Star chamber, the Court of Requests and the Court of Augmentations would illustrate the history of royal justice in its different sides and in different ages, in the formative period of legal and parliamentary growth, in the dreary turmoil of Lancastrian anarchy, under the vigorous despotism of the Tudors and in the dust of the great conflict which led to the Civil War. Then there were the records of the Courts Christian, of the Courts of the Forest and the Manor, records illustrating the history of the Palatine jurisdictions, the franchises of the Lords Marchers of Wales, the Court of the Staple in London and Calais, the Court of Castle Chamber in Dublin. Borough customs would throw light on one quarter of history; records of the Stanneries of Devon and Cornwall upon another. The origins of mercantile and international law might be explored; and closer knowledge could be obtained of many important State trials by a systematic account of the contents of the Baga de Secretis. The Society held out the further hope of scientific contributions to the knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon law and Anglo-French language of the Year Books.

In the selection of specimens from this copious material, Maitland displayed a felicitous strategy the aim of which was to exhibit, as rapidly as might be, the range and versatility of the Society's operations. A sequence of volumes illustrating any one department of law would fatigue attention, warn off subscribers and fail to make the desired impression on the general historical public. It was better to begin upon several different types of record than to work one vein without intermission; better for the cause of science, and a course more likely to bring forward good contributors as well as to stimulate public interest in the undertaking. With a general editor less perfectly equipped such a scheme might have been hazardous; but Maitland was master of the whole field and could be trusted not to fail in proportion and perspective. In swift succession the members of the Selden Society received volumes illustrating Pleas of the Crown, Pleas of Manorial Courts, Civil Pleas, manorial formularies, the Leet jurisdiction of Norwich, Admiralty Pleas; then an edition of the Mirror of Justice followed by a volume on Bracton and Azo. Of these first eight volumes Maitland wrote four and contributed a brilliant introduction to a fifth—the edition of the Mirror, executed by his pupil and friend Mr W. J. Whittaker. It was an astonishing performance; even had the work been spread over twelve years of robust energy it would still have been astonishing. It was accomplished in half that time by a busy, delicate, University Professor who apart from statutory Professorial lectures was simultaneously engaged in writing the classical History of English Law.

Much might be said by qualified persons as to the exquisite technique displayed in Maitland's contributions to the Selden Society. He spared no pains in the examination and collation of manuscripts, and although he modestly disdained expert paleographical knowledge, he need not, we imagine, fear comparison with the most accurate transcribers of medieval documents, or with those who have achieved a special renown for their studies in "diplomatic" or in the affiliation of manuscripts. He possessed other qualities which are not often combined with such a passion and gift for minute scholarship. In the first place he was exceedingly anxious to make his work practically useful and to ease the path for students whose tastes might lead them to attempt similar explorations. He takes the reader into his laboratory and exhibits the whole process of discovery, showing where the difficulties lie, pointing out hopeful lines of enquiry, and providing always a clear chart to the documents, published and unpublished, of his subject. Secondly he combined in an extraordinary measure the gift for hypothesis with the quality of patience. He did not aim at providing sensational or curious results;—"the editor," he writes in the introduction to the first Selden volume, "has not conceived it his duty to hunt for curiosities, the history of law is not a history of curiosities"—he wished for plain truth—to discover the course of medieval justice in all its natural and instructive monotony, in its common forms and in its everyday working garb. "It has been necessary," he writes, referring to his selection of manorial pleas, "to print some matter which in itself is dull and monotonous; a book full of curiosities would be a very unfair representative of what went on in the local courts. We cannot form a true notion of them unless we know how they did their ordinary work, and this we cannot know until we have mastered their common forms." Such a scheme no doubt involves repetition, but there is at least one student of English history who, despite some acquaintance with histories and chronicles, never understood the everyday working of medieval life until he had the good fortune to dive into the publications of the Selden Society.

A saying used to be attributed to E. A. Freeman to the effect that it is impossible to write history from manuscripts; and it is obvious that a man who uses manuscript authority to any great extent, especially if he imposes upon himself great labours of transcription, will run the risk of losing his perspective and will be inclined to attach undue importance to those parts of his evidence which have cost him most sacrifice to obtain. On the other hand it is clear that the editor of historical manuscripts will do his work much better if he is also an historian; and this is specially true if he is called upon to pick and choose out of a vast repository of unedited material those specimens which are most likely to promote the advance of scientific knowledge. Maitland brought to the task of editing legal records an exact and comprehensive knowledge of the various problems, each in its proper order of importance, towards the solution of which his material might be expected to contribute. Like a skilful advocate examining a string of reluctant witnesses he had in his mind a provisional scheme of the whole transaction to quicken and define his curiosity. "These rolls," he writes, "are taciturn, they do not easily yield up their testimony, but must be examined and cross-examined." It was a close, seductive, patient cross-examination, one in which a little matter would often suggest an important conclusion, as where it is shown that the rapid development of the Common law in the thirteenth century is mirrored on the surface of the plea-rolls, which become fuller, more regular and more mechanical as the century goes on. And this cross-examination being conducted with great subtlety, vividness and penetration resulted in substantial discoveries. Each volume contributed new thought as well as new facts. The preface to Select Pleas of the Crown traced the gradual differentiation of the several branches of the Royal Court in the early part of the thirteenth century and embodied valuable conclusions "drawn from a superficial perusal of all the rolls of John's reign" as to the state of criminal justice and criminal procedure at that epoch. The Introduction to the Select Pleas of Manorial Courts was even more important, giving as it did for the first time an account of the stages in the decline of the English private courts and supplying an analysis, subtler than any which had yet been attempted, of the legal connotation of the term "manerium" and of the composition of the manorial courts. One suggestion was startling in its originality. The orthodox theory, contained in the works of Coke, had laid it down that a Court Baron could not be held without at least two freeholders. Maitland came upon the whole to the conclusion—though he is careful to state countervailing arguments—that originally no distinction was made between the freeholders and customary tenants. Both classes attended the Manorial Court and both classes gave judgment. Distinctions, however, did come to be drawn, and this by reason of a force the operation of which had escaped the notice of enquirers who had not been trained to attend to legal phenomena—by the force of legal procedure. "New modes of procedure are emphasising distinctions which have heretofore been less felt. The freehold suitors can maintain their position[19], the customary suitors become mere presenters and jurymen with the lord's steward as their judge. Every extension of royal justice at the expense of feudal does some immediate harm to the villein. It is just because all other people can sue for their lands and their goods in the King's own Court that he seems so utterly defenceless against the lord: 'the custom of the manor' looks so like 'the will of the lord' just because the humblest freeholder has something much better than the custom of the manor to rely upon, for he has the assizes of our lord the King, the Statutes of King and Parliament."

The third volume edited by Maitland for the Selden Society consisted of two parts—a collection of Precedences for use in seignorial and other local courts belonging to the thirteenth and early part of the fourteenth century, and Select Pleas from the Bishop of Ely's Court at Littleport. Here there was less matter for elaborate historical disquisition, for the main problem with regard to the first class of document was to settle the age of the manuscripts; but the brief introduction to the Littleport pleas contained an important suggestion with regard to the early history of the English law of Contract. Were not the local courts enforcing "formless" arguments long before the King's Court had developed the action of "assumpsit" for the enforcement of agreements not under seal? The reader is reminded that the King's Court never by any formal act or declaration took upon itself to enforce the whole law of the land, that only by degrees did its "catalogue of the forms of action become the one standard of English law." There was an action for defamation in the local courts long before the Kings Court had undertaken to punish the slanderer; and what was true of defamation might equally be true of "parol" agreements. The Bishop's Court at Littleport was certainly enforcing agreements and it was difficult to suppose that the villeins of Littleport put their contracts into writing. Here again a few slight indications had prompted a secure and far-reaching inference.

In the Institutes of the learned but uncritical Coke there are many tales drawn from a curious Anglo-French treatise entitled the Mirror of Justices, "a very ancient and learned treatise of the laws and usages of this kingdom," opined Sir Edward, "whereby the Common-wealth of our nation was governed about eleven hundred years past." For a long time the book was accepted at Coke's high valuation with no little injury to the sober study of legal antiquities. Then it was exposed as apocryphal by Sir Francis Palgrave. It could not be taken as evidence "concerning the early jurisprudence of Anglo-Saxon England." But could it be taken as evidence of anything at all? Wahrheit und Dichtung was Vinogradoff's verdict,—sediments of truth floating in a sea of absurdity. It was worth while at least to establish the text and to examine the credentials of a treatise which, like the pseudo-Ingulph, had done much harm to sound learning.

One reassuring result was obtained from Mr Whittaker's critical enquiry into the manuscript. The Mirror was never in the middle ages a popular or influential book. It existed in a single unique manuscript. Such authority as it obtained was conferred upon it by lawyers who lived some three hundred years after it was written, were "greedy of old tales and not too critical of the source from which they were derived." Still, in a book so full of concrete positive statement, so full of denunciation of practical abuses, there might for all its rubble of absurdity be a quarry for historians.

In a brilliant piece of persiflage Maitland once and for all demolishes the author of the Mirror. He exposes his wilful lies, his unctuous piety, the perverse originality which amuses itself by playing havoc among technical terms, his absence of all lawyerly interest, his perplexing and fantastic inconsistencies. A most ingenious hypothesis is advanced to explain the source of this curious piece of apocryphal literature. "In order to discover the date of its composition we ask what statutes are, and what are not, noticed in it, and we are thus led to the years between 1285 and 1290. Then we see that its main and ever-recurring theme is a denunciation of 'false judges,' and we call to mind the shameful events of 1289. The truth was bad enough; no doubt it was made far worse by suspicions and rumours. Wherever English men met they were talking of 'false judges' and the punishment that awaited them. All confidence in the official oracles of the law had vanished. Any man's word about the law might be believed if he spoke in the tones of a prophet or apostle. Was not there an opening here for a fanciful young man ambitious of literary fame? Was not this an occasion for a squib, a skit, a topical medley, a 'variety entertainment,' blended of truth and falsehood, in which Bracton's staid jurisprudence should be mingled with freaks and crotchets and myths and marvels, and decorated with queer tags of out-of-the-way learning picked up in the consistories?" No doubt, as Maitland admitted, this was guess-work; the certainty was that no statement not elsewhere warranted could be accepted from the Mirror unless we were prepared to believe "that an Englishman called Nolling was indicted for a sacrifice to Mahomet."