Samuel Roffey Maitland

Samuel Roffey Maitland (1792–1866) was an English historian and miscellaneous writer on religious topics. He was qualified as an Anglican priest, and worked also as a librarian, barrister and editor.

Maitland was born in London at King's Road (now Theobald's Road), Bedford Row, on 7 January 1792. His father, who was of Scottish extraction, 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 congregationalists in London, and it was only gradually that Samuel moved towards the Church of England.

Maitland left school in 1807, and was then placed under the tuition of the Rev. Launcelot Sharpe, one of the masters in Merchant Taylors' School; and on 7 October 1809 Maitland was admitted to St John's College, Cambridge, and about the same time he entered at the Inner Temple with the intention of going to the bar. Next year he migrated to Trinity College where his friend William Hodge Mill was. He left Cambridge in 1811, without a degree, unwilling to sign the Thirty-nine Articles.

In 1812 Maxwell Garthshorne died, leaving Maitland's father and uncle his executors. His estate included a large library behind him, and Maitland undertook to catalogue it, on condition of receiving the duplicates as his reward. From 1811 to 1815 he was living with his father, reading omnivorously, while preparing for the bar. When he applied to be called, he found there were difficulties, as he had not kept his terms at Cambridge. So on 10 October 1815 he returned to the university, entering again St John's. He kept three more terms, and at this time made the acquaintance of Samuel Lee, who had recently been made professor of Arabic.

During the first half of 1816, Maitland occupied chambers in the Temple, and studied. On 19 November 1816 he married. He had been called to the bar in Easter term, 1816, but his literary tastes had got an increasing hold of him.

...
Wikipedia