Leaving for the bar after an initial failure to obtain a fellowship at Cambridge, he returned to academia in 1884, and quickly became one of the most distinguished historians of his generation.

Maitland was educated at a preparatory school in Brighton before entering Eton College in 1863, where Edward Daniel Stone was his private tutor.

At Eton, Maitland was not prominent either academically or athletically, although a close school friend thought he would become "a kind of philosophic Charles Lamb".

Then, inspired by Henry Sidgwick, he switched to the relatively new moral sciences tripos in 1870, and took first-class honours in 1872, being bracketed senior with his friend William Cunningham; he was elected a scholar of his college the same year.

In 1880, Maitland was introduced by Frederick Pollock, who had been to Eton and Cambridge with him, to the Sunday Tramps, a walking club founded by Leslie Stephen.

The result of Maitland's initial work was Pleas of the Crown for the County of Gloucester, a transcription of the 1221 Gloucestershire eyre roll, which he published at his own expense in 1884 and dedicated to Vinogradoff.

He held frequent musical gatherings, and kept a series of exotic pets, including a monkey, a meerkat, and a badger.

He advocated for a number of reforms, including the abandonment of Greek as a compulsory entrance subject and the admission of women to degrees.

In March 1897 he helped defeat a proposal for the creation of a Queen's University for women only as an alternative to granting them Cambridge degrees, making a speech which was long afterwards remembered.

"[6] In 1902 Maitland was offered the Regius Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge by Arthur Balfour in succession to Lord Acton, but declined.

Maitland's health began to deteriorate in the 1890s: the exact nature of his illness remains unclear but has been variously ascribed to tuberculosis or to diabetes.

In December 1906, he left Cambridge for the Canaries for the last time: during the trip, he contracted influenza, which turned into double pneumonia.

Upon his death, the University of Oxford presented an address of condolence to Cambridge, described by Geoffrey Elton as an "unprecedented tribute.

The latter publication has been repeatedly reprinted, and contains perhaps his most-quoted observation, which still appears in learned articles and superior court judgments: "The forms of action we have buried but still they rule us from their graves."

Maitland taught his students, and all later historians, not to investigate the history of law purely or mostly by reference to the needs of the present, but rather to consider and seek to understand the past on its own terms.

In 1889, Maitland was invited by Henry Maxwell Lyte, the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, to examine and edit the petitions presented to Edward I's parliament.

At the time, it was generally believed that early English parliaments were, from the beginning, an assembly of the estates of the realm who met to discuss affairs of state.

In his introduction to the 1305 roll, Maitland instead proposed that early English parliaments were judicial bodies which met mainly to receive petitions to address grievances.

"During his lifetime, Maitland received honorary doctorates from the universities of Cambridge (1891), Oxford (1899), Glasgow (1896), Moscow and Kracow.

In 2001, a memorial stone for Maitland was unveiled in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey; he was the first professional historian to be so honoured.