as "the best book on English legal history ever published in the English language." In 1902 Maitland was offered the Regius Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge by Arthur Balfour in succession to Lord Acton, but declined. In the same year he became one of the founding fellows of the British Academy. Final years and death 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 1898 he suffered from an attack of pleurisy, and thereafter he wintered either in the Canary Islands or in Madeira. In December 1906, he left Cambridge for the Canaries for the last time: during the trip, he contracted influenza, which turned into double pneumonia. He died at Las Palmas and was buried in the English Cemetery there. Upon his death, the University of Oxford presented an address of condolence to Cambridge, described by Sir Geoffrey Elton as an "unprecedented tribute". Such addresses were often presented to the royal family, but the only precedent in the case of Maitland was an address to the University of Berlin upon the death of Theodor Mommsen. Posthumous publications by his students, editing their lecture notes based on his lectures, include The Constitutional History of England, Equity, and The Forms of Action at Common Law. 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." Personal life Maitland married Florence Henrietta Fisher, daughter of the historian Herbert William Fisher, in 1886 and they had two daughters, Ermengard (1887–1968) and Fredegond (1889–1949); after Maitland's death his widow married Sir Francis Darwin, a son of Charles Darwin. Maitland was a moderate Liberal in politics, sympathizing with the Liberal Party but striving to maintain objectivity in his scholarship. Florence Fisher's brother, the Liberal scholar and politician H. A. L. Fisher, edited Maitland's papers and lectures on English constitutional history after his death. Scholarship Approach and style His written style was elegant and lively. His historical method was distinguished by his thorough and sensitive use of historical sources, and by his determinedly historical perspective. Maitland taught his students, and all later historians, not to investigate the history of law purely or mostly by reference to the needs of