ABSTRACT
In discussing the family in the History of English Law, Maitland had one overriding polemical purpose, which was to contest the 'common-place among English writers’, notably Maine, that ‘the family rather than the individual was the “unit” of ancient law.’ All the interpretive strategies that facilitated Maitland's attack on Maine's teachings about the family were at work in two important sections on the family in the History of English Law : first, the brief discussion of feuding that prefaced his entire discussion of the family; and, second, the analysis of the consent of heirs to the alienation of land — a topic to which he returned so often in his History as to suggest that he found it particularly important and troubling. As a weapon against the dogma that ‘the family was the unit of ancient law’ and against other kinds of easy talk about the early history of family, Maitland provided a counter-maxim that has remained thought-provokingly effective.
