The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two.

II. Historians, Biographers and Political Orators.

§ 22. Mary Bateson.


With Maitland’s work that of Mary Bateson is closely connected, although it was to Creighton that she owed the impulse to historical research. As a medievalist, she more especially occupied herself with monastic and municipal history; her earliest writings, including an article entitled The Origin and Early History of Double Monasteries, belonged to the former field of study; and she edited Records of the Borough of Leicester, The Charters of the Borough of Cambridge (with Maitland, 1901) and two volumes entitled Borough Customs in the publications of the Selden society. Her papers entitled The Laws of Breteuil showed her original power of dealing with the sources of municipal institutions, and she had thoroughly trained herself in medieval bibliography. Whatever subject she treated, she wrote on it with simplicity, directness and independence of judgment—qualities which were part of her nature.   43