The Times/1931/Obituary/Mr. H. E. Malden

MR. H. E. MALDEN

Mr. Henry Elliot Malden, hon. secretary of the Royal Historical Society died at his home at Dorking on Monday in his eighty-second year. He was a modest and retiring scholar, who neither sought nor received the credit he deserved for his learning. With him has passed one of the last of an earlier generation of historical students, who could adapt themselves to new ideas and methods of research while profiting by the wider range of study that was permitted to the Victorian antiquaries.

The second son of Henry Malden, Professor of Greek at King's College, London, by his marriage to Georgina Augusta Drinkwater-Bethune, of Balfour, Fife, he was born on May 8, 1849. From Queen Elizabeth's School, Ipswich, he went up to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he rowed in the first Hall boar for five years and was president of the Hall Boat Club. There was no Historical Tripos in those days, and Malden took a second class in the Classical Tripos in 1872. He won the Chancellor's Meal for English verse in 1871. He married in 1879 Margaret Eleanor Whatman, daughter of Mr. William Godfrey Whatman, of Kitlands, Surrey, and devoted himself largely to the intricacies of local history. He was a prominent member of the Surrey Archaeological Society and edited the Victoria History of Surrey, having himself produced an excellent short history of that country, with many minor contributions.

A wider range of historical study was revealed in his editions of the "Magna Carta Papers" and "Cely Papers" for the Royal Historical Society, of "Stephen Gardiner's Register" for the Canterbury and York Society, of Sir Francis Palgrave's "Miscellaneous Works," and a "History of Trinity Hall, Cambridge." He was for nearly 30 years honorary secretary of the Royal Historical Society, of which he was elected a Fellow and member of Council in 1887, vice-chairman of Council in 1888, and vice-president of the Surrey Record Society, a member of the Historical Association, and president of the West Surrey branch since its formation in 1919, and local secretary of the Society of Antiquaries for Surrey. No learned society could have had a more kindly or more helpful official. He was in much request as a lecturer, being a ready and effective speaker, and frequently examined for local examinations. He leaves five sons and three daughters.