Sir Frederick Maurice Powicke

Sir Frederick Maurice Powicke was an English medieval historian. He was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, a professor at Queen's University, Belfast and Manchester, and from 1928 until his retirement Regius Professor at the University of Oxford. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1946.

Powicke was born on 16 June 1879 in Alnwick, the son of Martha, the youngest daughter of William Collyer of Brigstock, and Frederick James Powicke, a Congregational minister and historian of 17th-century puritanism. Powicke was educated at Owens College, Manchester, where he took his first degree, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took another with first-class honours.

From 1908 to 1915 he was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, although in 1909 he was appointed as Professor of Modern History in the Queen's University, Belfast, where he remained for ten years. From 1919 to 1928 he was Professor of Mediæval History at the Victoria University of Manchester, and during his time in Manchester he was a member of the Chetham Society and served on its council from 1920 to 1933. He also served as Ford's Lecturer in English History at Oxford for 1927. In 1928 he became Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, remaining in post until 1947. He was President of the Royal Historical Society from 1933 to 1937.

He was a tough, difficult man, small in build. At Oxford, he was determined to reinvigorate history there and made the university the leading centre in the England for historical study.

Powicke was the author of the volume The Thirteenth Century in the Oxford History of England.

In 1909, Powicke married Susan Irvine Martin, daughter of Anna and Thomas Martin Lindsay. Togeher they had two daughters. Their daughter Janet married the historian Richard Pares.

He died in the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford on 19 May 1963.