British historian
Roy Martin Haines, (1924 – 1 February 2017) was a British historian.
Early life.
Haines was the son of Evan George Martin Haines, who served in the Welsh Guards during World War I and died in 1929 aged 32 from an illness attributable to his military service. His mother was Sarah Hilda Haines, née Hall, for more than a quarter of a century the highly respected district nurse and midwife in Catshill, near Bromsgrove: she received the Royal Maundy in 1980 at Worcester.
Between 1932 and 1938 Haines was a pupil at St Michael's Preparatory School, Otford. He then attended Bromsgrove School, which he entered in 1938 as a foundation scholar.
Haines was later educated at St Chad's College in the University of Durham (Gisborne Scholar 1943), where he was admitted to the degrees of BA, MA, and MLitt (1954) (supervised by Professor H. S. Offler), and received a Diploma in Education. While at Durham Haines came into contact with Professor Alexander Hamilton Thompson, whose scholarship was to remain an abiding influence.
Career.
Haines returned to his former prep school, St Michael's, as a master from 1947 until 1954. He was responsible for establishing a termly newsletter and later became Chairman of the Old Michaelian Association. Kendall Carey, a pupil at St Michael's from 1949 until 1956, described Haines as "a superb teacher". In addition to the standard curriculum Haines taught heraldry, architecture, and medieval battles, and demonstrated motte-and-bailey castles with sand and matchsticks.
He subsequently studied at Worcester College, Oxford, with the help of a grant from the Chance Educational Trust, eventually gaining a DPhil (1959). Some of his publications were successfully submitted in 2010 for the degree of DLitt of the University of Oxford.
Haines was a history master at Westminster School, where he was later promoted to housemaster of Wren's. He was also Assistant Editor of the "Victoria County History of Oxfordshire".
Haines moved to Canada in 1966, first to Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, and then in 1967 to Dalhousie University . He later became Professor of Medieval History at Dalhousie.
In 1978–80 Haines was Canada Council Killam Senior Research Scholar. He spent part of the time at the Vatican Archives. In 1987/8 he was Visiting Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and was appointed a life member of the college in 1990.
Haines was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (elected 2 March 1967) and of the Royal Historical Society. In 1987 he delivered the Bertie Wilkinson Memorial Lecture at the University of Toronto.
Later life.
After retiring from Dalhousie Haines returned to the United Kingdom, where he lived in Putney before moving to Curry Rivel in Somerset. He died on 1 February 2017, at the age of 92.
Personal life.
In 1957 Haines married Carol Pamela Mary née Dight, an Oxford M.A., and daughter of the late F. H. Dight O.B.E., a meteorologist.
He was the father-in-law of Alexander Jones, FRSC, Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, both at New York University.