John Leland
13 September c. 1503
18 April 1552
parish church of St Michael-le-Querne, London[2]
51°30′46″N 0°05′51″W / 51.512778°N 0.0975°W
destroyed by fire in 1666
English
John Leyland, Layland
Latin poetry, antiquarianism
include Cygnea cantio (1545)
an elder brother called John
Leland has been described as "the father of English local history and bibliography".[5] His Itinerary provided a unique source of observations and raw materials for many subsequent antiquaries, and introduced the county as the basic unit for studying the local history of England, an idea that has been influential ever since.
Early life and education[edit]
Most evidence for Leland's life and career comes from his own writings, especially his poetry. He was born in London on 13 September, most probably in about 1503, and had an older brother, also named John.[2][6] Having lost both his parents at an early age, he and his brother were raised by Thomas Myles. Leland was educated at St Paul's School, London, under its first headmaster, William Lily.[2] It was here that he already met some of his future benefactors, notably William Paget.[2]
Leland was subsequently sent to Christ's College, Cambridge,[7] graduating in 1522 (BA).[2] While studying there, he was for a short time imprisoned, having accused a certain knight of collaborating with Richard de la Pole, the Yorkist claimant to the throne (d. 1525).[2] He proceeded to Lambeth, London, serving Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, as tutor to his son Thomas.[2] When the duke died in 1524, the king sent Leland to Oxford, where as Anthony Wood later claimed from tradition, he became a fellow of All Souls College.[2] He would later deplore the state of education at Oxford, which he felt was too conservative in its approach to classical studies.[2]
Between 1526 and 1528, Leland proceeded to Paris, studying along with many fellow expatriates, both English and German. His original plan to study in Italy, too, never succeeded.[2] Leland honed his skills at composing Latin poetry and sought the acquaintance of humanist scholars whom he much admired, such as Guillaume Budé and Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples. A scholar of particular importance for Leland was François Dubois (Silvius), professor at the Collège de Tournai, who had a profound effect on his poetic as well as antiquarian interests.[2][8] While in France, Leland kept in touch with his friends and sponsors in England, probably including Thomas Wolsey (d. 1530), Cardinal and Lord Chancellor, who made him rector at Laverstoke, Hampshire.[2][8]
Royal appointment[edit]
By 1529, Leland had returned to England. When Wolsey fell from the king's favour in that year, Leland appears to have sought the patronage of Thomas Cromwell, a relationship which would help explain his rising fortunes over the next few years. He was appointed one of the chaplains to King Henry VIII, who gave him the rectory of Peuplingues (Pepeling), in the marshes of Calais (though he may never have visited the place).[2][8] In 1533, Leland received papal dispensation for four benefices, on condition that he became subdeacon within two years and priest within seven.[2] He was appointed prebendary of Wilton Abbey in Wiltshire in 1535 and received two adjacent benefices.[2][9]
Leland and Nicholas Udall composed verses to be read or recited at the pageant of Anne Boleyn's arrival in London in 1533, which was staged for the occasion of her coronation.[9] Their common patron was probably Thomas, Duke of Norfolk and Cornwall.[2] The poets worked together again during 1533 and 1534, when Leland contributed verses for Udall's Floures for Latine Spekynge.[2]
Itineraries, c. 1538–43[edit]
Even after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Leland did not abandon his hunt for books. For instance, he obtained official permission to avail himself of the library belonging to the defunct monastery of Bury St Edmunds.[2] The descriptions of Britain which he encountered in the manuscripts, however, and his personal experiences of travel, also sparked off fresh interests. By about 1538, Leland had turned his attention to English and Welsh topography and antiquities, embarking on a series of journeys which lasted six years. Probably over the summer of 1538 (though there may also have been earlier and/or later trips), he made an extended excursion through Wales.[14] He subsequently made a number of journeys in England: the exact sequence and their dates are again uncertain, but there seem to have been five major English itineraries, taken over the summers of the years 1539 to 1543. His one firmly dated itinerary is that of 1542, which took him to the West Country. By that date he had been on a tour to the north-west, which went via the Welsh marches to Cheshire, Lancashire and Cumberland; while other itineraries took him to the west Midlands, the north-east (reaching Yorkshire and County Durham), and the Bristol region.[15] He probably explored the south-east in shorter excursions. He is not known to have toured East Anglia, for which only a few fragmentary notes survive.
Leland kept notebooks on his travels, in which he entered and assessed information from personal observation, and from books, charters and oral sources. It is this material which we now know as his 'Itinerary'.
In the 1906–10 edition, the Itinerary runs to five printed volumes. It comprises rough notes and very early drafts, the raw materials for a more digested description of England and Wales – Leland would not have envisaged publishing it in anything like its present form. The county on which he appears to have made greatest progress in organising his material was Kent. "Let this be the firste chapitre of the booke", he wrote; "The King hymself was borne yn Kent. Kent is the key of al Englande."[16] John Bale later listed an Itinerarium Cantiae (Itinerary of Kent) among Leland's writings.[17][18]
Although Leland's Itinerary notes remained unpublished until the eighteenth century, they provided a significant quarry of data and descriptions for William Camden's Britannia (first edition, 1586), and many other antiquarian works.[19]
Leland and archaeology[edit]
Leland was concerned to record evidence for the history of England and Wales as it was visible in the landscape, and he therefore took pains to note all kinds of archaeological remains, including megaliths, hillforts, and Roman and medieval ruins. He came across several Roman inscriptions, though he was unable to read most of them, complaining of one that it was made up of "letters for whole words, and 2. or 3. letters conveid in one".[23] He often reported finds of coins, writing of Richborough, Kent, for example, that more Roman money had been discovered there "then in any place els of England".[24] He investigated and recorded building materials in some detail.
He was sometimes able to make astute and informed deductions from what he saw. At Lincoln, for example, he identified three phases of urban development, beginning with a British settlement at the top of the hill (close to which "much Romaine mony is found"), the Saxon and medieval town further south, and a more recent riverside development at Wigford.[25] He was able to judge that the existing fabric of Ripon Minster "indubitately was made sins the Conquest".[26] He correctly distinguished what he called "Briton brykes" (actually Roman bricks) at several geographically dispersed sites, including Verulamium, Richborough, Lympne, Dover Castle, Canterbury, and Bewcastle.[27]
He was normally content to record surface remains and recovered artefacts, but on one occasion he adopted a more interventionist approach. At the hillfort at Burrough Hill, Leicestershire, he pulled some stones from the gateway to establish whether it had been walled or not: they were mortared with lime, which persuaded him that it had been.[28] The account included in Leland's Itinerary may be regarded as the earliest archaeological field report.[29]
Final years and death[edit]
In 1542, Henry presented Leland with the valuable rectory of Great Haseley, Oxfordshire.[2] The year following he preferred him to a canonry of King's College, now Christ Church, Oxford, and about the same time, collated him to a prebend in the church of Sarum. He was an absentee pluralist, with the income and leisure to pursue his interests. He retired with his collections to his house in the parish of St Michael-le-Querne, adjoining Cheapside, London, where he intended to work on his various projects. However, in February 1547 near the time of Henry's death, "he fell besides his wits". Leland was certified insane in March 1550 and died, still mentally deranged, on 18 April 1552, aged about 48.
Leland was buried in the church of St Michael-le-Querne near his home. However the church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, and not rebuilt, and so Leland's tomb has been lost.
Collections and notebooks[edit]
Following Leland's death or (more probably) his descent into madness, King Edward VI arranged for Leland's library, including many medieval manuscripts, to be placed in the custody of Sir John Cheke. John Bale consulted some of them at this time. Cheke fell from favour on the accession of Queen Mary, and departed for mainland Europe in 1554: from that point onwards, and continuing after Cheke's death in 1557, the library was dispersed. Books were acquired by collectors including Sir William Cecil, William, Lord Paget, John Dee[35] and Archbishop Matthew Parker.
Leland's own manuscript notebooks were inherited by Cheke's son, Henry, and in 1576 they were borrowed and transcribed by John Stow, allowing their contents to begin to circulate in antiquarian circles. Antiquaries who gained access to them through Stow included William Camden, William Harrison, Robert Glover and Francis Thynne. The original notebooks passed from Henry Cheke to Humphrey Purefoy, and so (following his death in 1598) to Humphrey's son Thomas, who divided many of them between his two cousins John Hales and the antiquary, William Burton. Burton subsequently managed to recover several of the items given to Hales, and in 1632 and 1642–3 donated most of the collection—comprising the Collectanea, De scriptoribus and several of the Itinerary notebooks—to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, where the volumes remain.[19]
The Leland Trail[edit]
The Leland Trail is a 28-mile (45 km) footpath, which follows the footsteps of John Leland as he traversed South Somerset between 1535 and 1543 in the course of his investigation of the region's antiquities. The Leland Trail begins at King Alfred's Tower on the Wiltshire/Somerset border and finishes at Ham Hill Country Park.[36]
Carley's introduction to the above volume incorporates the fullest and most up-to-date information on Leland's life and work.