Antiquary, born in London, UK. He studied at Cambridge and Oxford. After a stay in Paris he became chaplain to Henry VIII, who in 1533 made him king's antiquary, with power to search for records of antiquity in the cathedrals, colleges, abbeys, and priories of England. He became insane in 1550. Most of his papers are in the Bodleian and British Museum, one of his chief works being The Itinerary, published at Oxford in 9 volumes (1710).
John Leland (September 13, 1506 – April 18, 1552) was an English antiquary.
Early life
John Leland was born in London on September 13, 1502 [Mirror of Literature] or c.
Royal appointment
On his return to England he was a tutor of Thomas Howard, son of the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and to Francis Hastings, afterwards Earl of Huntingdon. Leland is the only person ever to hold this title. In 1533 Henry commissioned him to search after England's antiquities, and explore the libraries of all cathedrals, abbeys, priories, colleges, and all the places wherein records, writings, and whatever else was lodged that related to antiquity. "Before Leland's time," says Hearne, in his preface to the Itinerary, "all the literary monuments of antiquity were totally disregarded; and the students of Germany apprised of this culpable indifference, were suffered to enter our libraries unmolested, and to cut out of the books deposited there whatever passages they thought proper, which they afterwards published as relics of the ancient literature of their own country."
In this research Leland spent over six years (from 1540 to 1546 travelling through England, visiting the remains of ancient buildings and monuments of every kind. On its completion, he presented the results to Henry, under the title of a New Year's Gift (published by John Bale in 1549) in which he says, "I have so traviled yn your dominions booth by the se costes and the midle partes, sparing nother labor nor costes, by the space of these vi.
At the dissolution of the monasteries, Leland made application to Secretary Thomas Cromwell, requesting his assistance in getting the manuscripts that they contained sent to the king's library. 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 retired with his collections to his house in the parish of St Michael le Querne, Cheapside, London, where he intended to follow the Itinerary with a history divided into "so many books as there be shires in England and shires and great dominions in Wales".
Works
Leland's notes have survived, and held in the Bodleian Library.
The writings of Leland are numerous; His voluminous manuscripts, after passing through many hands, came into the Bodleian library, furnishing valuable materials to John Stow, William Lambarde, William Camden, Thomas Burton, William Dugdale, and many other antiquaries and historians. Polydore Virgil, who had plagiarised them freely, had the insolence to abuse Leland's memory—calling him "a vain glorious man." The Itinerary of John Leland, Antiquary, was published by Thomas Hearne, at Oxford, in nine volumes in 1710, with a second edition printed in 1745, with considerable improvements and additions.
Other references to John Leland
Somerset and Camelot
John Leland makes a possibly unwitting contribution to the myth of Camelot and King Arthur in a reference in a letter of 1542:
It has been suggested that in making this reference to "South Cadbyri" (Cadbury Castle in Somerset) he was possibly influenced by the proximity to this location of the villages of Queen Camel and West Camel.
The Leland Trail
The Leland Trail is a 28 mile footpath which follows in 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.
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