John Leland

John Leland c.1506-1552, English antiquary. He was successively chaplain and librarian to Henry VIII. In 1533 he was appointed king's antiquarian, and in this capacity traveled through England, collecting a great mass of historical and geographical data for a proposed book to be entitled History and Antiquities. The work was never completed because he went insane in 1550. His notes, however, were invaluable to later scholars.

Bibliography: See his Itinerary (ed. by T. Hearne, 9 vol., 1710-12) and Collectanea (ed. by Hearne, 6 vol., 1715); biography by E. Burton (1896).

Leland, John (c.1506–52), the earliest of modern English antiquaries. He studied at Paris, took holy orders, and by 1530 was involved with the royal libraries. He made a tour through England in 1535–43, intending his researches to be the basis of a great work on the ‘History and Antiquities of this Nation’, but he left merely a mass of undigested notes. Leland's Itinerary was first published at Oxford, in nine volumes, by Hearne in 1710–12; and his Collectanea in six (1715).

Leland, John (c. 1506–52). Leland, a distinguished antiquarian, was born in London, and educated at St Paul's and at Christ's College, Cambridge. He took holy orders, served the duke of Norfolk, and was appointed royal librarian by Henry VIII. In 1533 he was made king's antiquary and spent much of the next ten years on a remarkable tour of cathedrals and churches. He was given considerable encouragement, but became insane before his collections could appear in print. His notes were scattered but were used by John Stow in his work on London and by William Camden in his Britannia (1586). The Itinerary was not published until 1710, when Thomas Hearne produced an edition at Oxford.