John Leland or Leyland (13 September,  – 18 April 1552) was an English poet and antiquary.Carley (2006), "Leland, John (ca. 1503–1552)"

Leland has been described as "the father of English local history and bibliography". John Chandler comments on this and several similar 'paternity' claims: John Leland's Itinerary, p. xxi. 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 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.Leland was traditionally thought to have been born in about 1506, but as he claimed to be slightly older than his friend William Paget, James Carley argues for c.1503 as his date of birth. See J. P. Carley, "John Leland (1503?–18 April 1552)", in D. A. Richardson (ed.), Sixteenth-Century British Nondramatic Writers Second Series, Dictionary of Literary Biography vol. 136 (Detroit, 1994), pp. 224–9. 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. It was here that he already met some of his future benefactors, notably William Paget.

Leland was subsequently sent to Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1522 (BA). 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). He proceeded to Lambeth, London, serving Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, as tutor to his son Thomas. 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. He would later deplore the state of education at Oxford, which he felt was too conservative in its approach to classical studies.

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. 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.Carley and Petitmengin, "Pre-Conquest manuscripts from Malmesbury Abbey", p. 196. 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.

Royal appointment 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). In 1533, Leland received papal dispensation for four benefices, on condition that he became subdeacon within two years and priest within seven. He was appointed prebendary of Wilton Abbey in Wiltshire in 1535 and received two adjacent benefices.Carley and Petitmengin, "Pre-Conquest manuscripts from Malmesbury Abbey", p. 197.

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. Their common patron was probably Thomas, Duke of Norfolk and Cornwall. The poets worked together again during 1533 and 1534, when Leland contributed verses for Udall's Floures for Latine Spekynge.

Library tours, 1533–36 In 1533, the king appears to have entrusted Leland with a document, "a moste gratius commission" (or principis diploma as he called it in Latin), which authorized him to examine and use the libraries of all religious houses in England.Leland, De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. lii–liii. Leland spent the next few years travelling from house to house, for the most part shortly before they were dissolved, compiling numerous lists of significant or unusual books in their libraries.Leland's routes and their dates are discussed in Leland, De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. lxi–xcv. About 1535, he met the ex-Carmelite churchman and fellow antiquary John Bale, who much admired his work and offered his assistance.

In 1536, not long after the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535 commanding the dissolution of lesser monasteries was passed, Leland lamented the spoliation of monastic libraries and addressed Thomas Cromwell in a letter seeking aid for the rescue of books.Shrank, Writing the Nation in Reformation England 1530–1580, p. 100 He complained that

In the 1530s and 1540s, the royal library was reorganised to accommodate hundreds of books that were previously kept in monastic collections. Leland himself describes how Henry's palaces at Greenwich, Hampton Court and Westminster were adapted for the purpose. Leland's part in this is uncertain.

In humanist fashion, Leland styled himself antiquarius, a title which was at one time interpreted as referring to a formal appointment as "king's antiquary": however, it is now understood to have been merely Leland's own preferred way of describing himself.Momigliano, "Ancient History and the Antiquarian", pp. 313–4. There is no evidence that he personally oversaw the relocation of the books to their new home or received a librarian's wages. What he did do was to compile his lists of important volumes, and to take measures to encourage their preservation.

Itineraries, c. 1538–43 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. 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.Leland, De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. xcv–c. 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.Chandler (ed.), John Leland's Itinerary (2nd edn., 1998), pp. x, xxvii–xxxi (though some of Chandler's detailed arguments are now undermined by Carley's redating of the "New Year's Gift"). 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."Toulmin Smith (ed.), Itinerary of John Leland, vol. 4, p. 57. John Bale later listed an Itinerarium Cantiae (Itinerary of Kent) among Leland's writings.John Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. R. L. Poole and Mary Bateson, introd. Caroline Brett and J. P. Carley (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1990), p. 226.John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium Maioris Brytannie ... Catalogus (Basel, 1557–59), pt 1, p. 672.

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.

The "New Year's Gift", 1544

In the mid-1540s, Leland wrote a letter to Henry VIII in which he outlined his achievements so far, and his future plans.An authoritative text is in Toulmin Smith (ed.), Leland's Itinerary, vol. 1, pp. xxvii–xliii. It was subsequently published by John Bale in 1549 (with Bale's own additional commentary) under the title . The letter has traditionally (following Bale) been regarded as a "New Year's gift" to the King for January 1546, but James Carley has shown that it must have been composed in late 1543 or early 1544 (so that if it was presented at the new year, which is not certain, it would have been in 1544).Leland, De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. xxvi–xxix.

In the letter, Leland reported on his endeavours to preserve books, and the extent and thoroughness of his travels through England and Wales:

He also described what use he intended to make of the information he had accumulated. He noted four projects: De uiris illustribus, a biographical encyclopedia of British writers in four books, arranged chronologically. A detailed map of the realm engraved on a silver table, to be presented to the King (inspired by a set of table-maps once possessed by the Emperor Charlemagne), accompanied by a written description, the Liber de topographia Britanniae, and a key to identifying the British place-names given in ancient texts. A history of England and Wales, entitled De Antiquitate Britannica, or Civilis Historia. This work was to be divided into "so many bookes as there be shires yn England, and sheres and greate dominions yn Wales", i.e. about fifty: a further six books would deal with Britain's offshore islands. De nobilitate Britannica, a catalogue of royalty, nobility, and "capitaines and rulers", divided chronologically into three books.

Of these projects, De uiris illustribus was already largely complete (it was written in two phases, in –36 and –46), but the others would never come to fruition. Polydore Vergil appears to have suggested that Leland had been unrealistically over-ambitious: he was "a vaynegloryouse persone, whyche woulde promyse more, than ever he was able or intended to perfourme".Quoted in Leland, De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, xxxv.

Leland and archaeology