Born in London, about the end of Henry the Seventh’s reign; was educated at St. Paul’s School, Christ’s College, Cambridge, and All Souls, Oxford; and was made chaplain and librarian to Henry VIII., who also in 1533 appointed him his antiquary, with a commission to examine all the libraries of the cathedrals, abbeys, and colleges in the kingdom. He spent six years in travelling to collect materials for the history and antiquities of England and Wales, and retired to his house in London to arrange and methodize the stores of information which he had collected; but, after about two years, he died insane in 1552, without having completed his undertaking. We owe to his researches a large part of the valuable manuscripts in the Old Royal Collection, which was presented by George II., in 1757, to the British Museum. The great bulk of his collections, after passing through various hands, was placed in the Bodleian Library, in an unfinished state. Hearne published his “Itinerary” and “Collectanea,” and Hall edited his “Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis,” 2 vols.

  The ordre of Leylandes worke into. iiii. bokes deuyded, begynnynge at the Druides, and endyng in the lattre yeares of Kynge Henry the. viii. as he hath herein vttered, is very commendable. Sumwhat more is it than a yeare past, sens I put fourth a worke of the same argument, entytled de scriptoribus Britannicis, conteynynge. v. bokes wyth serten addycyons whych I gathered togyther beynge out of the realme. Sens I returned agayne therunto, by the serche of dyuerse most ruynouslye spoyled, broaken vp, and dyspersed lybrayes, I haue collected by no small labour and dylygence, so muche as wyll make so many bokes more, besydes the necessarye recognycyon and frutefull augmentacyon of the seyd first worke. Thys lattre worke intende I to set fourth also, to the commodyte of my contrey, as it is ones fynyshed, yf pouerte withstande me not, as it is my most doubt. Yet wolde I haue no man to iudge my rude labours, to Leylandes fyne workemanshyp in any poynt equal but at all tymes to geue place vnto it.

  Leland is the industrious bee, working all; Bate is the angry wasp, stinging all; Pits is the idle drone, stealing all.

  The precious and voluminous MSS. of Leland were doomed to suffer a fate scarcely less pitiable than that of their owner. After being pilfered by some, and garbled by others, they served to replenish the pages of Stow, Lambard, Camden, Burton, Dugdale, and many other antiquaries and historians.

  The ruins of Leland’s mind were viewed in his library; volumes on volumes stupendously heaped together, and masses of notes scattered here and there; all the vestiges of his genius, and its distraction. His collections were seized on by honest and dishonest hands; many were treasured, but some were stolen. Hearne zealously arranged a series of volumes from the fragments; but the “Britannia” of Camden, the “London” of Stowe, and the “Chronicles” of Holinshed, are only a few of those public works whose waters silently welled from the spring of Leland’s genius; and that nothing might be wanting to preserve some relic of that fine imagination which was always working in his poetic soul, his own description of his learned journey over the kingdom was a spark, which, falling into the inflammable mind of a poet, produced the singular and patriotic poem of the “Polyolbion” of Drayton. Thus the genius of Leland has come to us diffused through a variety of other men’s; and what he intended to produce it has required many to perform.

  He became chaplain to Henry VIII., who gave him the rectory of Popeling in the marches of Calais, and in 1533 dignified him with the title of his antiquary. By this commission his majesty laid his commands on him to make search after “England’s antiquities, and peruse the libraries of all cathedrals, abbies, priories, colleges, &c., and places where records, writings, and secrets of antiquity were reposited.” Never did the enraptured heir of broad acres and well-filled coffers peruse a loving father’s last testament with more delight than swelled the heart of our erudite Dominie Sampson as he gloated over this ravishing parchment: so, grasping his oaken staff, girding his loins, and binding tightly his sandal-shoon, the happy Oldbuck of a former generation went on his way rejoicing. Gruff old Harry, who, in spite of his odd habit of plundering monasteries and chopping off his wives’ heads after breakfast, knew how to enjoy a quiet joke, no doubt gave a sly wink to some of the attendant courtiers (delighted with his honest enthusiasm) as he grasped the antiquary’s hand at parting, charged him not to leave a parchment unturned nor a Roman hypocaust unexplored, and dismissed him with his benedictions and applause. Six years did the zealous Leland travel from library to scriptorium, from tumulus to tower, from castle to monastery. In 1542, he returned to give an account of his explorations to his royal master.

  Leland is the earliest of modern English antiquaries. His industry in accumulating facts was remarkable, and as a traveller he was a close observer. His “Itinerary” carefully notes the miles distant between the places that he visited, the best way of approaching each city, and most of the objects of interest likely to interest an historian. But manuscripts attracted him more than architecture, and he rarely rises in his descriptions of buildings above his designation of the abbey of Malmesbury as “a right magnificent thing.” On very rare occasions he notices local customs or popular botany. In his “Collectanea” he shows himself to be a conscientious genealogist, but he was not an historical scholar. He defends with unnecessary zeal the truth of the Arthurian legends, and condemns the scepticism of Polydore Vergil. His English style is rough and disjointed, and both his “Itinerary” and “Collectanea” read like masses of undigested notes. As a Latin poet he is deserving of high regard…. He is said by Polydore Vergil and Thomas Caius to have been personally vain and self-conceited, but his extant writings hardly corroborate this verdict. He had none of the virulence characteristic of the early professors of protestantism, and did not disdain social intercourse in his travels with abbots or friars. Pits’s suggestion that his mental failure was due to his remorse at having abandoned Rome rests on no foundation.

  Leland’s Latin style is fluent and copious, but not elegant. Of his English there is little to be said, except that it is clear and straightforward.

  John Leland continues for us the useful, and at this time really important, function of the “literary hodmen,” as they have been contemptuously and ungratefully termed…. His phrase is sometimes quaint in itself, and always has the pleasant archaism of his time; but it possesses no individual savour, and is once more only the literary vehicle of a man who sets down what he wishes to set down clearly and without any decided solecisms, so far as the standard of correctness of his own time is fixed, but who neither has been taught any kind of “rhetoric” in the vernacular nor cares to elaborate one for himself.