John Leland
John Leland was born in London in about 1503. After the death of his parents was adopted by Thomas Myles, who sent him to St Paul's School where, according to his own account, he studied under the headmaster William Lily and made the acquaintance of many of the figures who would become his later patrons: Thomas Wriothesley, William Paget and Anthony Denny.
Leland studied at Christ's College and obtained a BA from Cambridge University in 1522. Soon afterwards he was arrested on the orders of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. He was arrested and it seems that he had been contact with Richard de la Pole, the Yorkist claimant to the throne.
After his release he joined the household of Thomas Howard, second duke of Norfolk, and acted as tutor to his sixth son, Thomas Howard. After the death of the duke in 1524 he was associated with All Souls College. However, he told his friend, William Paget, he was dissatisfied with the conservative attitude to education at Oxford University. (1)
John Leland - Poet
By 1528 he was living in Paris developing his skills as a poet. David Starkey argues that while in France he was influenced by Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples in religion and Guillaume Budé in scholarship and antiquarianism. (2) According to his biographer, James P. Carley, Cardinal Wolsey was Leland's chief advocate during these years. It was Wolsey who arranged for him to the rectorship of Laverstoke, Hampshire. (3) It has been argued by Antonia Fraser that during this period he became a distinguished antiquary. (4)
In June 1530 John Leland became a royal chaplain. After the death of Thomas Wolsey he developed a close relationship with Thomas Cromwell. On 25th January, 1533, he attended the wedding of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and wrote many of the verses of the coronation pageants. (5) Six months later he was granted a papal dispensation to hold up to four benefices, "the income from which was not to exceed 1000 ducats, provided that he take subdeacon's orders within two years and priest's orders within seven". (6)
Royal Libraries
Henry VIII asked Leland to visit the monasteries and make a list of all the books that they owned. His first extended journey took place in 1533 when he made a tour of the west country. His work became even more important during the dissolution of the monasteries. It has been claimed that he laid "more-or-less single-handed the foundations of English historical scholarship on the wreckage of the monastic libraries". (7)
In 1536 John Bale wrote a letter to him, praising his antiquarian efforts and offering to be of assistance in any way he could. The following year Bale was arrested for preaching heresy in a sermon that denounced "papistry". Bale wrote to Thomas Cromwell, the king's principal minister and vice-general for religious affairs, requesting his release. Bale later claimed that Cromwell had arranged his release from prison as a reward for his "polemical comedies". According to John N. King: "The minister supported a troupe of actors led by Bale, who staged allegorical morality plays which promoted protestant ideas and satirized Catholic beliefs by personifying the two sides as Virtues and Vices respectively." (8)
John Leland played an important role in the re-formation of the royal library. Henry VIII had libraries in three palaces - Greenwich, Hampton Court, and Westminster - refitted for the reception of monastic books. "Leland conserved books in goodly number for the Royal Collection as well as for himself. Yet, although he made select lists of books from about 140 foundations, less than a dozen of the hundreds of monastic books in the Royal Collection can be shown to have arrived there through his agency. Possibly he was responsible for the rescue of a number of the others, but no record remains; perhaps many of the items he acquired were later deaccessioned." (9)
Leland continued to write poetry. David Starkey has claimed he was the most skilled Latin poet in England. (10) In an undated poem to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer he described the mass of wonderful material he had brought together at his house which would never see the light of day without the archbishop's generous support. (11) Maria Dowling, the author of Humanism in the Age of Henry VIII (1986) has suggested: "Leland stands to the Latin poetry of sixteenth-century England as Wyatt and Surrey do to the English." (12)
Tours of England and Wales
Leland spent a great deal of time touring the country. James P. Carley has pointed out: "The precise chronology of Leland's journeys, of which there seem to have been about five, is impossible to determine and only once did he give a date for his setting out: on 5 May 1542 he began an extensive tour of the west country. An earlier journey began in Wales and brought him to Shropshire, up to Chester and across to Yorkshire, down to the east midlands, Worksop and Bedford, and home again. Other trips included the west midlands, Yorkshire again, and places further north. The accounts of more than one trip have been lost. His notebooks suggest his procedure: sometimes he made maps and measured distances, he asked information from local inhabitants, and he also examined books and charters. He compared sources and noted when there were disparities or when information seemed to be unreliable. During the travels themselves he took rough notes, which he later amplified; normally he kept both rough and fair copies. Although he never managed to produce the many works he envisaged, his undertaking was an extraordinarily ambitious one and marks the beginning of English topographical studies." (13)
John Bale reports that John Leland went mad in about 1546. (14) Various theories of the cause of his madness have been put forward. His friends claim he developed paranoia because of "spiteful treatment by enemies". Others believed it was the "realization of his inability to produce the grandiose works he had promised" or that he was suffering from manic-depressive illness. James P. Carley has pointed out that "later generations saw Leland's madness as a symbol of the fate of the scholar, a warning against over-application to abstruse studies". Carley speculates that he might have suffered from a "magpie complex", that is an obsession with collecting, from which insanity provided the only escape. (15)
John Leland died on 18th April 1552.
Primary Sources
(1) David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (2003)
A student of both Oxford and Cambridge, he had in 1526-9 paid an extended visit to Paris, where he had been influenced by Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples in religion and Guillaume Budé in scholarship and antiquarianism. Finally he went mad, after laying more-or-less single-handed the foundations of English historical scholarship on the wreckage of the monastic libraries. But what mattered in 1533 was that he was the most skilled Latin poet in England.
(2) James P. Carley, John Leland : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)
The precise chronology of Leland's journeys, of which there seem to have been about five, is impossible to determine and only once did he give a date for his setting out: on 5 May 1542 he began an extensive tour of the west country. An earlier journey began in Wales and brought him to Shropshire, up to Chester and across to Yorkshire, down to the east midlands, Worksop and Bedford, and home again. Other trips included the west midlands, Yorkshire again, and places further north. The accounts of more than one trip have been lost. His notebooks suggest his procedure: sometimes he made maps and measured distances, he asked information from local inhabitants, and he also examined books and charters. He compared sources and noted when there were disparities or when information seemed to be unreliable. During the travels themselves he took rough notes, which he later amplified; normally he kept both rough and fair copies. Although he never managed to produce the many works he envisaged, his undertaking was an extraordinarily ambitious one and marks the beginning of English topographical studies.
Student Activities
Henry VIII (Answer Commentary)
Henry VII: A Wise or Wicked Ruler? (Answer Commentary)
Henry VIII: Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn?
Was Henry VIII's son, Henry FitzRoy, murdered?
Hans Holbein and Henry VIII (Answer Commentary)
The Marriage of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon (Answer Commentary)
Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves (Answer Commentary)
Was Queen Catherine Howard guilty of treason? (Answer Commentary)
Anne Boleyn - Religious Reformer (Answer Commentary)
Did Anne Boleyn have six fingers on her right hand? A Study in Catholic Propaganda (Answer Commentary)
Why were women hostile to Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn? (Answer Commentary)
Catherine Parr and Women's Rights (Answer Commentary)
Women, Politics and Henry VIII (Answer Commentary)
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (Answer Commentary)
Historians and Novelists on Thomas Cromwell (Answer Commentary)
Martin Luther and Thomas Müntzer (Answer Commentary)
Martin Luther and Hitler's Anti-Semitism (Answer Commentary)
Martin Luther and the Reformation (Answer Commentary)
Mary Tudor and Heretics (Answer Commentary)
Joan Bocher - Anabaptist (Answer Commentary)
Anne Askew – Burnt at the Stake (Answer Commentary)
Elizabeth Barton and Henry VIII (Answer Commentary)
Execution of Margaret Cheyney (Answer Commentary)
Robert Aske (Answer Commentary)
Dissolution of the Monasteries (Answer Commentary)
Pilgrimage of Grace (Answer Commentary)
Poverty in Tudor England (Answer Commentary)
Why did Queen Elizabeth not get married? (Answer Commentary)
Francis Walsingham - Codes & Codebreaking (Answer Commentary)
Codes and Codebreaking (Answer Commentary)
Sir Thomas More: Saint or Sinner? (Answer Commentary)
Hans Holbein's Art and Religious Propaganda (Answer Commentary)
1517 May Day Riots: How do historians know what happened? (Answer Commentary)