[5] 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.

[2] 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.

[2] 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.

[2][8] 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.

[2][9] 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.

[2] 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.

[2] 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.

[2][12] He complained that The Germans perceive our desidiousness, and do send daily young scholars hither that spoileth [books], and cutteth them out of libraries, returning home and putting them abroad as monuments of their own country.

[14] 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.

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.

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.

[17][18] 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.

yeres paste, that there is almoste nother cape, nor bay, haven, creke or peere, river or confluence of rivers, breches, waschis, lakes, meres, fenny waters, montaynes, valleis, mores, hethes, forestes, wooddes, cities, burges, castelles, principale manor placis, monasteries, and colleges, but I have seene them; and notid yn so doing a hole worlde of thinges very memorable.He also described what use he intended to make of the information he had accumulated.

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".

[22] Leland was concerned to record evidence for the history of England and Wales as it was visible in the landscape, and he therefore took pains to note all kinds of archaeological remains, including megaliths, hillforts, and Roman and medieval ruins.

[26] He correctly distinguished what he called "Briton brykes" (actually Roman bricks) at several geographically dispersed sites, including Verulamium, Richborough, Lympne, Dover Castle, Canterbury, and Bewcastle.

Leland's first response was an unpublished tract, written perhaps in 1536, the Codrus sive Laus et Defensio Gallofridi Arturii contra Polydorum Vergilium.

[30][31] Leland's material provides invaluable evidence for reconstructing the lost "tomb monument" of Arthur (thought to be a fabrication of the twelfth century) at Glastonbury Abbey.

[33] On his itinerary of 1542, Leland was the first to record the tradition (possibly influenced by the proximity of the villages of Queen Camel and West Camel) identifying the hillfort of Cadbury Castle in Somerset as Arthur's Camelot: At the very south ende of the chirch of South-Cadbyri standeth Camallate, sumtyme a famose toun or castelle, apon a very torre or hille, wunderfully enstregnthenid of nature....

Leland's own manuscript notebooks were inherited by Cheke's son, Henry, and in 1576 they were borrowed and transcribed by John Stow, allowing their contents to begin to circulate in antiquarian circles.

Burton subsequently managed to recover several of the items given to Hales, and in 1632 and 1642–3 donated most of the collection—comprising the Collectanea, De scriptoribus and several of the Itinerary notebooks—to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, where the volumes remain.