Thomas Leland (1722–1785) was an Irish Anglican priest, a historian, translator and academic and the author of the early gothic novel Longsword, Earl of Salisbury: An Historical Romance, published in 1762.

[3] He was born in Dublin and educated at Thomas Sheridan's school[4] and in 1737 went to Trinity College, where he graduated with a BA in 1742.

[4] He was ordained a Church of Ireland priest in 1748, and received his Doctor of Divinity in 1757.

[5] Leland translated the Orations of Demosthenes in three volumes (1756) and wrote a life of Philip of Macedon (1758).

[6] He wrote an influential History of Ireland from the Invasion of Henry II in 1773.