LELAND, Leyland, or Laylonde, John (c. 1506- 1552), a famous English antiquary, was born in London towards the close of the reign of Henry VII. From St Paul’s School, where he was brought up under Lily, the famous grammarian, he passed to Christ’s College, Cambridge, and thence to All Soul’s College, Oxford. After residing for some time in Paris, he returned to England, and became chaplain to Henry VIII., who appointed him, in 1530, to the rectory of Popeling, in the marches of Calais, made him his librarian, and in 1533 commissioned him as “king’s antiquary,” with power to search for records, manuscripts, and relics of antiquity, in all the cathedrals, colleges, abbeys, and priories of England. Accordingly he set out on a tour which lasted six years, and afforded him materials for study during the remainder of his life. On his return in 1542 he was rewarded by the king with the rectory of Haseley in Oxfordshire; in 1543 he became a canon of King’s College (now Christ Church), Oxford, and about the same time a prebendary of Salisbury. Leland now withdrew to his house in the parish of St Michael le Querne, London, and devoted himself exclusively to the digesting of his information. In 1547 he fell into a state of insanity, which continued until his death on the 18th April 1552....
Some of Leland’s papers, after passing through several hands, were deposited by Burton, the historian of Leicestershire, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford in 1632. Others came into the possession of Sir Robert Cotton, and are now, along with the rest of his books, in the British Museum. His principal works are The laboryeuse Journey and Serehe for Englandes Antiquitees; A New Yeares Gyfte to Kynge Henry the VIII. in the 37 yeare of his Regne, London, 1549; Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis, edited by Anthony Hall, Oxford, 1709, 2 vols. 8vo; The Itinerary, published by Thomas Hearne, Oxford, 1710-12, 9 vols. 8vo, and reprinted in 1770; and De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, edited by Hearne, Oxf., 1715, 6 vols. 8vo, and reprinted at London in 1770. See The Lives of those eminent antiquaries John Leland, Thomas Hearne, and Anthony à Wood, vol. i., Oxford, 1772.
LELAND, John (1691—1766), a polemical theologian of the 18th century, was born at Wigan, Lancashire, in 1691, and was educated in Dublin, where he made such progress in theological and other studies that in 1716, without having attended any college or hall, he was appointed first assistant and afterwards sole pastor of a congregation of Presbyterians in New Row. This office he continued to fill until his death on January 16, 1766.
Leland’s first publication was A Defence of Christianity (1733), in reply to Tindal’s Christianity as Old as the Creation ; it was succeeded by ∖∖∖α Divine Authority of the Old and New Testaments asserted (1738), in answer to The Moral Philosopher of Morgan; in 1741 he published two volumes, in the form of two letters, being Remarks on [H. Dodwell’s] Christianity not Founded on Argument·, and in 1753 Reflexions on the Late Lord Bolingbroke's Letters on the Study and Use of History. A View of the Principal Deistical Writers that have appeared in England was published in 1754-56. This is the only work of the author—“most worthy, painstaking, and commonplace of divines,” as he has recently been styled—which can now be said to have any present value. This value, however, is purely historical; his facts about the deists are interesting and useful, but it may be safely conjectured that no one now reads his (doubtless sincere) arguments, here and elsewhere, against the creed he opposed without some sense of their hollowness, contradictoriness, and obvious unfairness. His latest work was a treatise entitled The Advantage and Necessity of the Christian Revelation shown from the Slate of Religion in the Ancient Heathen World. Discourses on various Subjects, with a Life prefixed, was published posthumously, 4 vols. 8vo, 1768-89; also a Life by Huddesford, 1772.
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