t to Christ's college. Cambridge. From this university he
removed to All Souls, Oxford, where he paid particular attention to
the Greek language. He afterwards went to Paris, where he cultivated
the acquaintance of the principal scholars of the age, and could
probably number among his correspondents the illustrious names of
Buddoeus, Erasmus, the Stephani, Faber, and Turnebus; in this city he
perfected himself in the knowledge of the Latin and Greek tongues,
to which he afterwards added that of several modern languages. On
his return to England he took orders, and was appointed one of the
chaplains to Henry VIII., who gave him the rectory of Popelay, in the
marshes of Calais, appointed him his library keeper, and conferred
on him the title of Royal Antiquary, which no other person in this
kingdom, before, or after possessed. In this character his majesty
in 1533 granted him a commission, empowering him to search after
England's antiquities, and peruse the libraries of all cathedrals,
abbeys, priories, colleges, &c., as also all the places wherein
records, writings, and whatever else was lodged that related to
antiquity. "Before Leland's time," says Hearne, in his preface to the
_Itinerary_, "all the literary monuments of antiquity were totally
disregarded; and the students of Germany apprised of this culpable
indifference, were suffered to enter our libraries unmolested, and to
cut out of the books deposited there whatever passages they thought
proper, which they afterwards published as relics of the ancient
literature of their own country."

In this research Leland was occupied above six years in travelling
through England, and in visiting all the remains of ancient buildings
and monuments of every kind. On its completion, he hastened to the
metropolis, to lay at the feet of his sovereign the result of his
labours, which he presented to Henry, under the title of a "New Year's
Gift,"[4] in which he says, "I have so traviled yn your dominions
booth by the se costes and the midle partes, sparing nother labor nor
costes, by the space of these vi. yeres paste, that there is almoste
nother cape, nor bay, haven, creke or peers, river or confluence of
rivers, breches, watchies, lakes, meres, fenny waters, montagnes,
valleis, mores, hethes, forestes, chases 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