Having been so particularly called upon, at the last Meeting of the Society, to look into the state of our information respecting Lynwode, one of our most celebrated countrymen, and to report the result, I should have been wanting in proper respect to the President and the Society if I had not taken some little pains to put myself in the condition to do what was required of me.

Previous to the time of Leland, little if anything had been done to collect the facts in the lives of eminent Englishmen of whatever class, and to form what may be called a Body of English Biography. This was, however, a task which that diligent antiquary undertook, and his work has formed the basis of all subsequent accounts of English authors who lived before the Reformation. Of Lynwode he gives what are the main facts in any history that might be written of him.