Like his monarch a few months later (Leland didn’t make clear the dates of his descriptions so am making an assumption) Leland travelled to Hull form Beverley although, unlike Henry VIII, he detoured through Cottingham.
His initial comments on Hull show but a vague knowledge of Hull’s history ‘The towne of Kingeston was in the tyme of Edward the 3 but a meane fischar toune’ thus with no reference to Edward I, trade with the Baltic or the trade in wool. He then claims that the town of Hull grew in importance as a result of the Icelandic fish trade whereby cod was caught and dried back in Hull ‘The first great encreasing of the towne was by the passing for fisch into Iseland, from whens they had the hole trade of stoke fisch (cod) into England’. ‘In Richard the secundes dayes the town waxid very rich’, this he goes on to say because of the then status of Michael De la Pole ‘Counte of Southfolk, wherapon he got of King Richard the 2 many grauntes and privileges to the toune’ (Hull). During Richard II’s reign, he claims, Hull ‘was wonderfully augmentid yn building’ ‘and the waul begon’ ‘made al of brike, as most part of the houses of the toun at that tyme was’. Thus Leland records that Hull prospered and expanded mostly during the reign of Richard II (1377 – 1399) rather than this happening across the 14th century.
Leland was writing in the written English of the day and not in latin. The English language had become the language of Court and the production of the Bible in English was a pillar of the Reformation. Spelling was ‘flexible’ by later standards (see above), for example the word town being spelled variously across just a few lines.
The painting above shows a youthful-looking Richard II seated in the bishop’s chair at Westminster Abbey – he was only 32 when deposed.