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I have to say I'm a tad sceptical about the 1442 oil painting.  It was quite a new technique then and there can't have been many paintings from that era that could be dated that precisely.  Nathaniel may have sincerely thought that's when it was painted though.  I found out that the Scottish edition of the Geneva Bible was printed in 1579 so maybe more feasible.

Anyway here's some more books ...

LATIN SELF TAUGHT

'Ive something older than that - a Latin collection of Petrarch's poems dated 1490.  I can read it, rather slowly'

'Education wasn't to be got easily in old London, but I bought 'Riddles Latin Dictionary' in 1848 and I taught myself Latin.

'I practised by copying the language from old tombstones and memorial inscriptions from old churches and giving them a free rendering.

'When I was young the usual library in a house was the Bible. Fox's 'Book of Martyrs,' and one or two more.'

'My copy of 'Fox's Martyrs' now - I don't know the weight, but it's a huge book and a good many pounds.'

'The type isn't quite the size of loaves of bread, but nearly as big as three penny bits.'

He seems very interested in what things weigh, doesn't he?

Well WA are happy for me to post the cutting on here so I'll transcribe it in sections over the next few days.

Talks About Old London
The Octogenarian Book Lover of Stepney
Volumes by the Ton
Collector who never earned more than £2 a week

Mr Nathaniel Bryceson, 83 years old, is the subject of the 123rd talk.  His learning is one of the objects of Stepney's highest admiration.

'Two tons of books - I had two tons.  I know they weighed two tons, because when I was moving they broke the carman's van and it was guaranteed to carry two tons.'

The bent, white-haired old man moves a slow hand round the crowded walls of his little back room.
From bed to door old books.  In the drawers of the old desk old books.  On the walls - old prints of old churches.

'Churches.' he says 'where my ancestors are to be found.  That's a picture of 'the Dook,' in the room he died in - nearly as plain as mine.'


Well something to think about....

I've been reading through the message boards and note that Mary Shephards brother was Charles Lea, 1776 1836.  I think this is the same C Lea I have the burial bill original document for except the year reads 1838 as far as I can see. Also that Thomas Lea gives them some coal.

Hi 

I will get in touch with the contact at Westminster Archives and see what their response is. I've had a chance to go through the cuttings book in more detail now.  It's almost all newspaper cuttings apart from a watercolour of a house, the bill, a burial bill for C Lea, and a transcript of a marriage register.  Most of the cuttings are bdm announcements, there are some wills, inquests, reports of sermons, bits of local history esp Highgate.  There aren't any other references to NB or many others to any George Lea.  Thomas Lea seems to feature quite a bit. 
Anyway George Lea was my great-grandfather and died in 1911 at the age of 71.  He married Fanny Gurney and had two daughters, Fanny Gurney Lea and Nancy in the 1880's.  They married brothers, name of Johnson.  Fanny Gurney Johnson had a son and a daughter born 1920 who is my mother. There's a history of late marriages so I'm not quite as ancient as all this makes  me seem!  I don't know who compiled the scrapbook but they seem to have had an obsessive interest in the Leas and their relations.  Most cuttings seem to be between 1880 and 1900 with a sudden halt in 1920, the latest one is the birth of my mother.  She is still alive but has dementia.   There was a family tragedy in 1921 which could account for the sudden end of collecting cuttings.
I don't know who George Lea's father was but thinking it may have been Thomas Lea who I'm guessing was the brother of the Eccleston Wharf George Lea and was evidently much more successful in the coal trade than poor old George.
I've had another look at the NB cutting and he mentions his grandmother but not his mother, which ties in with his earlier writings.  He states that his grandmother had 11 children!  I'm not sure how reliable a narrator he is...
One of my mother's cousins is still alive but I spoke to his daughter today and he's been more interested in the researching the Johnson side than the Leas.  The Johnsons had a gold thread manufacturing business so more exciting than coal perhaps.