View the souce of this page to see how it was made. The span arond the image has a style attribute to set the top margin to that it lines up, at least roughly. If you share the same CSS file for a lot of images, it is easier to put this on the individual images rather than in the CSS file, although an alternative might be to make all your images have the same top margin by padding them with white space as needed.
Download the inital letter L

L ayaman went travelling the length of this land,
And secured a book that he used for his source,
the ‘English Book’ which Bede had written;
A second he took in Latin, created by Albin,
And Augustine who brought the Christian faith in,
His book he took as third source,
and set by this his whole course:
A French cleric composed it,
Wace was what they called him, and very well he wrote it,
And he gave it to her highness, Eleanor of Aquitania;
She was the queen of Henry, the king of such high fame.
Lawman laid out these books, and he leafed through them,
Gazing at them gratefully - the Lord be gracious to him!
Quill pens he clutched in fingers, composing on his parchment,
And the more reliable versions he recorded,
Compressing those three books into one complete book.

[Layamon, Brut, MS. Cotton Caligula A.ix]

light version