Appendix CASE ONE - Collection Point® | The Total Digital Asset ...

98 Legal History in the Making
Scottish Students at the University of Utrecht, 1636-1800. (figures in
brackets refer to the number of Scottish law and medical students at Utrecht)
1636-1650
1651-1675
1676-1700
3
6
50
L
(1)
(1)
(16)
M
(-)
(-)
(9)
1701-1725
1726-1750
1751-1775
1776-1800
38
2
1
1
L
(1)
(1)
(-)
(-)
M
(23)
(-)
(-)
(-)
Details derived from diaries and letters illustrate the competition between
Ley den and Utrecht. As an example from the seventeenth century Feenstra
cites the letters of Colin Mackenzie of Coul to his uncle John Mackenzie, one
of the Clerks of Session. Colin began to read law at Utrecht (1692), but he
ended his studies at Leyden (1698). 10 Van den Bergh's book on Gerard Noodt
provides us with another example. On 8 August 1712 the famous Romanist
Noodt, who was several times secretary of the Leyden academic senate, in this
capacity delivered to the city council of Leyden the complaints of senate and
students regarding the academic printer (appointed after the death of Abraham
Elzevier), 'concerning the bad paper and letters, as well as the increase in the
price of printing theses, which caused many students to take their degree in
Utrecht and other neighbouring Academies'. 11
Later we shall see whether Scottish students also suffered from the high
prices and the poor quality of the paper of the academic printer of their
theses. Van den Bergh states that the complaint that masses of students
were migrating to Utrecht was raised again by Noodt in the senate on 17
December 1716. The occasion was another quarrel with the burgomasters of
Leyden, concerning the fact that the decisions of the academic court were much
too mild towards students, much to the distress of Leyden shopkeepers. This
time the bailiff had taken action against some students, in blatant violation of
the privilegium fori. Noodt urged that the numerous and rich English (in fact
mainly Scottish, says Van den Bergh) students in Leyden might very well take
refuge in Utrecht, if the academic jurisdiction was impaired. This seems a good
argument, but we happen to know that in this case Noodt's threat was just a
trick. In Utrecht there was no forum privilegiatum for academics at all. 12 At
a later period a further point of difference between Leyden and Utrecht may
have been the middle-class mentality of the former town. On the advice of
Sir David Dalrymple, James Boswell - who studied law in the Dutch Republic
10 Feenstra, op. cit., 133. On 13 February 1701 Sir Colin Mackenzie of Coul, Bart., was admitted to the
Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, see Grant, op. cit., 135.
11 G. C. J. J. van den Bergh, The Life and Work of Gerard Noodt (1647-1725): Dutch Legal Scholarship
Between Humanism and Enlightenment (Oxford, 1988), 81.
12 See Van den Bergh, op. cit., 81-82.