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

104 Legal History in the Making
challenged the powers of the Cavalier Parliament. 40
On 24 August 1680 Guilelmus Blakader, Scotus, was next, also at Leyden;
he disputed about 'Lithiasis'. 41 Because the Greek word lithiasis means 'stone'
or 'gravel' we are very probably dealing with a medical dissertation and a
mistake in the Cataloguspromotorum. The last comer was Hugo Reid, a 'Scoto-
Britannus'. He matriculated at Leyden in 1721 and took his degree in law on
13 August 1722 disputing de Praeparatione bills in hepate. 42 The subject of the
disputation, the preparation of the bile in the liver, indicates that this is again a
doctorate of medicine and a mistake in the Catalogue: during two centuries not
seven but only five Scotsmen took the highest law degree at a Dutch university.
The number of medical doctorates amounted to 138 in all. In this figure is
included the doctorate of Duncan Cuminius, conferred on him on 30 June
1684 after a public defence of his dissertation, De Cerebro eiusque pathologia
in genere. The steps the English envoy took before Professor Drelincourt to
prevent the promotion were frustrated by the Academic Senate:
iudicavit Senatus ad se non pertinere iudicium de rebus politicis, sed de eruditione in
qualibet facultate, idque liberum semper fuisse Academiae, neque illam libertatem
aut posse aut velle abnegare. 43
Our Scots law students were likely to be innocent of disputationes inaugurates
aut pro gradu: they went abroad because it was considered more honourable
to pass the Faculty of Advocates' examination in civil law, which included an
examination on a title of the Digest by a committee of examiners appointed by
the Faculty. 44 For admission to the Faculty of Advocates it was not necessary
to take a law degree abroad but a Latin thesis had to be written which
would be discussed at the examination. Did the Scots law students prepare
themselves for these theses by active participation in so educative a practice
as disputing exercitii gratia? Answering this question is not very easy because
the disputations at issue have not been preserved systematically. In so far as
they were written by the professors praesides and published in volumes under
their names, library catalogues give some help; on the 'loose' disputations
of which sometimes the student was auctor et respondens and which might
inform us about his personal contribution, a researcher can very rarely set
eyes. As yet in my investigation of Scottish students I have not produced
40
G.M. Trevelyan, A Shortened History of England (Harmondsworth, 1959), 342-43. Hamilton
praises the light burden of English taxation: 'In Anglia sunt levissimae (sc. taxationes), etiamsi tot
quotidie de eorum oneribus audiantur querimoniae & murmura' (Disputatio, fo.B 3 verso).
41
See Molhuysen, Bronnen, iii, 332*. I did not find William Blakader in the matriculation lists. Cf.
D.N.B., ii, 578 (Blackadder).
42
Molhuysen, Bronnen, iv, 284*. On 17 June 1721 'Hugo Reid, Scotus, [Aet.] 20' matriculated at
Leyden as a medical student (Album studiosorum, col. 874).
43
See Molhuysen, Bronnen, iv, 26 and 195*.
44
Feenstra, 'Legal relations', 131 and n.22. Murdoch, at p.150, says that the Faculty of Advocates'
examination included a lecture to the judges of the Court of Session on a title from the Digest assigned
by the Dean of Faculty. It was not until 1750 that advocates were required to pass an examination in
Scots law. Those who chose the examination in Scots law introduced in the previous century did not give
a lecture before the judges.