Introduction

This work deals with English students who studied at Leiden University in the years 1575–1650, that is, in the period starting at the university’s foundation, and ending when humanism left the centre stage and before Cartesianism began to play a major role on the university scene. During these years, Leiden University was one of the first universities in Europe, being a well-known centre of late humanism and attracting a substantial number of foreign students. Apart from the large numbers of German students, the English, the French, and the Scandinavians also formed significant student groups totalling close to a thousand students each. Also from an English perspective, Leiden was an attractive continental university, in popularity rivalled only by Padua. In those years, student mobility in general reached its peak, and also the number of English students found at continental universities was higher than before or after that time. ¹