Leiden a great town from the dutch Golden Age

Leiden Sir John Percival July 1718 The university of Leiden, like others of these provinces,
has not any students upon foundations as those
Oxford and Cambridge have with us, but (they)
lodge in private houses and repair at stated
hours to the lectures held by the professors
of those sciences they choose to apply themselves to.

When that is over they are perfect masters of themselves, being subject to no discipline of forms. They have several small privileges, as to be excused paying the yearly duties due to the city and State upon half a tun of beer and the quarterly duty upon forty quarts of wine.

Their greatest privilege and which I think indeed too great, considering they are under no proper regulation, is that in case of quarrels and even murder they are exempt from the jurisdiction of the criminal court, and can be tried only before the Rector Magnificus of the university, assisted by four assesors, four burgomasters and twe sheriffs or judges, who are generally observed to suffer the guilty person to make his escape.

But neither this nor other privileges are allowed them unless they cause themselves to be admitted members of the universitey and their names be annually entered in the matriculate book by the rector above mentioned.

Card-playing people by Lucas van Leyden in 1517

The townhouse stands in one of the broadest streets of the city and is a handsome old pile of building. The magistrates have therein their several offices for transacting public business and from thence issue all orders that conern the government of the city. The rooms are but meanly furnished, yet there are two or three good paintings and among the rest a celebrated piece of Lucas van Leyden; the subject is the Last Judgement.

It is extraordinarily well preserved, though of great antiquity, for that the painter died in 1533. He was famous in his time though he never travelled further to perfect himself than to Flanders. There are several of his (en)gravings in which art he so well imitated Albert Durer that they contracted a great intimacy. He fancied himself poisoned by a rival in his art and throwing himself into a milk diet, languished for six yearsand then deceased thirtynine years old.

The burghers (far happier in this respect than the subject of Great Britain) without the obligation of calling lawyer to their assistance, plead their own causes before these burgomasters, and a speedy end is put to their differences. The court of sheriffs takes cognizance both of civil and criminal causes. In it the great bailiff presides, and it is only before him that the lawyers are allowed to plead. He had under him two deputies or lieutenants, who, with inferior officers called ``dienders``, have charge to seize on criminals and carry them to prison. Thither the sheriffs repair to examine them of the facts laid to their charge. When they refuse to own the crime of which by several circumstances they are suspected to be guilty, they are put on the rack, which generally extorting a confession, they are afterwards executed at the instance of the great bailiff.

Torture
But sometimes persons have been known so fond of life and so courageous under pain as to bear the repeated tortures inflicted on them without confessing, by which they escaped the death they deserved. Of this there was an instance when I was at The Hague, where a desperate villian lay in jail, guilty, in the full persuasion of all the people, of several murders charged against him; for they were sworn to by eyewitnesses. Yet he, knowing that death could not pass on him by the law unless he owned his crimes, endured the rack twice before my arrival, and while I was there, underwent it a third time. He had such power over himself as not to cry out, only he fetched deep sighs. He openly upbraided his judges and executioners, bidding them to do their worst, and triumphed that he should be too hard for them, for that after his third and last trial they could do no more to him. But I was afterwards informed that the magistrates came to a resolution still to continue him in prison, till some pretence could be found to put him to death consistent with law.

Willem van Mieris (1662 Leiden - 1747 Leiden) painted The Spinner.

Art
The polite arts are yet subsisting here. Mr Carel de Moor and Mr van Mieris are two very good painters in their way. The first for faces, the other for small history. Mr Smeltzing is eminent for carving and striking medals, Mr Johan van Musschenbroeck for microscopes and mathematical instruments and Mr Vermey for casting busts and other figures in plaster.

Of these and other men`s works, Mr Pieter de la Court, a gentleman of Flemish extraction and originally of the town of Lier, has an eminent collection. He is a curious man and very rich. Though entire strangers to him and his lady, he civilly invited us to breakfast and afterwards showed us three rooms full of good paitings the works of Gerard Dou, Cornelis van Poelenburch, Rubens, Carlotti, Jan Velvet Breughel, Philip Peter Roos, Jan Frans van Bloemen, alias Orizonte, Frans van Mieris the father and son Willem van Mieris. There are several pieces of flowers and fruit by Mrs Tuysch, now residing at Amsterdam, which are excellent in their kind; her price is according.