Hadriaan Beverland (Hadrianus Beverlandus, September–December 1650 Middelburg, Zeeland — 14 December 1716 London) was a Dutch humanist scholar who was banished from Holland in 1679 and settled in England in 1680. Early life Beverland was born between 20 September and 14 December 1650 in Middelburg, son to Johannes Beverland (?-1654) and Catarina van Deijnse (?-1665). He had two older brothers: Johannes (1638?-1695) and Christoffel (1646?-1676). His father worked in the military village of Lillo and died in March 1654. In September 1654, Beverland’s mother Catarina married Bernard de Gomme, an important military engineer for the English army. The couple moved to England around 1660. Beverland and his brothers remained in Middelburg to finish their education and lived in different households. In 1663 Beverland was registered at the Latin School of Middelburg. In July 1669 he was registered at the University of Franeker. He also studied at the universities of Leiden and Utrecht in the decade that followed and spent a year at the University of Oxford in 1672, a move that was partly inspired by (the threat of) war in the Dutch Republic. During his studies, Beverland befriended other humanist scholars: Jacob de Goyer, Nicolaas Heinsius, Jacobus Gronovius, Johann Georg Graevius, and Isaac Vossius. He earned a doctorate in Law at the University of Utrecht in 1677. From his early twenties onwards, Beverland focused on compiling a grand work on sexual lust, which would be titled ‘De Prostibulis Veterum’ (‘On the prostitution of the ancients’). By 1677 Beverland contemplated the publication of his ideas and in 1678 he offered a first glimpse of his conclusions in Peccatum Originale (Original Sin). To silence the criticism he received after his first publication, from members of the Dutch Reformed Church in particular, Beverland decided to edit the work. He published a second edition, De Peccato Originali (On Original sin), in 1679. Studies In his studies Beverland defined sexual lust as the original sin. He argued that Adam and Eve had had sexual relations in the Garden of Eden, disobeying God’s commands. As a punishment, all people were henceforth dominated by sexual desire. Beverland concentrated on the past to display the universal power of lust in human nature. Yet he also made sure to point to the gross discrepancy between the official restriction of sex to marriage, prevalent in Calvinist doctrine and secular laws in early modern states, and the actual sexual behaviour of