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Life after Gravity

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1
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For Clarissa
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Acknowledgements

This is the second book I have written about Isaac Newton, although
I do not regard myself as a specialized expert. Instead, I have leant
on the shoulders of many scholars, especially three: Rob Iliffe,
Simon Schaffer, and Steven Snobelen. Together they know everything
that has ever been discovered about Newton, and individually they
have all been very helpful. In addition, I have benefited from the
wonderful online Newton Project, currently hosted by Oxford
University at http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/ and freely available
to all. Headed by Rob Iliffe and Scott Mandelbrote, around fifty
researchers—mostly underpaid and unnamed women—have me­ticu­
lous­ly transcribed many thousands of documents from different
archives.
Other colleagues have also been extremely generous with their
time and their expertise. In particular, I should like to thank the
anonymous reviewer who made some extremely perceptive comments
as well as Will Ashworth, Malcolm Baker, Martin Cherry, Tim
Chesters, Sally Dixon-­Smith, Sarah Dry, Mark Goldie, James Harriman-
Smith, John Leigh, Alex Lindsay, Joanna Marschner, Andrew
­
Odlyzko, Anna Marie Roos, Stuart Sillars, Robert Turner, Simon
Werrett, and also Clive Wilmer—alphabetically last in that list but
deserving particular gratitude as my sternest critic and strongest
supporter.
I am very lucky to have a wonderful agent, Tracy Bohan of the
Wylie Agency, and also a delightfully sympathetic team at Oxford
University Press, notably Luciana O’Flaherty, Matthew Cotton,
Kizzy Taylor-­Richelieu, and Kate Shepherd.
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Contents

List of Illustrations xi
Prologue xv

ACT I.  THE THEATRE: ISAAC NEWTON MOVES

TO THE METROPOLIS
1. Living in Style 3
2. The Tower of London 23
3. Family Trees 41
4. The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt 60

ACT II.  THE AUDIENCE: ISAAC NEWTON IN

LONDON SOCIETY
5. Fortune Hunters 83
6. The Royal Society 101
7. Hanover-­upon-­Thames 124

ACT III.  THE PLAY: ISAAC NEWTON AND ENGLISH

IMPERIALISM
8. Making Money 151
9. Knowledge and Power 171
10. Going Global 196
Epilogue218

Notes 223
Bibliography 235
Illustration Credits 245
Index 247
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List of Illustrations

0.1 The Indian Emperor. Or the Conquest of Mexico. As performed in

the year 1731 in Mr Conduitt’s, Master of the Mint, before the
Duke of Cumberland &c. Act 4, Scene 4; William Hogarth, 1732 xv
0.2 Sir Isaac Newton; Godfrey Kneller, 1702 xxi
1.1 Newton’s House, 35 St Martin’s Street; C. Lacy after
Edward Meredith, 1811 13
1.2 David Le Marchand; Joseph Highmore, 1724 19
2.1 Tower of London; Samuel and Nathaniel Buck, 1737 30
2.2 Queen Anne’s coronation medal; Isaac Newton and John
Croker, 1702 37
3.1 Family tree; Isaac Newton, 1705 56
4.1 Medal of John Conduitt; designed by Gravelot, engraved by
John Sigismund Tanner, 1737 61
5.1 Title page, The Constitutions of the Free-­Masons;
James Anderson, 1723 87
5.2 Frontispiece, The Constitutions of the Free-­Masons, 1723;
engraving by John Pine 88
5.3 A New & Exact Map of the Coast, Countries and Islands within
ye Limits of ye South Sea Company; Herman Moll, 1711 91
6.1 Principia Mathematica (1713) with hand-­written additions and
corrections; Isaac Newton, after 1713 120
6.2 Frontispiece of Principia Mathematica (1726); George Vertue
after John Vanderbank, 1726 122
7.1 Caroline Wilhelmina of Brandenburg-­Ansbach;
Jacopo Amigoni, 1735 130
8.1 ‘The Art of Coining’, Universal Magazine, 1750 156
8.2 Gold assay plate, 1707 166
9.1 Africa: Corrected from the Observations of the Royal Society
at London and Paris; John Senex, 1725 173
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xii  List of Illustrations

9.2 Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa, coat of

arms, 1663 188
9.3 Ivory imported by the Royal African Company, 17th or
18th century 189
9.4 Cape Coast Castle 192
10.1 Newton in Senegal, 1770; from Jean Delisle de Sales, Philosophie
de la nature, 1770 202
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The first of all English games is making money. That is an

all-­absorbing game; and we knock each other down oftener
in playing at that, than at football, or any other roughest
sport: and it is absolutely without purpose; no one who
engages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a great
money-­maker what he wants to do with his money,—he
never knows. He doesn’t make it to do anything with it. He
gets it only that he may get it. ‘What will you make of what
you have got?’ you ask. ‘Well, I’ll get more,’ he says. Just as,
at cricket, you get more runs. There’s no use in the runs, but
to get more of them than other people is the game. And
there’s no use in the money, but to have more of it than
other people is the game.
John Ruskin, The Crown of
Wild Olive, 1866
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Prologue

This book has two subjects: Isaac Newton’s three decades in London,
and a picture by William Hogarth that is packed with Newtonian
references.

Figure 0.1  The Indian Emperor. Or the Conquest of Mexico. As performed in the
year 1731 in Mr Conduitt’s, Master of the Mint, before the Duke of Cumberland
&c. Act 4, Scene 4; William Hogarth, 1732
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xvi Prologue

Here are ten facts about Isaac Newton.

Some of them may surprise you.
All of them are discussed in this book.

He owned two silver chamber pots, twelve bibles, and thirteen

copies of the New Testament.
He lost a small fortune on the stock market by buying high and
selling low.
He lived in London longer than in Cambridge.
He was twice elected MP for Cambridge University.
He was paid a bonus for every coin minted from slave-­trade
gold.
He had sworn to sexual abstinence, but was plagued by obsessive
thoughts.
He wanted to ban imports of luxury goods from China and
India.
He worked for many years in the Tower of London while it still
housed a zoo.
He hired an experimental assistant who became the Grand
Master of English Freemasonry.
He believed that 666 is the Number of the Name of the Beast.
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Prologue  xvii

Precise figures are hard to find, but this table indicates Newton’s
relative affluence by listing estimates for the wealth at death of
twelve other people who appear in this book.1
£1000 in 1700 was worth approximately £140,000 in 2018 using
measures of price, and £2,500,000 using measures of income.2

Hans Sloane Physician and collector £100,000

David Garrick Actor £100,000
Isaac Newton Master of the Royal Mint £32,000
Edward Gibbon Historian £26,000
George Handel Composer £17,500
Robert Boyle Chemist £10,000
Alexander Pope Poet £5000–6000
Samuel Johnson Writer £2300
John Flamsteed Astronomer Royal £2000
Elizabeth Tollet Poet £1770+
William Whiston Former Cambridge professor £1300+
Daniel Defoe Author Nothing
John Desaguliers Master of Freemasonry Pauper

To say that all the world’s a stage had become a cliché long before
William Shakespeare was born.3 During the eighteenth century,
members of England’s elite put on their own daily performances. Their
elaborate gestures, powdered wigs, tightly drawn-­in waists and el­lip­
tic­
al phraseology all helped to disguise a personal identity that
remained closed off even from husbands and wives. Emotions were to
be reined in, not displayed publicly. Born with life-­scripts marked up
in advance, privileged children were moulded into their adult roles,
their futures mapped out in front of them. Posing for family portraits,
miniature aristocrats held stiff, formal poses, perhaps clutching a little
sword or wearing a dress cut so low that a nipple showed. One major
priority for landed families was to preserve their estates intact, and so
the oldest son inherited everything; daughters remained the posses-
sion of their father until marriage, when they—along with everything
they owned—became the property of their husband.
London polite society thrived on financial schemes, sexual intrigues,
and political manoeuvres, and it became fashionable for children to
perform adult plays that taught them about the survival skills they
would need. In 1731, four years after Newton died, the Drury Lane
Theatre revived John Dryden’s The Indian Emperour, which had first
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xviii Prologue

been staged in 1665, when Newton was at Cambridge. Soon

­afterwards, the manager’s son—actor and notorious rake Theophilus
Cibber—directed a children’s performance in the house of John
Conduitt, Newton’s successor as Master of the Mint. The wealthy
audience included the juvenile actors’ proud relatives as well as three
royal children—Prince William (already the Duke of Cumberland,
despite his youth) and his two younger sisters. William must have
enjoyed the occasion because, at his request, the play was presented
again the following year for their parents—King George II and Queen
Caroline—at St James’s Palace.4
Now largely forgotten, Conduitt was a man of considerable stand-
ing, a Member of Parliament and husband of Newton’s half-­niece. An
assiduous social climber, he was proud of the aristocratic entertain-
ment he had provided, and he wanted a permanent record. By the
following year, his friends were gossiping that he was ‘going to have a
conversation piece drawn by Hogarth, of the young people of quality
that acted at his house; and if I am not mistaken he hopes to have the
honour of the Royal part of the audience in the picture.’5 He did
indeed commission Hogarth to portray this event in an exceptionally
large picture, 130 × 145 cm (Figure  0.1). Because it contained so
many individual faces, the painting took three years to finish. This
domestic scene is still privately owned, and unlike much of Hogarth’s
work, was not on sale as an engraving until 1791, long after most of
its participants had died.
Conduitt made an astute choice of artist. Hogarth is now most
famous for his scenes of depravity and corruption, which forced pros-
perous purchasers to confront the risks of slipping from their comfort-
able existence to share the misery of London’s gin-­ sodden slum
dwellers. But at the time, he was renowned for his conversation pieces.
The word ‘conversation’ carried implicit connotations of sexual as well
as verbal encounters, and these carefully constructed group pictures
depicted long-­term tensions and ambiguities in eighteenth-­century
culture. Resembling snap-­shots in oils of a specific instant in time,
they portrayed the wealthy at leisure inside their own homes, dis-
played on canvas as if participating in a performance.
Conduitt’s commission arrived with perfect timing, while Hogarth
was beginning to enjoy the success of his Harlot’s Progress series.
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Prologue  xix

After celebrating with friends on a trip to Kent, he set to work. Dryden’s

The Indian Emperour. Or the Conquest of Mexico was loosely based
on the Spanish colonization of the Aztecs in the early sixteenth century.
Hogarth had recently painted another play, the theatrical hit The
Beggar’s Opera, when he sat among the Drury Lane audience sketching
on blue paper to remain concealed in the dark. Perhaps remembering
the five years his father had spent in Fleet Prison, Hogarth depicted a
grim scene inside a cell, featuring two women and a man in handcuffs.
In five successive versions, he increasingly included the audience as well
as the action on stage, so that in retrospect the series seems to have been
leading up to a grand finale—his Indian Emperor.
Again, he showed a prison scene, when two local princesses are
vying for the love of Hernán Cortés, a Spanish invader who has been
temporarily imprisoned by Montezuma, an Aztec emperor. The adults
in the audience would have known that, before the evening was over,
Montezuma would die and the Cortés character would emerge as
conqueror, but perhaps for the watching children the plot and its
savagery came as a surprise.
Hogarth’s pictures were rarely unambiguous: he liked stacking them
with symbolic references and double meanings. Here shimmering
flashes of gold and cream evoke power and aristocracy both on and
off the makeshift stage, while the scene ripples with concealed pas-
sions. By lacing it with visual references to Newton, Hogarth sim­ul­
tan­eous­ly paid tribute to an English icon and emphasized Conduitt’s
high status in London society.
Physically present as a marble bust surveying the scene from the
mantelpiece, Newton also pervades the canvas metaphorically. In the
audience, the royal governess is bidding one of her daughters to pick
up the fan that has fallen though the force of gravity, while the
prompter at the back left is one of Newton’s staunchest propagandists.
Appropriately enough for an intellectual Titan, only Newton’s head is
present, glowing like a floodlit reminder of his innovative book on
optics. Materially absent from the room as from life, Newton’s mind is
dominant. Resembling gravitational forces that shoot through empty
space, he is both nowhere and everywhere, an all-­seeing divine pres-
ence looming over these childish human activities.

* * *
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xx Prologue

When Isaac Newton wanted something, he was willing to pay for

the best—and he knew that whatever a person’s inner virtues, out­
ward appearances counted. England was renowned as the land of
portrait painters and, like other affluent social climbers, Newton
commissioned London’s top artists to create flattering pictures for
winning over his critics and influencing his supporters. This was
common practice in England; in contrast, continental Europeans
looked down with disdain on such ‘Face-­Painting’, regarding it as
inferior to history painting, which showed a specific event such as
a famous battle or a mythological scenario. Newton hung many of
his portraits in his own home, where his visitors could admire the
exclusive good taste that can only be purchased by the wealthy.
When he became president of London’s Royal Society, one of his
first steps was to organize a picture collection of its eminent
Fellows. To set a suitable example, Newton donated a large picture
of himself, making sure that everyone recognized his elite status
by adorning it with gold lettering (in Latin) advertising his role as
president.
Among Newton’s favourite artists was the German-­born Godfrey
Kneller, who had studied under Rembrandt van Rijn in Amsterdam
before being appointed Principal Painter to the Crown by Charles II.
Many years later, when one of Newton’s London homes was
demolished, Kneller’s card was found underneath the floorboards.
He painted five different portraits of Newton, although only two
of them are well known. Newton’s facial characteristics are similar
in all of them, and their striking differences are due not to his
advancing age but to his desire of repeatedly presenting himself in
different roles.
The first time he sat for Kneller, in 1689, Newton was in his mid-
forties and had published the Principia—his famous book on
­
mechanics and gravity—just two years earlier. (In English, this book’s
full title is Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; because all
three editions were published in Latin, it is usually referred to as the
Principia, short for Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica).
This early portrait shows him as a reclusive academic with unkempt
hair and a thin pale face, a dedicated scholar who has temporarily
ventured out of solitude before scurrying back to the security of his
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Prologue  xxi

Figure 0.2  Sir Isaac Newton; Godfrey Kneller, 1702

rooms. It has often been interpreted to confirm what many people

want to believe: that Newton was an unsullied scientific genius who
disdained all thoughts of material comfort. Although that persona
dominates biographies and documentaries, after arriving in London
Newton radically refashioned himself, and the sombre picture
remained virtually unknown, languishing in the dark corridor of a
country mansion until the middle of the nineteenth century.6
Kneller’s second portrait (Figure 0.2) was very different, and it
displays the man-­about-­town who is the less familiar subject of
this book—the metropolitan Newton who thrived in high society
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xxii Prologue

for three decades and became extremely rich. When it was

painted in 1702, Newton was already Master of the Mint, and
within three years he had become President of the Royal Society
and been knighted by Queen Anne. More conventional but less
intimate than the first, the painting shows a distinguished gentle­
man wearing a fine white shirt and gazing out arrogantly at the
viewer. This Newton appears determined to advertise his elegant
worldly status. The glossiness of his wig competes with the sheen of
the sumptuous velvet wrap, which is deep crimson, the colour of
nobility that remained Newton’s favourite. Unlike the previous por­
trait of 1689, this one was widely circulated. As well as being repeat­
edly copied in oils, it was engraved in black and white with varying
degrees of fidelity. Reproduced in books, prints, and medallions,
this version travelled all over Europe and became the standard
Enlightenment image of Sir Isaac Newton, Britain’s most distin­
guished natural philosopher.
Perhaps on Kneller’s advice, in this second picture Newton’s face is
surrounded by luxuriant but artificial auburn locks, very similar to
the style worn by King George I when he posed for Kneller’s cor­on­
ation portrait. Men’s wigs were not mere decoration: they indicated
the owner’s station in life. Unlike those worn by women, which sup­
plemented their natural hair, men’s were a cover-­over or even a total
replacement: older men might be naturally bald, while younger ones
could have their heads shaved. In 1720, an advice manual on hair
and teeth made it clear that whereas women chose such adornments
to make themselves more beautiful, ‘men should dress suitable to
their various ranks in life, whether as a magistrate, statesman, war­
rior, man of pleasure, &c.’ Just like theatre actors who change their
costume, the author explained, male social performers ‘may be
dress’d to produce in us different ideas of the qualities of men’.7 In
Kneller’s portrait, Newton is acting out the cosmopolitan role that he
assumed in 1696, after terminating over three decades of scholarship
at Cambridge to live in London for the rest of his life.
This book explores how Newton interacted with elite metro­pol­
itan society, a milieu far removed from his previous surroundings
of the remote Lincolnshire countryside and the secluded cloisters of
Trinity College. He spent the next thirty years running London’s
Royal Mint, revamping the British economy and moving in
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Prologue  xxiii

fashionable aristocratic circles—a very different character from his

previous persona as a reclusive Cambridge academic. Rather than
soaring above mundane concerns, this Newton immersed himself
in financial negotiations, court intrigues, and international politics.
By the time he died, he had revived the ebbing fortunes of the Royal
Society, but he had also accumulated a substantial fortune, been
knighted by Queen Anne, and launched the international gold
standard. As a wealthy Enlightenment gentleman with influential
contacts, Newton played a key role in the interlinked growth of sci­
ence, the state, and British global trade.

Preparing to Leave

This was no overnight metamorphosis. Newton finally abandoned

Cambridge in the spring of 1696, but he had been exploring future
possibilities for some time, prompted by the publication of the
Principia in 1687 and the political upheaval of the Glorious
Revolution the following year. Each time he tried but failed to get a
better position, the metropolis became increasingly attractive. By
then, he had already emerged from the sanctuary of his books and
experiments to become prominent in university politics. Over the
next few years, he often travelled to London, even living there for
months at a time. During this transitional period, he established
fresh friendships and prepared himself for a fresh future.
Even during his most reclusive years, Newton could never totally
isolate himself from Cambridge’s intertwined religious and political
intrigues: survival demanded tactical secrecy and flexibility. He
openly abhorred Catholicism openly, denouncing it as a false reli­
gion that posed a dangerous threat to the English nation. In contrast,
he kept self-­protectively quiet about his aversion to some doctrines
of the Anglican Church, subscribing instead to a religious heresy
named after Arius, a Christian living in Egypt around the end of the
third century. The Arian doctrine maintained that although Jesus
Christ was the Son of God, he was born later and was therefore
secondary. This conflicted with the Trinitarian creed of the Anglican
Church that God comprises three distinct but divine personages:
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.8
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xxiv Prologue

When Newton was offered a position as Cambridge’s second

Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, his Arianism presented an
awkward obstacle, because Charles II had decreed that in addition
to their vow of celibacy, all university fellows should subscribe to
the Thirty-­Nine Articles, the basic statement of Anglican beliefs.
Newton’s manuscripts reveal how much he struggled to observe
sexual abstinence, but at least it was in line with his own high moral
standards. The new requirement presented a greater challenge: even
the name of his Cambridge college must have felt alien for a heretic
who rejected the validity of the Holy Trinity. Technically, it was
possible to obtain a royal dispensation, but several requests had
already been rejected. Somehow, although it is still not clear how,
Newton managed to wriggle out of the university stipulation for
orthodoxy. Mysteriously, after a visit to London, a draft exemption
was on its way to the Attorney General. Somebody somewhere—
probably his predecessor in the post, Isaac Barrow—had pulled
strings. From then on, no Lucasian Professor was obliged to take
the oath of Anglicanism. Even so, discretion was essential. While
Newton diplomatically kept quiet about his unorthodox beliefs, his
successor William Whiston actively advertised his own Arianism,
and was soon dismissed from the university in disgrace.
Consumed by his work, and keeping well below the parapet,
Newton effectively disappeared from public view. When he was at
last nearing the end of the Principia, Newton embarked on a new
phase in his life, gradually emerging from his self-­imposed seclu­
sion. By then, James II had inherited the throne from his brother,
Charles II—and James was determined to make England Catholic.
Refusing to heed his advisers, he replaced Anglicans in powerful
positions by Catholics, despotic behaviour that aroused great
resentment across the country. Even his daughters, Anne and Mary,
complained that ‘the priests have so much power with the King as
to make him do things so directly against the Laws of the Land, &
indeed contrary to his own promises.’9
At Oxford and Cambridge, James began distributing dispensations
for Catholics, who were normally banned from the universities. In
the spring of 1687, Cambridge University rebelled by making a test
case out of a Benedictine monk, Alban Francis, refusing to follow
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Prologue  xxv

James’s instructions that this ardent Catholic should receive a

degree without swearing allegiance to the Thirty-­Nine Articles.
Angry letters circulated; secret meetings were convened. Hypocrisy
does not seem too strong a word for describing Newton’s behaviour
as he launched himself into the campaign against Francis. The Arian
who ten years earlier had refused to take vows himself now defended
the Anglican Church, insisting that Francis should not be admitted
without signing up to the Thirty-­Nine Articles. Newton did have
other options: he might have left Cambridge, or he could have kept
quiet about his conviction that James had no right to intervene in
academic affairs. Instead, he decided that protecting the university
against Catholicism and Stuart control was more important.
Agitating when appropriate, but discreetly absenting himself
from Cambridge when expedient, Newton became such a key
player that he was one of eight representatives chosen to defend the
university at an official hearing in London presided over by George
Jeffreys, a sycophantic supporter of King James. Already notorious
as ‘The Hanging Judge’, Jeffreys ruthlessly enforced royal policy and
was duly rewarded with repeated promotion. For his part, Newton
drafted fervent defences of the university’s position and rose to
prominence. Although details of the negotiations remain murky,
the outcome is clear: Newton’s side won, sustaining only one cas­
ual­ty, an incompetent vice-­chancellor with a drink problem.
By the end of 1688, William of Orange—Protestant husband of
James’s daughter Mary—had landed in England and seized power.
James had fled to France, his Catholic protégés had been forced out
of Cambridge, and Jeffreys was confined in the Tower (reportedly,
he had been captured in a Wapping pub, despite having shaved off
his eyebrows and disguised himself as a sailor). Conspirators tend
to be scrupulous about covering their tracks, and it is now im­pos­
sible to retrieve definite information about Newton’s possible
involvement in the clandestine discussions that had been taking
place all over the country. Even so, stray references make it clear
that Newton had powerful patrons who were ready to reward him
for past favours—so much took place behind the scenes, so much
was hinted at rather than openly stated. Whatever had been hap­
pening, Newton rapidly emerged as a powerful figure within the
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xxvi Prologue

university, commanding enough support to be elected in January

1689 as one of Cambridge University’s two Members of Parliament,
and subsequently re-­elected in 1701.
To fulfil his parliamentary duties, Newton set off for London,
where he lived for most of 1689. He was there when the new
Parliament made one of its most momentous decisions. Breaking
definitively with the past, the house decreed that succession to the
throne would no longer be an automatic consequence of birth, but
should be decided by statute. In line with Newton’s sentiments, the
official statement declared that ‘it hath been found, by experience,
to be inconsistent with the security and welfare of this Protestant
Kingdom, to be governed by a Popish Prince.’10 The former recluse
from Cambridge was invited to dinner with King William, and
backed him solidly on many occasions. By serving on committees,
reporting to the university authorities, and negotiating in unre­
corded conversations, Newton helped to ensure that Cambridge
fellows would abandon their previous oath of loyalty to James and
instead swear allegiance to William and Mary.
When his Principia appeared in print, even those who disagreed
with Newton’s theories—to say nothing of the far larger numbers
who failed to grasp what he was talking about—were united in cele­
brat­ing the middle-­aged scholar. Accolades soon started arriving,
and Newton began to engage with correspondents and make friends
with people who might be useful to him. For example, he went to
stay with John Locke at Lady Damaris Masham’s house in Essex for
a week’s intellectual conversation, later inviting him back for a
return visit. These two men are now acclaimed as a great scientist
and a great philosopher, but they were drawn together by their
interest in theology. A devout Christian, Newton dedicated himself
to finding God through studying both the Bible and the natural
world. Like many of his contemporaries, he regarded science not as
an end in itself but as a route towards divine truth. Locke com­
mented that ‘Mr. Newton is really a very valuable man, not only for
his wonderful skill in mathematics, but in divinity too, and his great
knowledge in the Scriptures, wherein I know few his equals.’11
Taking advantage of his post-Principia fame, Newton started
looking for more lucrative positions. Despite King William’s sup­
port, he was blocked in his attempt to become Provost of King’s
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Prologue  xxvii

College at Cambridge, and London began to seem an increasingly

attractive option. By 1690, Locke was trying to engineer him a place
at the Mint, where there had been a succession of corruption scan­
dals. The Master was Thomas Neale, an MP and financial oppor­
tunist who had contrived to secure a variety of lucrative positions,
including acting as royal groom-­porter—the man responsible for
keeping the king’s apartments well supplied with dice, cards, and
gaming tables. Nicknamed the ‘Lord of Lotteries’, Neale was mocked
for aiming ‘To teach the Great ones and the Small / How to get
Money and Spend it all’.12
Newton first came across his future Mint boss in the autumn of
1693, when Neale was dreaming up his Million Adventure, a state
lottery designed to raise money for the Exchequer. Calculating the
risks was tricky, especially as some central laws of probability had
not yet been formulated. Seeking advice, Samuel Pepys—whose
name as President of the Royal Society appears on the title page of
the Principia—set Newton a dice-­throwing puzzle to clarify what
sort of odds were entailed, although the plan went ahead without
Newton’s further involvement. Neale had suggested that the govern­
ment could finance its war against France by offering 100,000 tickets
at £10 each, but the project foundered almost immediately.
Although the vouchers were marketed as an investment op­por­tun­ity,
purchasers found it difficult to reclaim their money—and nat­urally,
Neale made sure that he received a slice of the profits. This was
among the first of many suspect money-­making ventures that flour­
ished in England well into the eighteenth century.13
To put it bluntly, the national economy was in a mess, partly
because King William undertook protracted wars that proved crip­
plingly expensive. The remedies included founding the Bank of
England—which benefited those who were already wealthy—and
introducing new taxation systems. Although apparently fair, these
fiscal reforms provided plenty of opportunities for bribing corrupt
officials and for passing extra costs on to consumers through
increased prices. William’s supporters—including Newton—knew
that if the country went bankrupt, his reign would come to an end.
And if that happened, the Glorious Revolution would stand for
nothing: James II would regain power, and the Catholic Stuarts
would be restored to the throne.
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xxviii Prologue

On top of that, the currency was literally shrinking. Unlike now,

the standard was set not by gold but by silver, the traditional pre­
cious metal. In principle, the weight of silver in a coin represented
how much it was worth, but for years criminals had been shaving
small slivers from the rims, so that when a coin was melted down,
its value was far less than it should have been. Symbolically, Jacobite
supporters were whittling away the monarch’s head. To make mat­
ters worse, many counterfeit coins were circulating. The Chancellor
of the Exchequer, Charles Montagu, had run out of ideas—he said
‘that when he thought of this matter he was like a monkey thrown
into the water which always claps his paws or hands to his eyes and
sinks to the bottom’.14
Montagu played a uniquely important role in Newton’s life.
Newton is renowned for his enmities, and only Montagu remained
his ‘intimate friend’ for several decades. It was Montagu who brought
him to London, arranged a lucrative position at the Royal Mint, and
enabled him to climb ever higher in metropolitan life. Newton first
met this valuable ally at Trinity College. Conveniently related to the
Master, Montagu arrived in 1679 as a student, and four years later
was made a Fellow on the express instructions of Charles II.
Although notoriously prickly, he became one of England’s most
influential Whig politicians, admired by many but also disdained as
‘a party-­coloured, shallow, maggot-­headed statesman’.15 The rela­
tionship between these two men gradually shifted. Initially, Newton
was the older, more experienced member of the college, and they
joined forces to set up a society for scientific experiments. Yet
despite being over twenty years younger, Montagu soon became
Newton’s wealthy patron, intervening at a crucial stage in the deli­
cate negotiations involved in publishing the Principia and also
backing him at the Royal Society.

A New Life

By the spring of 1695, while Newton was still in Cambridge but

looking for an escape, the national debt had reached crisis level. As
the value of golden guineas soared, silver plummeted, making it even
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Prologue  xxix

more difficult to pay the wages of soldiers fighting overseas. The gov­
ernment decided to consult some of the country’s leading financiers
and scholars, including John Locke, Christopher Wren, and Isaac
Newton. That autumn, Newton submitted his carefully thought-­out
advice, but after many discussions and half-­hearted measures, the
government opted for the proposal he had rejected—that all the sil­
ver coins in the country should be recalled, melted down, and then
reissued. They did, however, adopt his recommendation that this
should be carried out in stages, rather than all at once.
Rumours about Newton’s intentions began to circulate, but pub­
licly he kept very quiet. In the middle of March 1696, he was still
hotly denying any plan of moving to the Mint, although naturally
that did little to quell the gossip. After all, he was a prime candi­
date—politically sound, an ace mathematician, and with the
chemical skills essential for assaying metals. A few days later,
­
Montagu sent him some excellent news—he had found Newton a
wonderful position as Warden of the Mint. ‘I am very glad that at
last I can give you a good proof of my friendship, and the esteem
the King has of your merits,’ Montagu wrote; ‘the King has prom­
ised Me to make Mr. Newton Warden of the Mint, the office is the
most proper for you ’tis the Chief Officer in the Mint, ’tis worth five
or six hundred p An. and has not too much bus’ness to require more
attendance than you may spare. I desire you will come up as soon as
you can, and I will take care of your Warrant in the meantime . . . Let
me see you as soon as you come to Town, that I may carry you to
kiss the King’s hand.’16
The Wardenship was not the most senior position at the Mint,
but it came with a fat salary and light responsibilities. Wasting no
time, Newton hurried down to London and completed the paper­
work so that he could embark immediately on his metropolitan
career. He subsequently returned to Cambridge only for brief pol­it­
ical visits, and there is no record that he even wrote to anyone he
had known there. At first, he continued to collect his income as
Lucasian Professor, but after five years he gave that up too.
Newton apparently had no qualms about leaving scholarly
Cambridge, his home for thirty-­five years. On the contrary, he rel­
ished his London life, with its prestigious connections and his
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xxx Prologue

appointment into royal service. When the Astronomer Royal, John

Flamsteed, asked him for some astronomical data, Newton replied
haughtily that he did not want ‘to be dunned & teezed by forreign­
ers about Mathematical things or to be thought by our own people
to be trifling away my time about them when I should be about ye
Kings business’.17 Flamsteed was one of the enemies Newton most
loved to hate, and he must have enjoyed putting him down.
Biographers often glide over those London years as if they were
an embarrassment, an unfitting epilogue for the career of an intel­
lectual giant. Even though Newton took his responsibilities at the
Mint very seriously, his admirers are determined to maintain his
status as a scientific icon. According to standard accounts, Newton
sublimated his own intellectual desires for the sake of his country
by abandoning the intellectual life he adored and reluctantly devot­
ing his great mind to rescuing the nation’s plummeting currency.
However unconvincing that argument might sound, it is widely
accepted, especially by scientists whose own identity and job satis­
faction are tangled up with the unrealistic image of a venerated
genius. Perhaps demoting Newton from his pedestal threatens their
faith in the purity of scientific research and challenges the value of
their own career?18
Economists see matters differently. More interested in falling stock
markets than in falling apples, they are untrammelled by assump­
tions that the life scientific is the only one worth living. According to
them, once Newton had tasted fame and the possibilities of wealth,
he wanted more of both. And that entailed going to London.19
Despite being educated as a physicist, I side with the economists and
their more realistic, if jaundiced, perceptions of human nature. After
his scholarly period hiding from public scrutiny, Newton headed
south to the capital, where he earned his fortune, won friends, and
influenced people. I can only speculate about reasons—professional
insecurity, the anguish of an impossible love affair, private worries
about intellectual decline as he aged—but Newton engineered his
move with great care and deliberation. Determined to make a success
of his new life, he broke away from provincial Cambridge with its
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Prologue  xxxi

fussy scholars squabbling over university affairs, and dedicated him­

self to his new metropolitan existence.
Newton continued to confirm and refine his theories of the nat­
ural world, but he was also a member of cosmopolitan society who
contributed to Britain’s ambitions for global domination. He shared
the ambitions of his wealthy friends to make London the world’s
largest and richest city, the centre of a thriving international econ­
omy. Like many of his contemporaries, he invested his own money
in merchant shipping companies, hoping to augment his savings by
sharing in the profits.
An uncomfortable truth is often glossed over: until 1772, it was
legal to buy, own, and sell human beings in Britain. Newton knew
that the country’s prosperity depended on the triangular trade in
enslaved people—and when he was meticulously weighing gold at
the Mint, he must have been aware that it had been dug up by
Africans whose friends and relatives were being shipped across the
Atlantic to cultivate sugar plantations, labour down silver mines,
and look after affluent Europeans. This was a collective national
culpability, and there is no point in replacing the familiar ‘Newton
the Superhuman Genius’ by the equally unrealistic ‘Newton the
Incarnation of Evil’. By exploring activities and attitudes that are
now deplored, I aim not to condemn Newton, but to provide a more
realistic image of this man who was simultaneously unique and a
product of his times.
This book presents Isaac Newton as a metropolitan performer, a
global actor who played various parts. Theatricality was a favourite
Enlightenment metaphor, which related the conduct of daily life to
the concealed mechanisms of the natural world being revealed by
spectacular experimental performances. Newton and his colleagues
hoped to establish a fair and equal society that would mirror God’s
orderly, law-­governed physical universe.20 Every week, newspaper
readers all over the country could absorb the pronouncements of
Mr Spectator, an urbane commentator on metropolitan life created
by the essayist Joseph Addison. The son of a clergyman, Addison
preached secular sermons on appropriate behaviour. Or as he put it,
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xxxii Prologue

Mr Spectator ‘considers the World as a Theatre, and desires to form

a right Judgement of those who are actors on it’.21
By using Hogarth’s theatrical picture (Figure  0.1) as its frame­
work, this book dispenses with conventional themes for organizing
Newton’s life—time, place, intellectual preoccupation—to paint an
unfamiliar picture of him within his cosmopolitan environment.
Confined within its ornate frame, this conversation piece has three
major components: the room and its portraits; the aristocratic chil­
dren, women, and men making up the audience; and the miniature
actors on the stage. Similarly, I have divided my narrative into three
main parts. The first, called ‘The Theatre’, explores the physical set­
ting of Hogarth’s drawing-­room scene, relating it to Newton’s resi­
dences, acquaintances, and family in his London life. In ‘The
Audience’, I switch the spotlight to the play’s fashionable spectators,
envisaging this metropolitan Newton moving in aristocratic circles
of women as well as of men. Finally, in ‘The Play’, I discuss Newton’s
involvement in the capitalist projects—trade, conquest, ex­ploit­ation—
that were inseparable from scientific investigation.
Echoing Dryden’s play on Hogarth’s painted stage, this prologue
summarizing Newton’s pre-­performance preparations for leaving
Cambridge has come to an end. Now the curtain rises—and Newton
arrives in London.
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ACT I
THE THEATRE
ISAAC NEWTON MOVES TO THE METROPOLIS

Who is talking to whom in this conversation piece? Just as i­ m­port­ant­ly,

who is looking at whom? William Hogarth—eighteenth-­ century
­mastermind of visual quizzes—specialized in posing questions, but he
never provided clear answers. In this portrayal of a play, the members
of the painted audience are not the only spectators. A sumptuous
London drawing room has temporarily been converted into a per­
form­ance space, but the entire picture is itself a miniature theatre,
with us—viewers three centuries later—peering in at a carefully
orchestrated depiction of high-­society life in the early eighteenth cen-
tury. As grand theatrical manager, Hogarth has displayed a spectacle
in which everybody is acting out a role.
In the aristocratic but unruly audience, attention is divided. Adult
gazes wander between the well-­disciplined children on the stage, their
acquaintances, and those younger children who are restless and need
to be distracted. Such undisciplined behaviour was common in
London theatres, where the performance on the stage was forced to
compete against the conversations in the pit. In contrast to the shifting
spectators, the child actors—all around 10 years old—seem transfixed
in stationary poses, symmetrically paired as if Newton himself had
disciplined them into mathematical order. Above all, everybody is
aware of three small royal visitors on the left, set apart by their own
pretend box.
Higher up on the left-­hand wall appear three people who are phys­ic­al­ly
absent yet form a crucial part of the stage-­set. The most prom­in­ent is
Newton, his marble eyes staring eternally across the room, separated
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2  Act I: The Theatre

by the large chimney breast from the living groups on either side below
him. To his right, two oval portraits hang directly above the audience.
They represent a married couple who are not physically present but
who gaze out at us and are very much alive: they own the house, and
their daughter Kitty is on the stage. In his rightful place at the top is
the husband, John Conduitt, currently Master of the Mint. Just below
him is his wife, Catherine Barton, the daughter of Newton’s half-­sister
and the woman who played a major role in his London life.
Newton would never have encountered such a mixed company of
smartly dressed families in a Cambridge college, where sombre fellows
moved in a resolutely male world. At Trinity, even the room servants
were men, although there were probably women behind the scenes
carrying out the more menial chores. But in London, Newton became
familiar with social events where distinguished men and women min-
gled in elegant surroundings. The codes of conduct guiding their inter-
actions were just as elaborate and concealed as at any university high
table—and Newton learnt how to negotiate his way to the top.
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1
Living in Style

Standing centre stage, at the middle of this mini-­theatre on a canvas,

are two statues—a woman and a mythological creature—who divide
the performers on the dais from their friends and families, Hogarth’s
other actors. They mark a physical and a metaphorical boundary
between the dramatic impression of sixteenth-­century Mexico being
played out to their left, and what purports to be modern metropolitan
reality on their other side. Hogarth did not intend his picture to be
taken as a completely faithful representation of the day’s events; in
any case, he had not even been present. Whereas he has depicted the
audience sitting comfortably in the Conduitts’ drawing room, the
stage appears to be set inside a prison cell with stone walls and a barred
window, an illusion that is not simply a complicated arrangement of
ingenious scenery. As the artist, he has located himself beyond the
frame, as though he is observing childhood memories of his father’s
prison sentence as well as the comfortable surroundings of his affluent
patrons.
The two intervening statues may or may not have normally been in
the house, but they probably represent the complementary muses of
comedy and tragedy. Here, in this painted canvas fiction, they occupy
a transitional space between two imagined scenes: a fabricated
Mexican prison cell and a carefully posed London audience. They are
connected by the garland of flowers on the central pillar, which com-
pletes a Hogarthian line of beauty running from right to left across the
actors’ hands and then through the heads of the audience.
The smaller sculpture depicts a faun or satyr, who is playing the
pipes of Pan and glancing upwards towards Newton’s bust on the
mantelpiece. Pan sometimes signalled comedy and disruption, so his
role in this picture may have been to emphasize the contrast between
childish play and philosophical seriousness, even though the adult
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4  Living in Style

audience is behaving in a less orderly fashion than the small actors on

the stage, who are arranged with geometric precision in a neat rect­
angle. Or perhaps Conduitt suggested to Hogarth that an image of
Pan would provide a subtle reference to Newton’s cosmology, since the
god also represented an elemental force of nature: the whole of cre­
ation danced to Pan’s music. According to Newton’s intricate in­ter­
pret­ations, the tunes played on Pan’s pipes represented the harmony of
the universe, the music of the spheres. When not immersed in the
Mint’s business, Newton devoted much of his time in London to con-
tinuing his Cambridge studies of ancient philosophy. He maintained
that during a former era in the remote past scholars had been able to
access true, uncorrupted knowledge—and he regarded it as his mis-
sion to retrieve that lost wisdom, to act as the privileged initiate who
would unpick its symbolic formulations.
The taller stone woman to Pan’s right wears a theatrical mask.
Since her face is in shadow, it is hard to know whether she represents
tra­gedy or comedy, but she is standing next to the hearth, the
­traditional Roman location for a home’s guardian goddess. She gazes
directly at Newton’s head, as if to indicate that even after death he
continues to preside over family life, just as he had always done.
Newton took his position as head of the extended Newton clan very
seriously. At times of crisis and illness, he lent emotional as well as
financial support to distant relatives, as well as inviting younger ones
to stay with him in his comfortable London homes.1

* * *
Newton wasted no time in securing the job he had angled so hard
to get. As soon as the official letter of invitation arrived, he hurried
down to London—a two-­day journey by stage-­coach—and con-
firmed his appointment as Warden of the Mint. Less than a month
later, on 20 April 1696, the prematurely grey-­haired man of 54 left
Cambridge and his Trinity rooms for good.
International trade and private enterprise boomed in the early
eighteenth century: the metropolis was an ideal location for an
ambitious middle-­aged man determined to move up in the world.
The city was being rebuilt after the devastating fire that had ripped
through its wooden buildings thirty years before Newton’s arrival.
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Living in Style  5

Now the largest conurbation in Europe, and home to a tenth of the

country’s population, it was expanding westwards, away from the
pollution and slums surrounding the dockland areas. Benefiting
from careful planning, London’s appearance had already changed
dramatically as solid brick and stone houses sprung up, lining the
wide streets and elegant squares arranged around central gardens.
Much of the early development was organized by Nicholas
Barbon, an unscrupulous speculator whose Puritanical father had
given him a middle name that now sounds extraordinary:
‘­If-­Christ-­had not died-­for-­thee-­thou-­hadst-­been-­damned’ (this is
technically described as a hortatory name). Barbon was one of the
first economists to stress that money itself has no intrinsic value:
whether golden coins or paper notes, currency is worth only what it
can be exchanged for. According to him, the government should
discourage people from stockpiling their savings and instead urge
them to spend so that the national economy would thrive. Rather
than buying clothes or plates or chairs for life, he argued, people
should follow the dictates of style and replace them regularly.
Perhaps remembering his early medical training, Barbon insisted
that a good circulation is just as essential for national prosperity as
it is for a healthy person. As he put it: ‘Fashion or the alteration of
Dress, is a great Promoter of Trade, because it occasions the
Expense of Cloaths, before the Old ones are worn out: It is the Spirit
and Life of Trade: It makes a Circulation, and gives a Value, by
Turns, to all sorts of Commodities; keeps the great Body of Trade in
Motion.’2
One of the great chicken-­and-­egg questions debated by economic
historians of early eighteenth-­century England is whether demand
stimulated production or whether marketing new goods expanded
the number of purchasers. Whichever round it may be theoretically,
in actuality what happened is that the nation embarked on a frenzy
of consumption, and London began to supplant Amsterdam as the
world’s commercial centre. Luxury possessions advertised their
owner’s prosperity, and very gradually the traditional social struc-
ture based on inherited status started to break down and be sup-
plemented by a hierarchy based on wealth. Recognizing this
burgeoning market for domestic items, traders and skilled artisans
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6  Living in Style

flooded in from abroad to supply the expensive products being

snapped up by customers eager to create a display of grandeur and
flaunt their status.
This increase in visible wealth was promoted by an economic
juggling trick: founding the Bank of England, for which Newton’s
patron, Charles Montagu, was rewarded by being appointed
Chancellor of the Exchequer. The directors deliberately enveloped
their new venture in an aura of prestige and mystery, so it is perhaps
appropriate that the original building lay over the site of the London
Mithraeum, ancient centre of a ritualistic cult. After disastrous wars
against France, King William needed £1.2 million to rebuild the
nation’s navy and, in exchange for promising to provide that money
(in principle, anyway), in 1694 a small group of men was given the
exclusive right to issue bank notes, with a guaranteed return for
them of over 13 per cent a year. The first Bank of England notes
were hand-­written for a specific amount, but fifty years later notes
began to be printed in specific denominations. Goldsmiths already
circulated notes rather than gold among themselves, but creating
the Bank of England meant stepping away from this older practice
of personal credit towards a more formalized central organization.
The system relied on regarding money as an exchange token of no
intrinsic value, so that more notes could be created than the gold or
silver available to cover them. The advantage of this new national
currency was reliability: if everybody could trust it, then there
would be no need to have any personal knowledge of the people
involved.3
The original Bank of England comprised a consortium of indi-
viduals who guaranteed to redeem their notes if asked to, and mod-
ern bank notes still bear the legend ‘I promise to pay the bearer on
demand the sum of . . .’ accompanied by the signature of the Chief
Cashier: the system works as long as the Bank does not collapse.
Inevitably, without formal accounting, sums of money did mysteri-
ously disappear into hidden coffers, and critics remained apprehen-
sive. The political economist Charles Davenant remarked, among
things that ‘have Existence only in the Minds of Men, nothing is
more fantastical and nice than Credit; ʼtis never to be forc’d; it hangs
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Living in Style  7

upon Opinion; it depends upon our Passions of Hope and

Fear . . . when once lost, is hardly to be quite recover’d.’4
Newton warned government officials about the dangers of rely-
ing too heavily on paper money. ‘Credit is a present remedy against
poverty & like the best remedies in Physick works strongly & has a
poisnous quality,’ he commented. In his view, ‘it inclines the nation
to an expensive luxury in forreign commodities.’5 But under
Montagu’s supervision, the economy soared, this private company
retained its monopoly over English banking, and some very rich
people became even richer. Instead of paying their servants more
money, wealthy people could convince themselves that it was their
civic duty to benefit the nation by spending—by buying ever more
goods for themselves in order to stimulate production. There was,
of course, no protection for those who were ill or disabled, or the
men who could find no work, or the children with no parents, or
the single women with no munificent male relatives. Both socially
and physically, the country was divided between the haves and the
have-­ nots—and especially so in London, where the poor were
trapped in no-­go areas towards the east of the city. And then there
were the even less visible victims, the many, many thousands of
African captives shipped across the Atlantic to work on plantations
or down silver mines.
Newton certainly does not have a reputation for extravagance.
On the contrary: the mythological shroud that conceals him from
view presents him as a parsimonious recluse, an unemotional
genius divorced from the trivial pleasures of metropolitan life. Yet
judging from the inventory of house contents taken when he died,
Newton was as susceptible to the newly created pleasures of retail
therapy as his neighbours. Original receipts still survive of the land-
scapes and Delft plates that he bought to complement the many
other fine furnishings of the various London houses in which he
lived. Now a wealthy man who lived immersed in fashionable lux-
ury, perhaps his puritanical conscience troubled him from time to
time? If so, he could take comfort from the influential Dutch doctor
Bernard Mandeville, who persuaded English purchasers that there
was no harm in ostentations expenditure. Greed is good, Mandeville
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8  Living in Style

argued, because it stimulates the economy—after all, ‘clean Linnen

weakens a Man no more than Flannel, Tapistry, fine Painting or
good Wainscot are no more unwholesome than bare Walls, and a
rich Couch, or a gilt Charriot are no more enervating than the cold
Floor or a Country Cart.’6
In conversations about Newton, the question that crops up again
and again is ‘What was he really like?’ The only honest answer is
that nobody knows: even when he was still alive, impressions that
conflicted with each other could all claim validity. There are several
difficulties. To start with, like most people Newton behaved in dif-
ferent ways at different times, or even at almost the same time.
Anecdotes squeeze him into a succinct stereotype—absent-­minded
genius, ruthless administrator, reclusive alchemist—but he could
display several apparently contradictory characteristics sim­ul­tan­
eous­ly. For example, after his death several relatives reminisced
about the dear old man’s love for children and animals, his tears on
hearing about cruelty, his vegetarianism. He may well have devel-
oped such an armchair sentimentality, but, even so, well into his
eighties he remained merciless towards criminals, insisting vindic-
tively that a counterfeiter should be cruelly punished: ‘it’s better to
let him suffer . . .’7
And then there is the problem of finding reliable evidence.
Historians are forced to fall back on a fairly random assortment of
comments that happen to have survived through the centuries.
Lack of information makes some references incomprehensible.
Newton once reported that ‘Sir Joseph is leaving Mr Toll’s house &
its probable I may succeed him.’8 Sir Joseph has been identified as
Joseph Tily, vice-­chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who had
married a wealthy widow and was involved in government-­linked
banking schemes. But who was Mr Toll, and which position was
Newton angling for? The answers to those questions will probably
never be found.
No testimonies are neutral and trustworthy, not even (or perhaps
that should be especially) those of a person’s nearest and dearest.
Witnesses tend to provide information confirming expectations.
After all, Newtonian stories revealing eccentricity—the neglected
dinner, the ill-­assorted clothes, the leg stuck out of the carriage
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Living in Style  9

window—are just so much more interesting than descriptions of

normality. Inevitably, the more often they are repeated, the more
difficult it becomes to suggest any alternative, especially in the
absence of any personal diary or systematic collection of cor­res­
pond­ence. Newton’s close relative John Conduitt reported that ‘all
the time he had to spare from his business & the civilities of life in
wch he was scrupulously exact & complaisant was employed the
same way [in study] & he was hardly ever alone without a pen in his
hand & a book before him.’9 How easy to interpret that as confirm-
ing the conventional view of Newton as an antisocial recluse—but it
also reinforces a less familiar version of Newton the wheeler-­dealer
who punctiliously observed the social responsibilities associated
with his prestigious positions.

Moving Around

After his first few months in London, Newton abandoned the

­live-­on-­the-­job accommodation provided by the Mint, and acquired
five different houses in succession, all carefully chosen to reflect his
good position in society. Initially, he settled in newly fashionable
Westminster, remaining there from 1696 to 1709, when he went to
Chelsea for nine months. After that, he stayed in St Martin’s Street—
near today’s National Gallery—for around fifteen years before
finally moving to a mansion in the Kensington countryside.
Newton’s reclusive existence in Cambridge suggests that he was
not a natural party-­goer, but he knew that living in London entailed
fulfilling social obligations. In his official positions at the head of
the Mint as well as the Royal Society, he had to cultivate visitors and
potential benefactors. As just one example, Newton arranged for
the Royal Society’s experimental assistant, a former draper called
Francis Hauksbee, to bring a bulky air pump to his Westminster
residence so that ‘I can get some philosophical persons to see his
experiments, who will otherwise be difficultly got together.’10 In a
more private capacity, Newton needed to ingratiate himself with his
patrons, and also ensure that he distributed benefits to those who in
their turn sought his support. And then on top of all that, there
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10  Living in Style

were the demands made on him by his Lincolnshire relatives, who

somehow seemed to increase in numbers and affection as he
became richer and more distinguished.
The spring of 1715 illustrates how Newton combined home and
business. That was when natural philosophers from all over Europe
converged on England to witness a total eclipse of the sun.
Advertising his Newtonian mathematical skills, the astronomer
Edmond Halley had drawn a map demonstrating that a band of
darkness would sweep across the south of the country, with a
black-­out elliptical shape stretching almost from Wales to Kent.
Because of some inaccurate moon results, Halley’s prediction was
twenty miles out, but London sky-­watchers did—as promised—
enjoy about three and a half minutes of totality. When two visiting
Frenchmen and an Italian, Antonio Conti, turned up at Newton’s
house in St Martin’s Street, they found it already crowded with for-
eigners keen to meet Britain’s greatest man of science. After politely
welcoming his guests, Newton showed them books and old manu-
scripts from his collection, and the following day invited them back
to admire some of his controversial experiments in optics. Evidently
identifying Conti as a valuable international contact, Newton met
him several times, inviting him to lunch and encouraging him to
attend meetings at the Royal Society. Since their conversations took
place through an interpreter, this international diplomacy must
have taken up a considerable amount of Newton’s time—an invest-
ment that paid off when, with Conti’s help, the Opticks appeared in
a handsome French edition.11
Newton’s first choice of home was just to the south of Piccadilly,
in the smarter end of Jermyn Street, a location recommended by his
patron Montagu, who had lived there for the past seven years.12 It
formed part of a prestigious new development originally designed
for politicians and early-­career courtiers who could not yet afford
the still more expensive Mayfair homes to the north. Lying conveni-
ently near to the Exchequer in Whitehall, where Newton carried
out much of his work, it enabled him to squeeze his physical pres-
ence at the Tower into a single day a week. At this stage, there were
still open green spaces on the way to Hyde Park Corner, from where
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Living in Style  11

La Route du Roi (the King’s Road, later corrupted into Rotten Row)
led directly to the royal residence at Kensington Palace; illuminated
by 300 oil lamps to ward off highwaymen, it was London’s first arti-
ficially lit thoroughfare. Piccadilly Circus would not be created
for  another century, but while Newton still lived there, William
Fortnum and Hugh Mason opened up a small grocery shop nearby.
Initially they sold half-­used candles appropriated from the court of
Queen Anne, but before long they had upgraded their enterprise
into an up-­market store catering for the wealthy.13
For the first four years, Newton and his household occupied
number 88 Jermyn Street, diagonally opposite St James’s Church
and now the only one in that stretch whose original bricks have not
been concealed by a façade of cream-­painted plaster. For some rea-
son, he then moved to the wider building next door. Victorian
enthusiasts often complained that little effort was made either to
record or to preserve Newton’s homes. However, his second house
in Jermyn Street—number 87, now a men’s clothing store—does
boast a commemorative blue plaque, even though the original
building was demolished in the early twentieth century. Presumably
there were good reasons for not putting it on number 88.
Virtually nothing is known about Newton’s third house, except
that it was in Chelsea—then a riverside village with no easy trans-
port to London—and that he stayed there for less than a year before
moving again. This time he chose another up-­and-­coming central
location—St Martin’s Street, which ran along the south side of
Leicester Fields. That year, 1710, was a stormy one for Newton at
the Royal Society. Eventually, he won a bitter dispute about prem-
ises by the strong-­arm tactic of exercising his presidential authority,
over-­riding objectors and buying a house in Crane Court for the
Society to move into, near the small alleys behind Fleet Street that
were packed with small shops selling scientific books and instru-
ments. For himself, he chose a more prestigious neighbourhood
further west, near to one of Dryden’s favourite coffee houses,
Slaughter’s. Plans were already in place for converting the area into
Leicester Square (currently home to the only London street sculp-
ture of Newton, an unobtrusive bust with a broken nose). Only a
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12  Living in Style

few years after Newton settled there, this part of London had
become sufficiently grand for the Prince and Princess of Wales
(George and Caroline) to move in nearby, at Leicester House.
Newton’s new home at 35 St Martin’s Street (Figure 1.1) was sub-
stantial and designed to impress his visitors; nearly 70 years old
when he arrived, he had his international reputation as President of
the Royal Society to maintain. Boasting three main storeys and an
eyrie later known as ‘Newton’s Observatory’ up in the roof, during
the nineteenth century it was first a hotel and then a refuge for
prostitutes. To smarten this home up, Newton splashed out on some
new furniture, spending almost £30 (about a third of his annual sal-
ary as Lucasian Professor), on wall-­hangings, a bed and fire-­irons,
as well as a sink and other essential equipment.14
Newton’s study from his St Martin’s Street residence has been
preserved, although seeing it entails travelling to rural Massachusetts.
When the house was demolished in 1913, the London City Council
(long since disbanded) had the foresight to put some of its furnish-
ings in storage. Over twenty years later, an American woman called
Grace Babson arranged for them to be shipped across the Atlantic
and reassembled, rather like an IKEA flat-­pack. Her husband was
Roger Babson, a self-­made businessman from New England, who
claimed to have made his fortune on the stock market by applying
Newton’s third law of motion. For this ambitious entrepreneur,
Newton was the guru of determinism whose mathematical laws
governed not only gravity but also the profitable ups and downs of
international finance.
This room is 300 years old, but it can only be reached by taking
an electric lift up to the third floor of an all-­purpose academic
building, which is part of a business college near the end of Boston’s
T-­line. Entering it is a disconcerting experience: after pushing but-
tons to operate the lift, any historical tourist must walk across a
bland corridor and then through a modern door directly into an
early eighteenth-­ century chamber. As a further disorientation,
Newton’s original room has been reconstituted so that it resembles
a museum or shrine rather than a place of work. Authentic dark
wooden panels line the walls, and a freshly polished old brass poker
sits ready to stir the unlit logs in the grate, but many of the carefully
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Living in Style  13

Figure 1.1  Newton’s House, 35 St Martin’s Street; C. Lacy after Edward Meredith,
1811
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14  Living in Style

chosen decorations—pictures of London, busts of Newton—date

from after his death. Although the heavy velvet curtains are crim-
son, Newton’s favourite colour, they fail to block out the American
campus sounds that filter through the modern window panes.
Living centrally was a major advantage for Newton, but he even-
tually yielded to pressure from his family, who insisted that for the
sake of his health, he should move to a less urban environment situ-
ated still further west—Kensington, the area picked by asthmatic
King William. Even then, Newton continued renting the house in
St Martin’s Street, installing a maid to care for all the possessions he
had left behind in case he should ever return from his rural retreat
in Orbell’s Buildings, on what is now Kensington Church Street. Built
at the end of the seventeenth century, this impressive three-­storey
mansion was surrounded by trees. The country air did restore
Newton to some extent, but by then in his eighties, Newton suffered
multiple problems of old age that might now be treatable med­ic­
al­ly—gout, lung infections, incontinence. His Conduitt relatives
managed to prevent him from struggling to work at the Tower, but
even going up to town for a Royal Society meeting entailed a round
trip of several days to allow him time for recuperation en route.
For each of his house moves, Newton faced a logistical night-
mare: how to transport his growing library of books. He ended up
with over 2000 volumes in several languages, ranging alphabetically
from a pocket-­size Abendana of the Polity of the Jews (1706) through
bibles and other religious books to Xenophon and finally Zozimi’s
Procopii &c. Historiæ, a folio volume of 1610. In between were
twenty-­three books by Robert Boyle, five copies of Euclid (one of
his favourite authors), thirty-­four items collected together under H
for History, and a Memoir on Dutch trade. Compared with other
English gentlemen, Newton paid virtually no lip service to the
nation’s great classics by Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, or
John Milton. More cumbersome still were the ever-­mounting piles
of manuscript notes, tracts, and correspondence, which were
roughly sorted into topics but lacked any systematic retrieval sys-
tem. In addition to the boxes stuffed with loose papers, the pamph­
lets and notebooks weighed in at around fifty kilograms.15
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Living in Style  15

Although Newton was clearly declining rapidly during his last

couple of years, his colleagues loyally maintained that he preserved
all his faculties as well as his teeth and his keen eyesight. Carefully
scripted accounts make his death sound painful and protracted—
‘the drops of sweat ran down from his face with anguish’—but, nat-
urally, his relatives reported that he endured the ordeal stoically,
boasting on his behalf that ‘more patience was never shown by any
mortal.’ His thoughts were sufficiently clear that, in line with his
unorthodox religious beliefs, he refused to receive the holy sacra-
ment of the Anglican Church, carefully protecting his reputation by
ensuring that only his closest relatives knew.16

Entertaining

One stock attribute of a scientific genius is to subsist on a starvation

diet, rather like a fasting saint. Many biographers have presented
Newton as an abstemious man who cared little for food, appear-
ance, or comfort. Their favourite anecdote depicts a Newton who
conforms to this imaginary superhuman status by absent-­mindedly
ignoring the dinner that had been placed before him. Other
unverifiable testimonies confirm this ability to exist on little more
than air—he apparently abstained from wine and meat, and
washed down his frugal breakfast with tea made from hot water
and orange peel.
Whatever his habits may have been in Cambridge, plenty of evi-
dence suggests that in London Newton enjoyed eating and enter-
taining for many years before he became too old and ill.
Contradicting the myths of being an absent-­minded, down-­at-­heel
academic, this metropolitan Newton was clearly a big spender. Like
his neighbours, he was keen to keep up appearances, and he could
certainly afford it. On top of the sizeable estate he had inherited
from his mother, his combined income from investments and the
Mint grew to several thousand pounds a year, towards the upper
end of aristocratic expectations and the equivalent of modern
millions.17
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16  Living in Style

Newton had apparently come to recognize that puritanical

­privation was not the only option in life. If you want to eliminate
drunkenness, he argued, you should change people’s behaviour, not
remove the alcohol—there is no point banning ‘all the best things
because by corruption they become the worst’.18 Portraits and writ-
ten comments confirm a new-­found pleasure in food: they all depict
a man who grew steadily plumper as he aged. Conduitt remarked
that Newton ‘always lived in a very handsome generous manner
thou without ostentation or vanity, always hospitable & upon proper
occasions gave splendid entertainments. He was generous & char­it­
able without bounds . . .’19 After Royal Society meetings, Newton
socialized at coffee houses and invited people to dinner. But he was
canny with his money: interestingly, he seems to have been particu-
larly munificent when he could charge the bill to his account at the
Mint. Drawing up the menu for fourteen eminent guests—including
several aristocrats and a bishop—Newton specified ‘Fish, Pastry.
fricasy of chickens & a dish of puddens. Qtr Lamb. Wild foul. Peas &
Lobsters.’20
Reports from his visitors vary, but they are not necessarily trust-
worthy. A French visitor deemed his dinner to be deplorable, but at
that time the French and the English were both equally guilty of
slating food from the other side of the Channel. On the other hand,
it was in Newton’s political interests to be hospitable towards a
Dutch ambassador, who commented that Newton spent a long time
discussing mathematics with him and then, after showing him
round the Mint, ‘entertained us most sumptuously’.21 Some scat-
tered facts do survive, and they indicate that Newton was prepared
for offering warm hospitality. His cellar was well stocked with bot-
tles of wine and cider, and in the space of a single week the local
butcher delivered one goose, two turkeys, two rabbits, and a
chicken. After Newton died, his executors settled suppliers’ bills for
a range of groceries as well as fifteen barrels of beer totalling around
£25—enough money to employ a maid for five years (men were
routinely paid double the female rate).22
In order to lay on such lavish dinners, Newton needed servants
and a well-­decorated house. Newton was so wealthy when he died
that the hand-­ written and erratically spelt inventory of the
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Living in Style  17

possessions he accumulated in St Martin’s Street covered seventeen

feet of vellum strips sewn together in a long band. It reveals how
well equipped he was to cater for his guests. The kitchen was fitted
with three spits, around twenty pans and two fish kettles, to say
nothing of pewter dishes, a marble mortar, a cheese toaster, and a
chocolate pot. Initially, he took on two maids who slept together in
the meagre­ly furnished garret, and a manservant, who was given a
small bed in the corridor. Later, he acquired a housekeeper for
supervising the additional staff employed to run the household,
including a cook as well as Adam the footman. When Newton
began hiring a coach and horses, he also had to pay for a driver and
his livery. And as Newton got older, he recruited men to carry his
sedan chair—naturally, his house boasted a stable to keep it in.23
Among many other possessions, Newton owned well over one
hundred drinking glasses, eighty napkins, forty plates of best china
with another fifty in the kitchen, and nine glass salvers. Over two
hundred prints were stashed away in the drawers of a walnut writ-
ing desk, although his wig-­stand had been relegated to the stable
storage area along with several old tables, curtains, and his silver
sword. Then there were the more valuable silver items—cutlery,
castors, and candle-­snuffers, as well as two urinals (usually referred
to as chamber pots by historians). Listed alongside the rest of the
silver plate, these were particularly extravagant versions of a home’s
standard accoutrements provided in the dining room for the benefit
of male guests. Modern replicas are available on the Web for dis-
cerning customers with a couple of (modern) thousand pounds
to spare, and the genuine antiques also on sale show that there
were several different styles to choose from. After he was knighted
by Queen Anne, did Newton elect to behave like other lords of the
realm and have his silver chamber pots engraved with his c­ oat-­of-­arms?
Put together, Newton’s silver items weighed over 370 ounces, which
would today be worth several thousand pounds (silver is still valued
by the ounce on the London market).
That seems a sizeable hoard. By comparison, one of the most
obsessive eighteenth-­century collectors, the Earl of Warrington,
amassed 25,000 ounces of silver, but his was an extreme case: he
devoted much of his life to converting his wife’s massive dowry into
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18  Living in Style

elaborate ornaments, and his estate was worth substantially less

than Newton’s when he died. However Newton acquired his silver-
ware, much of it—including the chamber pots—had probably been
crafted by Huguenot immigrants. Welcomed to England after the
French law protecting them was revoked in 1685, Huguenots soon
came to dominate many skilled trades. Ingenious metal smiths
attracted their spendthrift customers by developing increasingly
large, ornate (and often functionless) must-­have items of precious
metals designed to advertise their owners’ opulent lifestyle. At least
the chamber pots had a practical function.24

Showing Off

As one might expect, Newton’s dining room contained eight chairs

and an oval table, but in addition it was home to two walnut card
tables as well as sundry other pieces of furniture. To complement
the silver and crystal sparkling in the candle-­light on the dinner
table, pictures, mirrors, and landscapes adorned the walls. And to
emphasize his wealth still further, Newton commissioned one of
the most expensive sculptors in town, David Le Marchand, to carve
him twice in ivory, as a picture and as a bust.
Le Marchand, a French Huguenot immigrant, was so prestigious
that his clients included Queen Anne and George I, but when his
own portrait was painted by the English royal artist Joseph
Highmore, he chose to show himself clutching Newton’s sculpted
head (now owned by the British Museum). Wearing a fine white
shirt and elaborate wig, his free hand elegantly outstretched in an
elegant classical pose, Le Marchand is advertising his status as an
English gentleman of discerning taste (Figure 1.2).25
The rest of the house was also comfortably furnished, with plenty
of sofas, spare beds, chairs, and pictures. Newton’s bedroom was
especially well appointed: its contents were worth even more than
those of the dining room. Judging from the inventory list, Newton
created a crimson boudoir for himself, perhaps emulating the
recent refurbishments by William and Mary at Hampton Court.
Crimson curtains surrounded his crimson mohair bed with its
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Living in Style  19

Figure 1.2  David Le Marchand; Joseph Highmore, 1724

feather bolster, pillows, and quilt. The walls were lined with
­crimson drapes, and a large mirror in a gilt frame hung over the
fireplace. Completing the decorations were a gilt wall sconce
(to hold a candle), six walnut chairs, and a commode fitted with an
earthenware bowl.
Ostentatious displays of wealth were a new vogue in the early
eighteenth century, when the economic boom precipitated the birth
of today’s highly commercialized society with its throw-­away com-
petitive culture. The population was growing rapidly, the country
needed money to fund its frequent wars, and the government
encouraged trade to stimulate manufacture. Britain grew rich by
importing raw materials and converting them into fashionable,
desirable objects. Daniel Defoe exclaimed in 1713 that merchants
had acquired the purchasing power of aristocrats: ‘Here I saw, out
of a Shopkeeper’s House, Velvet Hangings, Embroidered Chairs,
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20  Living in Style

Damask Curtains . . . in short, Furniture equal to what, formerly,

suffis’d the greatest of our Nobility.’26 Interior design flourished as
aspiring consumers bought and bought and bought again in the
hope that expensive purchases would signal their refined taste and
rising status.
British merchants were importing manufactured products from
Asian countries, notably India and China, which dominated the
global market. Consumers ranging along the social scale from
Samuel Pepys to Queen Mary were snapping up Indian patterned
chintzes and other lightweight fabrics to replace traditional sombre
bedspreads and wall-­hangings, while China was exporting por­cel­
ain ornaments for cupboards and mantelpieces, as well as elaborate
coloured silks for curtains, women’s dresses, and men’s waistcoats.
The essayist Joseph Addison rejoiced that London had become ‘an
emporium for the whole Earth . . . the single dress of a woman of
quality is often a product of a hundred climates . . . the scarf is sent
from the torrid zone . . . the brocade petticoat rises out of the mines
of Peru and the diamond necklace out of the bowels of Indostan.’
He neglected to mention the flip-­side of globalization—that each
item in this imagined outfit also depended on extensive forced
labour by men, women, and children working under atrocious
conditions.27
Many such fashionable items were scattered around Newton’s
house—silk cushions, a Japan table, a shagreen (probably shark-
skin) cutlery box, an Indian screen, a calico quilt (probably also
red), muslin curtains. During his first decade in London, Newton
benefited personally from sales of these imported luxuries because
he invested in the privately owned East India Company, which was
reaping huge profits from trading with India, China, and Japan.28
But as international commerce escalated, fears grew that these for-
eign imports would undercut British products, and the government
stepped in with taxes designed to safeguard local manufacturers
and squeeze out foreign competitors. In order to compete in the
global market and protect its own enterprises, Britain imposed tar-
iffs that encouraged internal producers to create cheaper imitations
of exotic goods and squeeze overseas rivals out of business.29
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Living in Style  21

Newton supported that policy, even though it was hard to

­implement. Writing chummily to a Member of Parliament, he
resorted to blaming the womenfolk: ‘I perceive our Wives are
resolved not to quit . . . the well dy’d Callico, and They (We know)
must, and will govern.’30 The terse labels in Newton’s official inven-
tory make it impossible to be sure whether his particular domestic
trappings were cheap replicas manufactured at home or had been
imported. For example, by the time he was decorating his homes,
silk woven in London was readily available, provided by the enter-
prising Huguenot immigrants who settled in Spitalfields. There is,
however, one firm piece of evidence that Newton tried to buy
British—the crimson curtains surrounding his bed were made not
of silk but of harrateen, a linen-­based fabric only recently intro-
duced in England and deliberately intended to supplant expensive
equivalents from abroad.
The sources of Newton’s domestic decorations may be largely
unverifiable, but they mattered—and they mattered to him. Newton
encouraged people to buy home-­manufactured goods, because he
endorsed Britain’s mercantilist strategy of stimulating national
industrialization at the expense of long-­established Asian pro­du­
cers. Concerned to protect the Mint and the currency, he lamented
that much of the gold and silver pouring in to the country from
Africa and South America was going straight out again to buy
goods from Asia, leaving Britain with insufficient funds to pay for
its expensive wars. He condemned what he saw as frivolous expend-
iture that was damaging the national economy. ‘For these things
serve for nothing but a useless & expensive sort of luxury main-
tained by the exportation of or gold & silver to the Indies,’ he
warned.31 As Master of the Mint, he backed the government’s pro-
tectionist policy of making foreign goods prohibitively expensive,
thus encouraging British opportunists to import raw materials and,
with the help of some discreet industrial espionage, reproduce the
inventions of their foreign rivals at lower prices.
One raw material preoccupied Newton—African gold, dug out of
the ground or panned in rivers by local conscripts who knew that
their friends and families were being shipped across the Atlantic to
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22  Living in Style

the Americas. Those who survived the voyage might be recruited

for sugar plantations or despatched down silver mines to extract the
precious metal needed for providing gentlemen like Isaac Newton
with silver chamber pots and cutlery. The silver blades of Newton’s
fashionable knives were embedded in handles of ivory, another
material stained with colonial blood. To adorn the cutlery on his
dining table and to provide the raw material for the expensive
sculptures he commissioned from Le Marchand, many wild ele-
phants must have been killed. Moreover, on the long trek from the
hinterland to reach an African port, undernourished porters died,
burdened down by their giant loads of sawn-­off tusks. Newton
probably remained as untroubled as his compatriots by the treat-
ment British merchants and soldiers were meting out to people and
animals abroad.
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2
The Tower of London

Just below Newton’s bust, Hogarth has represented the marble plaque
from his tomb in Westminster Abbey. The monument itself—one of
the very first to be installed in the Abbey’s nave—is a massive, sombre
edifice that pays tribute to Newton’s intellectual work, and this small
bas-­relief at its base comes as rather a surprise. It shows eight naked
cherubs apparently dancing across the surface as they twist, bend,
and lift in the course of their work. Although lacking wings, they are
otherwise very similar to the putti that frequently appeared in
seventeenth-­century illustrations of scientific experiments, where they
functioned as God’s invisible helpers.
Here they are busily carrying out the type of practical tasks tackled
by Newton himself during his lifetime: one peers through the telescope
that he built by hand, another slides chemical preparations into a fiery
furnace, others are weighed down by the piles of objects they carry. In
contrast with the formal sculpted head emanating silent intellect on
the mantelpiece, they symbolize a Newtonian avatar who was per­
petu­al­ly in motion—testing samples of gold, persecuting coun­ter­feiters,
entertaining distinguished foreign visitors, pronouncing on national
taxation policies, devising opportunities for self-­advancement.

* * *
Under normal circumstances, the only emotions Newton revealed
were anger and contempt. In the spring of 1696, when he stepped
out of his carriage and into his new home at the Mint, located right
inside the Tower of London, even this man of iron self-­discipline
must have felt excited. Yet after only four months, he had had
enough. Moving over three miles away to his first house near
Piccadilly, Newton began commuting in on Wednesdays, his only
regular day at the Tower.
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24  The Tower of London

The problem was not the work, which he continued to carry out
with dedication for almost thirty years, but the place. Situated on
the bank of the Thames, itself a source of pollution and smell, the
Tower lay close to some of London’s worst slum areas. Concealed
behind its ramparts, the Mint had been haphazardly expanding for
four centuries, its assaying chambers and coin workshops crammed
into narrow windswept spaces between the Tower’s inner and outer
fortifications. Around twenty wooden, ramshackle buildings strag-
gled in a line among stables and coach-­houses; the residence allo-
cated to Newton did have a small garden, but its view was dominated
by high blank walls. Making the castle feel still more cramped, its
central area was taken up by a large military administrative block
that is no longer there.1
And then there was the noise. The Tower was already a busy
tourist site, and sightseers swarmed in to marvel at the royal Crown
Jewels, hastily reconstructed during the Restoration after having
been melted down during Oliver Cromwell’s regime. They could
also admire the large collection of armour, which emphasized that
this was the country’s military centre, distributing weapons,
­soldiers, and provisions all over the world. After the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, when the Stuart monarchy was deposed and
Parliament’s power was strengthened, the display was enhanced by
introducing the Line of Kings, fourteen heroic monarchs mounted
on life-­size wooden horses (James II was not included). It was a
hundred years since the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the
exhibits of captured torture devices further reinforced the message
of English splendour.
What many visitors really wanted to see was the famous men­
agerie. Elephants, lions, and other spectacular creatures were kept
in an enclosure by the river, next to a large pool of water into which
the corpses of traitors were thrown. Tower residents such as Newton
had to put up with night-­time roars, screeches, and bellows, while
the nearby yard where the lions were kept ‘smelt as frowzily as a
dove-­house or a dog-­kennel’. Only a few years before Newton
arrived, Mary Jenkinson had been fatally mauled after stroking a
lion’s paw. When his acquaintance the Bishop of Carlisle visited in
1704, there were six lions, two leopards (by then, the one that had
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The Tower of London  25

belonged to Charles I was ‘old . . . lean and Lazy’), several wild cats,

sundry birds, and two ‘dull and lumpish’ Swedish owls.2 In addition
to those wild animals, the Tower accommodated many horses. The
Mint itself owned around fifty, which every morning and evening
tramped over the cobblestones between their stables and the work-
shop, earning their keep by powering the latest French equipment
that manufactured coins more efficiently than the traditional man-
ual methods. Just carting away the manure (more smells) cost a
small fortune, while the nine deafening presses often started up at
five in the morning and continued until midnight.
The high levels of security made it difficult to move from one
place to another. If Newton arrived by road, he had to brave the
menagerie, then travel through two portcullises separated by a
drawbridge that passed over the filthy, sewage-­ laden moat.
Negotiating various cannon along the way, he next went past the
Stone Kitchen pub towards Mint Street, but then had to confront
several cross-­walls providing extra protection (no longer in exist-
ence). Safety trumped convenience at every point: Tower stairways
could not be reached directly from their doorways, and deliberately
circuitous routes made offices hard to access. Outside, the nearest
bridge was almost a mile (over 1 kilometre) away.

Life in the Tower

Newton endorsed the egalitarian ideals proclaimed during the

Glorious Revolution, but, under the new Whig regime that fol-
lowed, some people were definitely more equal than others. At the
Tower, he was pushed into close proximity with men and women
from many different backgrounds, but they shared the desire to
improve their own existence. As the gaps between rich and poor,
between one nation and another, continued to increase, Newton
was determined that he would be moving upwards.
For his first three years at the Mint as Warden, Newton was tech-
nically under the command of the Master, Thomas Neale, the lot-
tery speculator whom he despised. After Neale died, Newton
successfully manoeuvred with the help of his patrons to acquire the
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26  The Tower of London

top job and a higher salary. Now at the peak of an administrative

hierarchy, he was still forced to protect the Mint’s interests and his
own position by constant negotiations with Whitehall statesmen
who held power over him. At the same time, he knew that his staff
were playing a similar double-­speak game of patronage with him.
Nothing was straightforward; the words never meant quite what
they said. After dutifully rewarding his clerk Hopton Haynes for
translating and copying various documents, Newton learnt that
further obligatory gifts were expected. Adopting a suitably grovel-
ling and convoluted tone, Haynes told Newton, ‘I am sorry I had
not ye good fortune to see You ysday at the Excise, tho’ I hope You
are so kind, as stil to continue yr good inclination to favor my pre-
tension, if occasion be. But I have recd such demonstrations of yr
friendship, already, for which I never pretend to return, & You, I dare
say, never expect any other requital than my gratitude that I cannot
but assure myself of Yr good Offices when a fair occasion presents,
by which You’ll extremely add to the many obligations You have
already layd upon [your humble servant].’3 To succeed, Newton had
to manage both upwards and downwards.
As well as housing the Mint and the menagerie, the Tower was
home to many other occupants. When the first Astronomer Royal,
John Flamsteed, was waiting impatiently for the new Observatory
at Greenwich to be completed, he temporarily took over a medieval
turret at the top of the White Tower, struggling up its narrow spiral
staircase with his heavy telescopes and instruments. More per-
manently, the Tower accommodated the Ordnance Office, which was
mainly responsible for producing ammunition, storing weapons,
and transporting soldiers. And, of course, the castle still functioned
as a state prison: only the year after Newton arrived, his one-­time
patron the Earl of Monmouth was deprived of his pol­it­ical positions
and held captive in the Tower for a few months.
The Mint and the Ordnance Office might seem rather strange
neighbours, but there were close historical associations between
making guns and minting money. Both processes involved heavy
machinery that forced (also known as forged or coined) metals into
an accurate shape. Guns could themselves be a form of currency,
especially in Africa, where they were regularly exchanged for gold
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The Tower of London  27

as well as people destined to work as slaves. Because England was

repeatedly at war, the Ordnance Office kept encroaching on the
Mint’s domain. By 1703, it employed almost forty clerks on top of
storekeepers, craftsmen, and labourers, and its demands for new
muskets and pistols continued to escalate. Inside the Tower walls,
large warehouses sheltered weapons and explosives, which were
made under contract by around 200 self-­ employed gunsmiths,
many of them living nearby. This centralized arrangement doubly
benefited the state: it forced the independent gunsmiths to compete
against each other and so lower their prices; and it prevented any
single external group from gaining power and rebelling. To ensure
their income during times of peace, these small gunmakers also dealt
with private trading companies, but they increasingly depended on
the government for survival.4
Newton also needed to ward off members of the garrison, trying
to prevent them from taking over buildings and constructing bar-
racks on vacant plots. Tensions ran high in the crowded confines of
the Tower, where fights repeatedly erupted, often initiated by a
minor incident before escalating into a major confrontation. On
one occasion, Newton complained, a Tower warden ‘took the
Porters son by the throat; whence arose a fray between them which
caused such a tumultuous concourse of people as rendred ye money
unsafe which was then coming down the street of the Mint in
Trays . . .’ At night, the paved road to the Mint workers’ homes was
only dimly lit by oil lamps, and it was policed by solitary sentries
who—according to Mint employees—stole from the properties they
were meant to be guarding. The soldiers told a different version of
events, claiming that they had no option but to shoot inhabitants
who insulted them.5
Many military and naval personnel lived on-­site with their wives
and children, those subordinated family members who had no
choice over their accommodation but experienced many of the
same discomforts as Newton. Like him, one of those residents with-
out a voice, a young woman called Elizabeth Tollet, found the con-
stant presence of the army especially disturbing. She commented
enviously to her brother, a student at Cambridge, on his good for-
tune in escaping from the sound of troops marching through the
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28  The Tower of London

courtyards: ‘No noisy Guards disturb your blest Retreat.’6 In contrast

with her, Newton was a single man with a handsome salary, and he
could afford to move out, heading westwards across London in the
opposite direction to the prevailing winds laden with the stench of
the docks and the brown smog of open fires.
Elizabeth Tollet’s father, Newton’s friend George Tollet, was less
fortunate. A widower with nine children, only three of whom sur-
vived to become adults, he needed to take advantage of any housing
he was offered. After holding various administrative posts, he
became an Extra Commissioner of the Navy in 1702, when he
moved with his family to the Tower. As a mathematician who was
later elected a fellow of the Royal Society, Tollet associated with
many eminent London men, including not only Newton but also
Samuel Pepys, Edmond Halley, John Evelyn, and the prominent
politician Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford. Indeed, he was so well
respected that in 1706 he was a pall-­bearer at John Evelyn’s funeral,
and two years later was granted a coat of arms. Despite that emi-
nence, few references survive to George Tollet, who is absent from
the standard Newton biographies. Unusually, the main evidence of
their friendship stems from the poetic renown of a female depend-
ant, his daughter.7
Elizabeth Tollet—an intelligent but small and physically disabled
woman—was exceptionally well educated, and she grew up to
become a fluent Latin translator who also wrote and published her
own poetry. Virtually forgotten until the end of the twentieth cen-
tury, her emotive verse is now becoming better known because she
often focused on female oppression. According to the journal editor
John Nichols, Newton ‘honoured both [Tollet] and his daughter
with his friendship, and was much pleased with some of her first
essays [poems]’.8 Nichols gave no indication of where he obtained
that information, but he is acclaimed for bequeathing to posterity
anecdotes that once circulated as gossipy general knowledge.
Newton’s unexpected praise of Elizabeth Tollet’s accomplish-
ments suggests that he had acquired the diplomacy essential for
survival in London society. It seems unlikely that he would genu-
inely appreciate her writing: there were no poetry books in his
library, he appears to have had no interest in art apart from
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The Tower of London  29

commissioning portraits and busts of himself—and although he

did once go to an opera, he walked out after the second act. A
pedantic stickler for accuracy, Newton wished that words would
signify what they claimed to represent and no more. This insistence
on plain language was most famously expressed by John Locke in
his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), the book that
dominated eighteenth-­century philosophy and education. Ambiguous
words, Locke objected, inevitably led to uncertainty, and so had no
place in natural philosophy. Newton castigated ancient poets for
making the work of historians more complicated by not sticking to
the straight facts; similarly, determined at the Tower to clean up the
nation’s currency, he scrutinized witnesses’ testimony to eliminate
any half-­truths that might be conveniently concealing evidence of
forgery.9
Tollet contributed to Newton’s fame because, after his death,
some of her poems helped to publicize his ideas. Although Newton
liked to promote himself in elite circles, he regarded himself as
being one of God’s chosen few, and generally disdained the mun-
dane task of communicating his ideas to ordinary people. Because
Tollet and other women had no opportunity to study at university,
they were hardly in a position to make great discoveries. In con-
trast, they could and did play significant roles in science communi-
cation and education.
Scientific poetry might now seem rather a contradiction in terms,
but during the eighteenth century it provided an extremely popular
medium for disseminating simplified versions of the latest experi-
ments and theories. When Newton first went to London, his name
was little known outside scholarly circles, and natural philosophers
were far from being England’s great cultural heroes. That accolade
was reserved for the nation’s literary men—John Milton, John
Dryden, Alexander Pope. Rather than being a specialized art form
or minority interest, poetry was a favourite genre, whose readers
welcomed the metaphorical, allusive power of language. Scientific
poems could run to several hundred lines, and often doubled up as
theological texts, exhorting readers to admire the beauty of the
world designed by a munificent God. These didactic verses were
particularly targeted at women and other people unable to attend
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30  The Tower of London

university—a large category that included not only the poor but
also Jews, Catholics, and Dissenters.
Typically, virtually nothing is known about Tollet’s mother, but
she did benefit from an enlightened father, who enabled her not
only to excel at the conventional female skills of music and drawing
but also to study topics usually reserved for boys. Before she was
born, he had lived for a while in Dublin, where he astounded the
local Philosophical Society by showing off the skills of a 10-­year-­old
girl he had been teaching. ‘Mr Tollet’s Schollar’ impressed her audi-
ence by her knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, and geography,
even surviving an interrogation on Euclid. Nearly twenty years
later, perhaps Tollet made his own daughter perform similar math-
ematical feats for the entertainment of visitors. If so, then his friend
Isaac Newton would be an obvious guest to invite.
Apart from a recently discovered portrait, Tollet left little ma­ter­
ial trace of her existence beyond her books of poems, but through
them she bequeathed impressions of living in the Tower, Newton’s
place of work for three decades. In one stanza, she portrayed herself
strolling ‘round the Walls and antique Turrets’ to admire a scene
that Newton must also have contemplated—in one direction the
churches and green fields of London, and in the other the sailing
ships that travelled up and down the neighbouring Thames, plying
the international trade that made the metropolis one of the richest
cities in the world (Figure 2.1). Like her contemporaries, Tollet

Figure 2.1  Tower of London; Samuel and Nathaniel Buck, 1737

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The Tower of London  31

cele­brated London as the reincarnation of Augustan Rome, the

­centre of a glorious global empire importing luxury goods:

See! here Augusta’s massive Temples rise,

There Meads extend, and Hills support the Skies;
See! there the Ships, an anchor’d Forest ride,
And either India’s Wealth enrich the Tide.10

Newton and Tollet were both familiar with the hardships of solitary
study, and she fretted at the long lonely days with only her books
for companions. Her sense of isolation was intensified by knowing
that her two younger brothers were drinking and gambling their
way through Oxford and Cambridge, an opportunity that was
denied to her. Instead, she devised empathetic translations of Latin
aphorisms scratched by Jane Grey into the wall of her cell in the
Tower, and composed imaginary verses by another former prisoner,
Anne Boleyn:

Think how I pass the melancholy Hours,

Alone, immur’d in these relentless Tow’rs,
My languid Head upon my Hand declin’d,
Supported only by the conscious Mind.11

As well as enduring the Tower’s physical confinement, Tollet also

felt psychologically compressed within the walls of a female exist-
ence. How cruel it was, she protested, that the laws of nature had
condemned women to servitude. Only too aware of Francis Bacon’s
maxim that knowledge means power, Tollet accused men of terror-
izing women by denying them access to education:

That haughty Man, unrival’d and alone,

May boast the World of Science all his own:
As barb’rous Tyrants, to secure their Sway,
Conclude that Ignorance will best obey.12

There were many other mathematical daughters scattered around

the country. In 1709, the male editor of the annual Ladies’ Diary
announced that, by popular request, recipes would be replaced by
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32  The Tower of London

‘enigmas, and arithmetical questions, [which] give the greatest

­satisfaction and delight to the obliging fair’.13 Every year, answers
flooded in from women who could never get a degree but preferred
the challenge of mathematics to conventional activities such as
flower-­arranging or embroidery. Tollet’s scientific poetry demon-
strates that she had learnt the basic principles of Newtonian phys-
ics, either from her family or by private study. Whereas many
(male) Newtonian poets made vague references to ‘circling spheres’
and ‘whirling orbs’, she provided a more informed summary of the
gravitational laws governing planetary motion:

What Force their destin’d Line obliquely bends,

And what in vacuous Space their Weight suspends.14

As soon as she heard of Newton’s death, Tollet composed an elo-

quent elegy in which she imagined the tomb that would be built for
him in the future:

Soon shall the marble Monument arise,

And Newton’s honour’d Name attract our Eyes:
The finish’d Bust, in curious Sculpture wrought;
Shall seem to breath, alone absorpt in Thought.15

Tollet knew that no such grand memorial awaited her: she was
buried in Westham (now West Ham), which is in every sense a
long way from Westminster. Unlike Newton, she was trapped
within the Tower, dependent on her father’s whims or money-­
earning capacity in order to escape. Even the vagaries of the
weather affected her more than they did Newton. During her sec-
ond year in residence, in November 1703, a devastating hurricane
roared over the country and ruined many of the Tower buildings.
This was no ordinary storm: a bishop and his wife died in their
bed, fifteen warships sank, and Queen Anne pronounced it to be
God’s punishment for ‘the crying Sins of this Nation.’16 Newton
grumbled from a distance about the difficulty of finding money for
repairs at the Mint, but only four days later, while the streets were
still piled high with rubbish, he was elected President of the Royal
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The Tower of London  33

Society. In the meantime, as her father’s live-­in housekeeper, Tollet

would have been responsible for making sure the damage to their
home was cleaned up. Similarly, when the coldest winter for 500 years
froze the Tower’s old elm pipes and water had to be carried in by
buckets, Newton was comfortably ensconced in Chelsea with his
servants.17

Political Promotion

This young female poet shared some of Newton’s experiences at the

Mint, but scarcely impinged on his awareness. In contrast, another
woman was a major presence in his life for many years: Queen
Anne, who ascended to the throne in 1702, the same year that the
Tollet family moved to the Tower. As a royal princess, she was of
course far more privileged than Tollet, yet she was still subordinated
to the men in her family. Her uncle—Charles II—had insisted that
Anne and her sister Mary be brought up in the Church of England,
although their father—Charles’s brother, James II—converted to
Catholicism. But when it came to choosing a husband for Anne,
Charles and James were in accord, handing over their sister to
George, the brother of the Danish king.
In 1688, Anne had found herself torn between obedience to her
father, James II, and loyalty to her husband, George, who supported
William of Orange in his bid to seize the throne. Opting to follow
her husband, she slipped down the back stairs of her London resi-
dence and climbed into a waiting carriage that swept her away to
join the Revolutionary forces in the north of England. That sounds
rather cloak-­and-­dagger, but—like many of her eminent con­tem­
por­ar­ies—Anne operated by enveloping herself in a miasma of
secrecy. All over Europe, rulers relied on intrigue and espionage to
overturn plots against them as well as to achieve their own aims.
For example, in order to woo a potential prestigious bride whom he
had never met, a Hanoverian prince disguised himself as a noble-
man, leaving his palace at midnight and travelling incognito
through the darkness. Although gossip soon began circulating, the
mutually beneficial marriage contract was signed before any
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34  The Tower of London

ob­ject­ors could prevent it—and this secret suitor subsequently

became George II of Great Britain.18
When it came to spying, women at court were perfectly placed,
especially those who enjoyed some degree of independence because
they were either unmarried or widowed. Go-­betweens carried lov-
ers’ clandestine letters inside their hats or gloves, or stitched them
into curtain linings to prevent discovery. Ironically, women’s sup-
posed lack of intelligence put them beyond suspicion, enabling
them to move freely between different social and political circles,
quietly absorbing essential information before passing it on. When
captured, they were assumed to be lying and generally escaped the
interrogation under torture inflicted on male spies. Referred to as
‘she-­intelligencers’, they are, of course, extremely hard to identify: a
successful spy is one who leaves no trace.19
Anne adopted the motto semper eadem (always the same) of
Queen Elizabeth, who had died a hundred years earlier. No other
woman had reigned on her own since then, and Anne knew that
she would have to keep control of her ministers and demonstrate
that she was capable of tough decisions, especially military ones.
One of her greatest coups was to secure a monopoly for England to
trade enslaved people in the Americas, and a female poet congratu-
lated Anne for proving that women could be strong rulers:

Too long her Sex under Reproach has lain,

And felt a general (oft a just) Disdain:
But she redeems their Fame; in her we find
What Excellence there is in Womankind:
And to her Sex this lasting Honour brings,
That they are capable of highest things.20

Acutely aware that royal patronage mattered, Newton gained suffi-

cient influence to secure a place for his Oxford friend David
Gregory as mathematics tutor to the queen’s small son, the Duke of
Gloucester.21 Born in 1689, the boy had been named William after
the recently crowned king and immediately hailed as a Protestant
champion. His favourite occupation was disciplining his miniature
army of ninety children, but he died when he was only 11 years old,
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The Tower of London  35

and the question of the succession hovered over the country

throughout Anne’s reign. Neither Charles nor William had any sur-
viving children, so there was constant pressure on her to produce
another heir.
A Victorian biographer described Anne as ‘ugly, corpulent, gouty,
sluggish, a glutton and a tippler’. If he had suffered through seven-
teen pregnancies (plus some phantom ones) and the seventeen
young deaths that followed, he might well have gone that way him-
self. Despite being perpetually ill and/or pregnant, she was an intel-
ligent and knowledgeable patron of the arts, which all flourished
during her time in power. In contrast with the rather ascetic
approach of her cousin William, Anne was influenced by the more
baroque tastes of her father, James II—although definitely without
the Catholicism. She sponsored the architect John Vanbrugh to
build Blenheim Palace, rewarded George Handel with a royal pen-
sion, and commissioned portraits from Kneller and other society
artists (in which she naturally does not appear ugly, corpulent, or
gouty). It was during her reign that literary stars such as Alexander
Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Daniel Defoe appeared on the scene, and
she also gave unprecedented encouragement to female playwrights
and poets.22
Newton was eager to gain Anne’s support at the Mint, and
throughout her reign he manoeuvred to promote her interests while
maintaining the approval of influential politicians and patrons,
notably Charles Montagu. Reams of surviving manuscripts covered
with spidery columns of numbers show that he deployed the same
mathematical skills and obsessive attention to detail when adminis-
tering royal finances as when calculating cometary orbits. As just
one example, mixed in with a host of theological papers is a docu-
ment analysing Queen Anne’s contract with Cornish miners, in
which Newton painstakingly lays out all the figures needed to prove
that she was paying far above market value for their tin.23
In another tactic for ingratiating himself with Anne, Newton
made the Tower of London a production centre for royal propa-
ganda by spotting the potential publicity value of commemorative
medals. Whereas Newton routinely left the design of images on
ordinary coins to the Mint staff, he ensured that these special pieces
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36  The Tower of London

were under his control. Designed and produced at the Mint, they
won him a double goal: gaining favour at court, and spreading cov-
ert political messages. Collaborating with engravers, ministers, and
other experts, he sought to strengthen Anne’s position while also
reinforcing the policies of the dominant Whig party, which sup-
ported rule by Parliament. Newton effectively became a ministerial
agent operating from within his Tower citadel, combining his par-
ticipation in party politics with his scholarly knowledge of ancient
history and mythology.24
Most monarchs were experts at self-­promotion, but Anne showed
an unusual interest in medals. During the twelve years of her rule,
Newton oversaw the production of twenty-­nine, a far higher number
than for her successor, George I. They were expensive luxury items,
bought to be displayed in glass-­fronted cabinets, or worn around the
owner’s neck as a visible badge of allegiance, or as diplomatic gifts for
foreign visitors. Newton personally controlled every stage of their
manufacture, recommending that ‘no medals be made in ye mint
without order from her Matie to ye Master & Worker of ye mint.’25 As
an additional safeguard, before going into production any design had
to be approved right at the very top—by the Lord High Chancellor,
Robert Harley, member of the same social circle as George Tollet.
Unravelling Newton’s involvement is complicated because he
reserved no special notebook for sketching designs. Instead, while
he was working on something apparently unrelated—revising his
Principia, or recalculating the timetables of Persian history—he
sketched possibilities in the margins. When planning a promotional
medal, Newton realized that its message needed to be clear, just like
any advertising slogan. The images were intended to be deciphered,
their allusions disentangled as if they were complex texts, and so
they relied on mythological figures and symbols that would then
have been familiar but have now been largely forgotten. The chief
expert was John Evelyn, who is now more famous for his deliciously
gossipy diaries than for his distinguished tome on numismatics, but
Newton’s own copy of this learned work survives at Cambridge, and
its dog-­eared pages reveal how he scoured it for hints. He learnt
from Evelyn that medals were ‘Vocal Monuments’: like Elizabeth
Tollet’s scientific poetry, they had to be read and interpreted. For
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The Tower of London  37

promoting Anne, Newton adopted the language of mythology, now

the domain of classical experts but then as much a part of everyday
vocabulary as Santa Claus or Robin Hood today.
Newton’s first opportunity came with Anne’s coronation in 1702.
Since her father was a Catholic, Newton and his colleagues were
keen to downplay any inherited right to the throne. Instead, they
emphasized that she had become queen by statute, not by common
law: according to the Whig point of view, it was Parliament that had
decided Anne should follow William and Mary, and Parliament
that decreed the crown would go to the Hanoverian branch of the
family in the absence of a living heir. Newton wanted to portray
Anne as William’s constitutional successor, not as a Stuart descend-
ant, and to stress her aggressive foreign policy.
Thanks to his extensive historical research, Newton possessed
huge reservoirs of mythological knowledge: years of meticulous
scholarship now yielded practical political dividends. On Anne’s
coronation medal (Figure 2.2), he portrayed Anne as Pallas Athene,
Greek goddess of wisdom and war, and the favourite daughter of
Zeus (Roman Jupiter or Jove), ruler of the gods and traditionally
shown carrying the thunderbolt of a warrior. In William’s cor­on­
ation medal, Jupiter had symbolized the king, but now Newton gave
the thunderbolt to Pallas—that is, to Anne, William’s successor—
who towers above a four-­armed giant on the ground. In a note
probably intended for Anne’s approval, and scattered with biblical

Figure 2.2  Queen Anne’s coronation medal; Isaac Newton and John Croker, 1702
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38  The Tower of London

references, Newton spelt out the symbolism, ‘She succeeds ye

Thunderer . . . & ye Thunderer is here the late King William who in
his coronation medal was represented by Iupiter with a thunderbolt
in his hand . . . . The Giant with many heads and hands signifies not
a single person but a body politic & may represent any kingdom
principality nation people or body of men wth whom her Majty hath
or may have war.’26 Engraved by the Mint’s top craftsman, John
Croker, Newton’s medal proclaimed that, despite being a female
invalid, Anne was leading England to victory.
Newton’s endeavours paid off. From his personal perspective,
Anne’s backing later came in particularly useful during his pro-
tracted, bitter dispute with the Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed.
Moreover, he had negotiated himself into a protected place for sup-
porting the Whigs against the Tories and for preventing the return
of the Catholic Stuarts. As he had probably intended, his cor­on­ation
medal proved valuable for Whig propagandists. With elections
being held every three years, they needed campaign material for
defeating the Tories, their opponents in the two-­party system. Whig
pamphlets and poems picked up on Newton’s coded imagery by
emphasizing that Anne was continuing to enforce William’s revolu-
tionary principles. For example, this is the opening couplet of a
long but anonymous verse reference:

If Mighty Jove’s Auspicious Reign be o’er,

To thunder is alone in Anna’s Pow’r . . .27

Soon after Anne’s coronation, it seemed that her troops were faring
badly abroad, but, by taking advantage of a potential disaster,
Newton contrived a fresh opportunity to demonstrate his loyalty.
Spain also confronted the problem of a childless monarch, and after
the king’s death the War of Spanish Succession erupted all over
Europe in an attempt to prevent the Austrians or the French from
building up a massive power bloc. England had been faring badly,
but just as all seemed lost, news arrived that a Spanish fleet was due
to arrive in Vigo Bay (north-­west Spain), loaded down with gold
and silver from South America. In a stunning victory, the English
stripped the galleons of their precious cargo and shipped it back to
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The Tower of London  39

London, where Newton personally superintended its landing. The

inside story, which he knew perfectly well, was that the Spanish had
secretly unloaded most of their bullion in advance, so that only a
paltry £14,000 worth of silver came to London—but Newton kept
diplomatically quiet about that. Instead, the Mint contributed to the
government’s celebrations of this naval triumph by issuing com-
memorative gold coins, including a massive five-­guinea piece show-
ing Anne’s bust with VIGO inscribed directly beneath it.28
Eager to symbolize Britain’s increasing global domination, in
1711 Anne donated the marble for a large baroque sculpture to be
placed right in front of the new St Paul’s Cathedral. This early
­tribute to British imperialism is still there (albeit as a nineteenth-­
century replica), showing the queen with her gilded orb and sceptre
standing on a pedestal surrounded by four stone women. Of these,
three traditional sculptures draped in classical robes represent
Britain, Ireland, and France (Anne was initially crowned as queen
of England, Scotland, and Ireland, but after the Act of Union
between England and Scotland in 1707, she ruled over Great Britain
and Ireland; France was included because, on paper, the country
still counted as part of the monarch’s inheritance and featured on
the guineas Newton produced at the Mint).
By contrast, the fourth statue depicting America confirms how
little British people knew about people overseas. Modelled on
Brazilians captured by Portuguese invaders in the sixteenth century,
she rests her foot on the severed head of a European. Half-­naked,
she wears a generic feather skirt and headdress to indicate ‘Indian’,
an ambiguous word that could refer to the Mexicans in Dryden’s
play, to the inhabitants of India, or (as here) to the non-­Europeans
living in North America. In 1710, four Iroquois ambassadors had
visited London to solicit support for invading Canada. Erroneously
described as ‘kings’, they were formally presented to Queen Anne in
English-­ designed costumes, wearing turbans and slippers more
appropriate for Muslim Turks. Despite their courteous behaviour,
these unfamiliar Indians were also portrayed as untamed savages:

Chiefs who full Bowls of hostile Blood had quaff’d,

Fam’d for the Javelin, and invenom’d Shaft.29
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40  The Tower of London

The diplomats from America prudently kept their thoughts to

themselves, but a clever satirist was probably spot on when he
imagined their contemptuous description of their hosts in a letter
back home: ‘Instead of those beautiful feathers with which we adorn
our heads, they often buy up a monstrous bush of hair, which c­ overs
their heads, and falls down in a large fleece below the middle of
their backs.’30 Warmly welcomed, and accompanied back across the
Atlantic by an armed fleet, the Iroquois believed their mission had
been successful. They were wrong. In a private letter, Anne made it
clear that her ulterior motive was to expel French settlers so that
‘the several Indian Nations will be under Our Subjection and Our
Subjects will enjoy the whole Trade of Furr and Peltry, which they
purchase with the Woollen Manufacture of this Kingdom, and with
Guns, Powder, Shott, Knives, Scissars, Beads & Toys.’31
There is probably no way of ever being sure that Newton heard
about this visit, but it was well publicized and he was fully aware of
British policy overseas—indeed, so much so that, in 1713, he
actively supported Robert Harley’s Whig campaign to exit the War
of Spanish Succession under terms giving Britain a greater share of
the lucrative slave trade. Although the state normally funded only
coronation medals, for this special occasion Newton designed a
medal portraying Anne as Britannia, olive branch in her hand, ris-
ing up from a bucolic scene of bountiful land and sea. His records
show that for 562 golden pieces of this imperial publicity, the
Treasury spent over £2500.32
The government continued to spend lavishly on regal display.
When she died, Britain’s last Stuart monarch was given a funeral
that cost more than £10,000. But despite the ostentatious splendour,
Anne was treated with less than royal courtesy. Some of the chief
mourners were people she disliked, and the ceremonial crown she
wore to the grave was made of tin covered with gold paint.33 Her
final public event was delayed for two days until the new king—
George I—arrived from Hanover, but Newton soon realized that
the next monarch would be paying far less attention to matters of
the Mint.
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3
Family Trees

Hogarth’s drawing room was owned by a man—John Conduitt—who

owned a wife—Catherine Barton—to care for him, his houses, and
his child. Here she has a virtual presence, suspended below her hus-
band, who had inherited Newton’s position as Master of the Mint.
Looking out from her oval frame towards the viewer, her gaze is
directed away from the stage and away from Newton. Perhaps by
then she had tired of being an adjunct to her ambitious husband and
her demanding uncle. Hogarth has colour-­coordinated her with the
room’s furnishings—the pale blue window curtains to her right, the
draped swags on the far side of the mantelpiece—as if she were merely
a decorative item in Conduitt’s inventory of treasured possessions.
Perhaps the original picture is hanging in the dim corridor of a remote
country house, unidentified and forgotten. Or perhaps it never
existed—Hogarth may have conjured this portrait out of his im­agin­
ation, placing it on the wall as a symbolic reminder that women as
well as men were important in Newton’s life.

* * *
It was a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in pos-
session of a good fortune, must be in want of . . . somebody to look
after both him and his house (as Jane Austen did not put it). This
was a common male problem, but the solution was not necessarily
an Austen-­style marriage. Since women were legally the possession
of their menfolk, those who remained unmarried became a col­lect­
ive family responsibility, an obligation often fulfilled by installing
them as unpaid housekeepers for the bachelors and widowers
among the relatives. Sisters, daughters, and nieces could easily
become consigned to perpetual servitude, effectively forced into
unwelcome spinsterhood.1 Elizabeth Tollet was only 8 years old
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42  Family Trees

when her mother died and her father brought her to the Tower with
her two younger brothers. She probably realized from childhood
that she had no choice but to assume the wifely roles of house-
keeper, childcarer, and hostess without ever acquiring her own hus-
band. Lonely women all over the country could empathize with her
protest:

What cruel laws depress the female Kind,

To humble Cares and servile tasks confin’d?2

The young woman that Newton recruited to organize his life was
very different from Tollet. Soon after he moved out of the Tower
and into Jermyn Street, he was joined by Catherine Barton, the
daughter of his younger half-­ sister, Hannah. The exact date is
uncertain, but Barton was probably around 17 years old when she
arrived in the metropolis and—in contrast with Tollet—was all set
to enjoy herself. Whereas Tollet endured long periods of secluded
isolation, drifting around the Tower with only her Latin books for
company, Barton became a gossip-­ column party-­ goer, publicly
referred to as ‘the famous, witty Miss Barton’ in the Gentleman’s
Magazine.3 She was definitely no home-­ loving innocent from
Lincolnshire who had decided to sacrifice her youth by caring for
elderly Uncle Isaac.
Although Barton’s exact status in the Newton household is not
clear, she apparently managed to maintain her independence while
also ensuring that Newton would continue to value her presence
and support her financially. Surviving references suggest that
although she remained close to Newton throughout his life, she also
engineered a separate existence, even before she married in 1717. In
particular, she regularly entertained intimate friends such as
Jonathan Swift, who was a close confidant long before he wrote
Gulliver’s Travels.4 When Newton died around thirty years later, she
and her husband were by his bedside in Kensington, although
she had not been a permanent resident for all of that time. Perhaps
she was responsible for persuading Newton to smarten up his
homes by buying new furniture, decorations, and tableware? In the
St Martin’s Street house they shared, her private apartment ran to at
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Family Trees  43

least a couple of rooms, and the list of their contents is twice as long
as those in Newton’s bedroom—but they were worth only half as
much. Among other pieces, there were four tables, six chairs and a
settee, several sets of curtains, a silk and feather bed, tapestries,
mirrors, chests, and a commode.5
Barton is usually referred to as Newton’s niece, but during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that word conveniently
­covered a range of associations between men and younger women,
and could be used even when they were not tied together by blood.
Complementing that ambiguity, more intimate so-­called avuncu-
late relationships were openly acknowledged, even though they
were not positively endorsed. Whatever Barton’s position in her
uncle’s household, other attractive nieces became sexually involved
with their protectors. One particularly relevant example is Grace
Hooke, niece of Newton’s arch-­ enemy Robert Hooke. She first
arrived from her home on the Isle of Wight at the age of 12, when
her father—Hooke’s brother—began paying for her to go to school
in London. Newton had much in common with his slightly older
rival at the Royal Society: both obsessive workers who seized every
opportunity for an argument with each other, they both became
extremely rich (although, unlike Newton, Hooke lived like a pauper
and hid his fortune in a chest under his bed, where it was dis­covered
after his death). In addition, they were both cared for by charming
live-­in nieces who had their own similarities: they each enjoyed at
least one aristocratic affair, and they each survived a severe case of
smallpox.
There is, however, a major contrast between these two examples:
unlike Hooke, it is improbable that Newton engaged in full sexual
activity with his niece. Hooke kept an extraordinary diary, in which
he recorded every orgasm with the symbol of Pisces, and it reveals
that the first time Grace and Robert Hooke slept together, she was
16 and he was 40. He had apparently been besotted with her even
before that, and they lived together more or less continuously until
she died. Grace Hooke did, however, spend a mysterious ten-­month
interlude on the Isle of Wight, when it seems extremely likely that
she had a baby. It might have been her uncle’s: his sexual diary
shows that the dates would match. On the other hand, it might have
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44  Family Trees

been fathered by another older man with whom she spent t­ime—­
Sir Robert Holmes, the island’s 55-­year-­old governor with an illus-
trious reputation as the swashbuckling naval officer who had ousted
the Dutch to secure King Charles’s privileges in the lucrative West
African slave trade. He certainly believed that a small girl born dur-
ing that period was his illegitimate daughter and rightful heir, Mary.6
Shocking now, but far less so in the late seventeenth century,
when large age differences between husbands, wives, and other
sexual partners were quite common. At the time, incest was not a
criminal offence, and it remained legal (although banned by Church
law) right through until the early twentieth century. Even then,
nieces were not specified in the list of taboos and a long line of dis-
tinguished incestuous uncles includes sundry aristocrats as well as
Voltaire.7 Of course, these examples yield no information about
Newton’s friendship with his niece. On the other hand, they do
indicate how differently close family relationships were viewed in
the past.
After Newton’s niece moved in to his London home, did his
­contemporaries assume that he was sleeping with her? Possibly, but
if so, all traces of any insinuations have vanished. In any case,
­substantial evidence suggests his emotional preference for men.
When homosexuality was illegal or still widely frowned upon,
many ­bio­graph­ers were reticent about exploring this topic. ‘Was
Newton gay?’ is the wrong question to ask, because—like nieces
and uncles—male and female friendships of all types were con-
ducted differently from now, and the category ‘homosexual’ had
not yet been created. Sodomy was technically an ecclesiastical
offence carrying the death penalty, but during the seventeenth cen-
tury same-­sex couples could and did enjoy pleasurable relationships
together, sometimes feeling themselves intimately bound by their
mutual seraphic love, a divine friendship in which souls soared
pure and high above bodily concerns.8
Despite—or perhaps because—he professed sexual abstinence,
Newton wrote a fair amount about lust. From a young age, he
repeatedly castigated himself for even the slightest deviation from
his self-­imposed restraint. As an adult in London, when he wrote a
female servant’s reference, he scrupulously crossed out the words
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Family Trees  45

‘lived with me two or three years’ and substituted ‘served me as a

cook’.9 Even on his deathbed, he insisted on his celibacy, an asser-
tion that many historians have unquestioningly accepted as incon-
trovertible proof, apparently assuming that he was too saintly to lie.
Newton reportedly told his doctor that he was still a virgin, which
might seem an odd status to insist upon at that late stage. The word
occurs in one of his favourite biblical texts, the Book of Revelation,
where he found confirmation that he was destined for spiritual
leadership provided he practised abstinence. Those who were
­chosen ‘were they which were not defiled with women; for they
are virgins,’ he read; ‘they are without fault before the throne
of God.’10
Newton was plagued with thoughts of sexual sin. In his diatribes
against Roman Catholicism, he railed against monks’ self-­denial,
maintaining that their practices served only to inflame desire. ‘The
cell, the solitude, the habit, hunger, thirst, vigils, every ascetic prac-
tice will constantly bring to mind the reason for these things, and
the more effort he puts into them, the more often and powerfully it
will do so.’ Newton was writing from personal experience: as a
Cambridge fellow, he had led a similar life of self-­discipline, clos-
eted apart from society. Too much privation, he warned, ‘at length
brings men to a sort of distraction & madnesse so as to make them
think they have visions of women conversing with ʼem & sitting
upon their knees.’11
Unsurprisingly, there are few concrete facts, especially after
Newton moved permanently to London. At Trinity, he was a close
colleague of another fellow, John Wickins, for twenty years, but it is
now impossible to know exactly what their relationship was, why it
ended, or even whether any aspect was deliberately concealed.
Around the end of 1689, Newton became deeply involved with
Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, a Swiss mathematician living in London
who was over twenty years younger than him. It was in Fatio’s inter-
ests to flatter Newton and secure his patronage in the competitive
world of natural philosophy—and reciprocally, Fatio was trying to
secure a position for Newton in London. Snippets of surviving cor-
respondence suggest that Fatio and Locke belonged to a small circle
centred on Charles Mordaunt (First Earl of Monmouth): Newton
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46  Family Trees

was very keen to ingratiate himself with this influential politician, a

powerful Whig close to the monarch.12
Whatever its nature, Newton’s relationship with Fatio seems to
have been immensely important for him, because its demise cor­res­
pond­ ed with a period of psychological collapse followed by a
renewed determination to start life afresh. Only a few months after
their first introduction, Newton invited himself to visit Fatio from
Cambridge. ‘I intend to be in London ye next week & should be
very glad to be in ye same lodgings wth you,’ he wrote. ‘Pray let me
know by a line or two whether you can have lodgings for us both in
ye same house at present or whether you would have me take some
other lodgings for a time till . . .’13 Till what? Oddly (and annoy-
ingly), this is the third place in this letter where words have been
cut out of the paper. The records kept by Trinity College reveal
Newton’s numerous absences, but not where he went while he was
away. After Newton moved to the Mint, Fatio got in touch from
time to time (especially when he needed some money), and later
composed a poetic eulogy hymning him as a Christ-­like figure des-
tined to make great discoveries.14 No solid information has yet been
dug up confirming that Newton conducted any clandestine London
romances. But there were plenty of rumours about his niece.
Scandalmongers circulated various spiced-­up versions of two
basic questions. Did Catherine Barton have an affair with Newton’s
wealthy friend and patron, the distinguished politician Charles
Montagu? And had Montagu persuaded Newton to keep quiet by
offering him a cushy position at the Mint? Those claims ran the
gossip rounds at the time, and have preoccupied biographers ever
since. For three centuries, historians have devised convoluted argu-
ments designed to protect the reputations of one, two, or even all
three protagonists. Victorians vehemently refuted both assertions.
More recently, the first—the affair—but not the second—the
bribe—has become generally accepted.15 My answer is yes to both
accusations, even though some crucial evidence about dates is
missing.
That can only, of course, be surmise. Everybody was desperately
covering up for each other, and three centuries later there are large
holes in the timetable of Newton’s life. Basically, it boils down to a
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Family Trees  47

choice. You can—as I do—accept allegations voiced at the time; or,

you can be so confident of Newton’s unimpeachable moral integrity
that you deny them.

Catherine Barton

Newton acquired his first house in Jermyn Street in 1696, and

Barton probably left her family home in Northamptonshire and
moved to London fairly soon afterwards. There is no way of being
absolutely sure that they had already met each other, but it does
seem extremely likely. To the end of his life, Newton remained in
close touch with his extended family, supporting numerous rela-
tives and attending their weddings. He spent time with Catherine’s
mother Hannah (his half-­ sister) in Cambridge as well as in
Woolsthorpe, and they presumably also saw each other several
times in 1689—the year Catherine was born—while Newton was
caring for their sick mother in Stamford, fairly near to the Bartons’
home. When Catherine’s father was dying in 1693, Hannah sent a
tearful plea for comfort to her ‘Dear Brother’.16 Had she perhaps
already tried to cement the bond with her increasingly wealthy
half-­brother by bringing the family to London during the year he
lived there as MP for Cambridge University? Or perhaps he visited
them during one of his mysterious absences from Cambridge—or
they might have met at Woolsthorpe, where Newton returned every
few years to visit other relatives and keep a close eye on his Lincolnshire
property. Possible, even likely—but impossible to verify.
Unfortunately for historians, when people meet regularly they
have no need to correspond with each other. Only one letter sur-
vives from Isaac Newton to Catherine Barton, sent in the summer
of 1700, when she had already been away from his London house
for some time, staying with friends near Oxford to recover from her
smallpox infection. Ever economical with paper, Newton recycled a
hand-­written sheet of information about the coinage systems in dif-
ferent countries by writing on the back of it. He promised to send
up some wine for her host, and his affectionate tone suggests close
familiarity with a warm concern for her appearance, every sufferer’s
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48  Family Trees

nightmare. ‘I had your two letters & am glad ye air agrees wth you &
th[ough ye] fever is loath to leave you yet I hope it abates, & yt ye
[re]mains of ye small pox are dropping off apace . . . Pray let me
know by your next how your f[ace is] & if your fevour be going.
Perhaps warm milk from ye Cow may [help] to abate it. I am Your
very loving Unkle, Is. Newton.’17
That recommendation to bathe in fresh milk is less strange than
it might sound. Milkmaids were rumoured to have wonderful com-
plexions, and modern medical knowledge suggests that they were
often effectively immunized against smallpox by catching a less
dangerous form, cowpox. More generally, Newton quite fancied
himself as a dispenser of medical advice. A few years earlier he had
achieved great success with his pregnant sister-­in-­law (Barton’s aunt
by marriage), whose chest infection had cleared up after she applied
the poultice he had prescribed. He even tried to cure the chronic
headaches of his lifelong rival the Astronomer Royal John
Flamsteed, recommending (vindictively?) that he should bind his
head tightly until his skull went numb.18
In the same letter, Newton also offered his niece a gentle repri-
mand: ‘My La[dy] Norris thinks you forget your promis of writing
to her, & wants [a] letter from you.’ This casual reference indicates
that Newton had already introduced his niece into London’s fash-
ionable political circles. At the time, Elizabeth Norris’s husband was
representing the East India Company on a diplomatic mission to
India, where he was faced with the near-­impossible task of persuad-
ing Mughal officials that he could obtain special trading privileges
for them. Like Newton, as a fellow of Trinity College he had resisted
the attempts of James II to introduce Catholics into Cambridge, and
was a keen Whig supporter, so presumably they had known each
other for some considerable time. A couple of years later, Norris
died of dysentery on the way home, but his wealthy widow felt suf-
ficiently at ease with Newton to solicit his advice about marrying
for a fifth time. Perhaps she was angling for an approach from
him—but if so, he ignored the hint.19
Whether or not the cow’s milk did the trick, Barton’s face was
preserved unblemished. As well as being beautiful, she was very
intelligent, and much admired by Newton’s friends, as well as her
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Family Trees  49

own. Her circle included the poet John Dryden, author of The
Indian Emperour, who wrote a flowery tribute before he died in
1700. She habitually dined with celebrated socialites—Lady Betty
Germain, Anne Long, Lady Frances Worsley—and for many years,
she remained a close confidante of Jonathan Swift, often entertain-
ing him alone, especially after he moved into the same street. ‘I love
her better than anybody here, and see her seldomer,’ he wrote to
Stella, who had been his elusive passion since she was 8 years old
and seems to have been rather concerned about this relationship.
Only half-­jokingly, Swift reprimanded Stella for making catty jokes
about Barton.20
Barton delighted in telling Swift risqué stories, such as the one
about a woman reputedly destined to remain unburied until the
Resurrection because, before her death, she had insisted that the
parson and the pall-­bearers should be virgins (not very funny, per-
haps, but Swift appreciated it). While he lived in London, they
remained close, worrying together one year when Whig supporters
planned to burn effigies of the Pope and the devil during celebra-
tions commemorating the birth of Elizabeth  I.21 Barton also sup-
plied Swift with biographical titbits and political gossip that came
in useful for his satires. ‘Mrs Bart[on] is still in my good Graces,’ he
told a friend in 1709; ‘the best Intelligence I get of Publick Affairs is
from Ladies, for the Ministers never tell me any thing.’22 After Swift
switched political sides to support the Tories, he used Barton as his
mouthpiece to transmit messages from his political leaders. For
example, through Swift and Barton, the powerful Henry Bolingbroke
warned Newton not to be too confident of retaining his place at
the Mint, telling him that he ‘thought it a sin his thoughts should be
diverted by his place at the Mint & that the Queen would settle
upon him a pension’.23
While Swift remained in London, he refrained from attacking
Newton directly, but many others found his satires offensive,
including Queen Anne, who effectively exiled him to Ireland. No
longer in contact with Barton, no longer dining at her uncle’s house,
Swift felt free of any obligations. During a bitter dispute about the
Irish currency, he accused Newton of falsifying evidence and tyran-
nically imposing English power; after a prolonged conflict, Newton
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50  Family Trees

backed down. This very public controversy took place while Swift
was writing Gulliver’s Travels (1726), for which he concocted the
Academy of Lagado to satirize the Royal Society and ambitious sci-
entific innovators. He must have thought back to those private din-
ing sessions with gossip-­mongering Barton, when she may well
have entertained him by dressing up an anecdote that she later told
her husband, who in turn used it to depict Newton as hopelessly
absent-­minded. According to Barton, Newton often became so
engrossed in his thoughts that he would forget to eat his dinner and
instead consume it for breakfast the following morning, not even
realizing his error. Perhaps this insider titbit became transformed
into Swift’s parable of the flappers, whose function was to strike
their dysfunctional masters gently and recall their constantly wan-
dering attention.
Presumably Swift became a sensitive topic of conversation in the
St Martin Street household, although there is no record of rows
between Newton and Barton on the topic—but since there are so
few traces of any conversations between them, that is hardly sur-
prising. No letters between Barton and Swift survive from this
period, although several years after Newton died, the two friends
renewed their correspondence with great familiarity and affection.24

Charles Montagu

Negotiating eighteenth-­century families is complicated. Like most

aristocrats, Charles Montagu was referred to by several different
names and titles. By 1695, when confronted with England’s mon­et­
ary emergency, he had already become the first Baron Halifax; nearly
twenty years later, he was created Earl of Halifax with the courtesy
title Viscount Sunbury (not to be confused with the Marquess of
Halifax, who was not a Montagu and was born George Savile). In
addition, Montagu was at various times known as President of the
Royal Society, Chancellor of the Exchequer, First Lord of the
Treasury, and High Steward of Cambridge University. Making it
even more difficult to pin him down, the Montagu family was so
large and well connected that, after the 1695 election, seven
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Family Trees  51

Montagus—including Charles—were sitting as MPs. Many of the

other Montagus also bore additional names, such as the Earl of
Manchester, who was Charles Montagu’s cousin.25
Soon after she arrived in London, Barton became a favourite at
the Kit-­Kat club, which was renowned not only for its drunken rev-
elries but also for actively supporting Whig policies. This privileged
political group included Newton’s preferred artist Godfrey Kneller,
whose forty-­eight portraits of his friends now provide the nearest
thing to a membership list. Painted over a period of twenty years,
and all mounted in identical frames, they show wealthy aristocrats
as well as the philosopher John Locke, the architect John Vanbrugh,
and the playwright William Congreve—and also Newton’s patron,
Charles Montagu. Traditionally, the Kit-­Kat drinking companions
honoured a woman of particular distinction by toasting her health
with a custom-­composed verse and engraving her name on a fine
glass goblet. In 1703, when it was Catherine Barton’s turn, Montagu
probably wrote the tribute. As Samuel Johnson remarked, his coup­
lets were not great poetry, but by then it seems to have been a gen-
eral assumption that they were lovers.

Beauty and Wit strove each, in vain,

To vanquish Bacchus and his Train;
But Barton with successful Charms
From both their Quivers drew her Arms;
The roving God his Sway resigns,
And awfully submits his Vines.26

Now wealthy and influential, Montagu had been so desperate for

money when he was 27 years old that he married the rich widow of
his cousin the Earl of Manchester; then in her sixties, she died in
1698. Whether or not he had met Barton before that, he later openly
pulled strings for her, such as recommending her brother to the
Duke of Marlborough for a captain’s commission, even though he
was said to be an incompetent soldier. By 1706, they clearly knew
each other extremely well, because just before leaving for several
months in Europe, he revised his will by adding an intriguing codi-
cil. Whereas he had originally bequeathed £1000 to each of his
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52  Family Trees

brothers, Montagu now stipulated that £3000 and all his jewels
should go to Barton. Six years later, he increased that to £5000 plus
two country estates and an annuity. This was, he emphasized
unconvincingly, solely in recognition of ‘the great Esteem he had
for her Wit and most exquisite Understanding’. Claiming that she
was merely his housekeeper, he defended her against critics who
‘pass’d a judgement upon her which she no Ways merited, since she
was a Woman of strict Honour and Virtue’.27 Did he seriously
expect anybody to believe him? Far from being dismissive of this
future windfall for his niece, Newton positively connived at it, since
Montagu’s will stipulated that he would be involved in the
administration.
When Montagu died unexpectedly in 1715 from a lung infection,
Barton sent a plaintive note to Newton wondering what she should
do. ‘I desire to know whether you would have me wait here . . . or
come home,’ she asked, presumably writing from Montagu’s house
to her uncle in St Martin’s Street. Aware that women were legally
the possession of their nearest male relative, she signed her letter
‘Your Obedient Neece and Humble servt, C.  Barton.’28 Newton—
then aged 72—promptly cancelled all his social engagements. ‘The
concern I am in for the loss of my Lord Halifax [Montagu] & the
circumstances in wch I stand related to his family,’ he wrote to a rela-
tive, ‘will not suffer me to go abroad till his funeral is over.’29 Newton
owned a golden mourning ring that is now at the British Museum,
and for the rest of his life he kept a portrait of Montagu in his room.
As Newton may well have realized, the allegations did not stop at
a mere affair. With its oblique reference to the Mint, the last line of
this anonymous Kit-­Kat verse hints at a patronage relationship
between Barton, Montagu, and Newton:

Stampt with her Reigning Charms, the Standard

Glass,
Shall current thro’ the Realms of Bacchus pass;
Full fraught with Beauty shall new Flames impart,
And Mint her shining Image on the Heart.30

Further insinuations were levelled by the notorious playwright

Delarivier Manley. In Memoirs of Europe, one of her scurrilous
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Family Trees  53

satires about London life, she lent the couple only wafer-­ thin
­disguises. For enlivening the humour of this extraordinary tale,
purportedly set in the eighth century, she assumed that her readers
would immediately identify Barton with the ‘charming Bartica’, and
Montagu with Julius Sergius, the maudlin drunkard at a gambling
party who had recently been deserted.31 More scandalously, Manley
made an additional accusation—that Montagu had bought Newton’s
silence about their illicit affair. In her fictionalized account, Sergius
(aka Montagu) sobbed that la Bartica was ‘a Traitress, an inconsist-
ent proud Baggage, yet I love her dearly, and have lavish’d Myriads
upon her, besides getting her worthy ancient Parent a good Post for
Connivance’.32
For admirers of Barton’s ‘worthy ancient Parent’, it is unthinkable
that Newton should have engaged in such a bargain. They stress the
lack of hard evidence that Montagu met Barton before 1696, when
he offered Newton his first lucrative position in London. But
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: that aphorism may
be well worn, but there are indeed many empty gaps in the relevant
historical records. Montagu could easily have met Barton earlier—
in Cambridge, for example—or heard the rumours that a beautiful
young niece was about to arrive.
On their own, such suppositions might easily be dismissed, but
their likelihood is strengthened by knowing that Voltaire—who
met Barton—made a similar claim. His testimony is particularly
convincing because he was a great fan of Newton, admiring him to
the point of obsession. His accusation did not appear in print until
long after Barton, Montagu, and Newton had all died, but presum-
ably it reiterated suspicions that had been prevalent at the time.
‘I thought in my youth that Newton made his fortune by his merit,’
Voltaire reported. ‘I supposed that the Court and the City of
London named him Master of the Mint by acclamation. No such
thing. Newton had a very charming niece, Madame Conduitt, who
made a conquest of the minister Halifax. Fluxions and gravitation
would have been of no use without a pretty niece.’33
Despite the gossip, Newton remained close to Barton, setting her
up with a substantial dowry, and endowing her daughter Kitty with
a Kensington estate worth £4000. He was also well disposed towards
other members of their extended family, staying in close contact
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54  Family Trees

until the end of his life. After Barton’s brother (the incompetent
soldier) was killed in a shipwreck near Quebec, she fulfilled only
the minimum of mourning obligations, whereas Newton ensured
that his widow and children were adequately cared for. At one stage,
Barton’s cousin, Benjamin Smith, arrived to live with them in
London, although that was not a successful experiment—Smith’s
behaviour was so appalling that Newton threw him out.
Frustratingly, his letters were destroyed by a well-­meaning clergy-
man who was scandalized by their language, but they might have
revealed a fascinatingly non-­sanitized aspect of Newton’s character.
Newton’s origins lay in Lincolnshire, and he never relinquished
his connections with Woolsthorpe, the hamlet where he grew up.
He owned property there until the end of his life, and he donated
money to restore the nearby church. Judging from his spelling of
some key words, Newton retained his childhood accent at a time
when English was spoken and spelt far less uniformly than now­
adays. His speech may well have resembled that of Alfred, Lord
Tennyson, also brought up in a small Lincolnshire village, whose
voice can be heard on a crackly recording made in 1890.34 As
Newton became rich and famous, relatives and friends constantly
tapped him for funds. He often responded generously—making
regular payments for the children of his half-­sisters, donating wed-
ding gifts of money and wine, and setting up a pension for the
widow of Barton’s brother and a loan for his uncle’s grandson.35
Letters also flooded in from people claiming any sort of vague
connection, including one from an unrelated Newton detained in
Marshalsea prison. Scores of these appeals survive because Newton
economically re-­used the paper they were written on for drafting
his own documents, but in this period, long before any state welfare
system, there must have been many more that have vanished. Even
the village rector tried to cash in, informing Conduitt after Newton’s
death that he ‘used to talk pretty much ab’t founding & endowing a
school in Woolsthorpe for ye use of ye Parish’.36 However liberal
Newton might himself have been, Conduitt had different priorities.
He committed over £700 on Newton’s spectacular monument in
Westminster Abbey, but pledged only £20 to alleviate the plight of
the Woolsthorpe poor.
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Family Trees  55

Rewriting the Past

In 1696, Newton had abandoned Cambridge, disillusioned by his

failure to secure a better position in the university. Although no
‘Dear Diary’ entry records his feelings, one might imagine his gloat-
ing exultation when nine years later, on 16 April 1705, he returned
briefly to participate in a grand ceremony celebrated throughout
the city. Now a wealthy metropolitan administrator, he knelt before
Queen Anne, who tapped him on both shoulders with a sword and
dubbed him a knight. When Flamsteed congratulated him a few
days later, he wrote to a friend that Newton ‘was more than usually
gay and cheerful’.37 Luckily for Newton’s self-­esteem, he died before
Swift lampooned him as an ‘Instrument Maker [who] it seems, was
knighted for making Sun-­Dyals better than others of his Trade’.38
There were, of course, several tedious speeches during the cere-
mony, but Cambridge University did put on a splendid reception.
‘The Ways were all along strowed with Flowers,’ wrote one reporter;
‘the Bells rung, and the Conduits run with Wine’. Welcoming
­scholars lined the main road up to Trinity College, which hosted a
magnificent dinner for 200 distinguished guests. Perched above
them on a makeshift throne five feet high, Anne knighted Newton
and two other friends of Charles Montagu, whom she honoured by
admitting him as a Doctor in Law. The tables were scattered with
poems, reportedly written by students, which sycophantically ele-
vated her above Henry VIII and Edward III, the founders of
Trinity.39
This was a political event through and through. Newton had
earned his accolade not because he was a famous mathematician,
but as a reward for loyalty: he had let Montagu persuade him to
stand as a Whig candidate in the forthcoming parliamentary elec-
tion. He had been an MP before settling in London, but this time
Newton made the time-­consuming journey up to Cambridge three
times—six days of travelling in a single month. Determined to
gratify Montagu, he campaigned hard, liberally donating money to
the right pockets, but he complained constantly of being squeezed
out. He was right: after humiliating public protests against ‘Occasional
Conformers’ who signed up to orthodox Anglicanism when it suited
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56  Family Trees

them, he came a bad last of four. That was the end of Newton’s
­parliamentary career—but he still had his knighthood, which inter-
ested him far more. During that summer, he dedicated himself to
consolidating this honour by assiduously tracing his ancestry. Relying
mainly on church records, which probably explains why he included
so little information about the women of the family, he diligently
researched back over several generations to his sixteenth-­century
great-­great-­grandfather, drawing up a pedigree that he filed at the
College of Arms in November (Figure 3.1).
Newton was already an expert on family trees. While he lived in
London, he became increasingly obsessed with calculating the
timetables and genealogies of ancient dynasties, a project that
he had begun years earlier at Cambridge. When he died, by far the
largest bundle of his manuscripts was labelled ‘relating to the
Chronology’—that is, to rewriting the dates of ancient history. At a
quick glance, Newton’s sprawling messy trees of his own family look
very similar to those he compiled for the Egyptians and Hittites
who had thrived many thousands of years before the Newtons

Figure 3.1  Family tree; Isaac Newton, 1705

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Family Trees  57

arrived in Woolsthorpe. This expertise must have come in handy

when he wanted to create a noble ancestry for himself and design a
suitable coat of arms.
Newton thought creatively during this search to establish past
facts. Ingeniously, he managed to suggest a link with Sir John
Newton of Thorpe, who may or may not have been distantly related
but was in any case willing to let a connection be established. Isaac
Newton appropriated Sir John’s family crest, which featured crossed
shin bones (although during the nineteenth century some Cambridge
sculptors inadvertently transformed them into pirate-­ like thigh
bones). Later on, Newton changed his mind about his origins, this
time deciding that his ancestors hailed from Scotland and came
south with James I in the early seventeenth century.40
Several different versions of Newton’s tree have survived, but the
one that somehow ended up in the University of Texas includes
dates.41 Resembling the way he found it necessary to reconcile
timetables between different civilizations, Newton was obliged to
operate under one dating system in England but to use another in
Europe: then, as now, the offshore island was out of step with the
mainland. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, Pope Gregory
had revised the older Julian calendar (named after Julius Caesar),
most significantly by altering the leap years pattern. But Protestant
England had refused to adopt this Catholic innovation, and by the
time of Newton’s birth lagged ten days behind the rest of Europe; by
his death, the divergence had increased to eleven days. For English
people, Newton might seem to have been specially chosen by God
because he was born on Christmas Day 1642, whereas in France his
birth was recorded as 4 January 1643. As an added complication, the
English new year started on 25 March rather than January 1—and
that explains why, in the Texas manuscript, Newton has recorded
being born on 25 December 1642 yet baptized a week later on
­(confusingly) 1 January 1642.
Changing the calendar made astronomical sense, but, for Whig
patriots such as Newton, it also implied kowtowing to pressure
from Rome and aligning England with Europe at the expense of
Scotland and the colonies. When several Protestant countries
adopted a compromise system in 1699, they put pressure on
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58  Family Trees

England to follow their example, and Newton was asked to supply

some relevant figures. He complied reluctantly, even though he
shared the Royal Society’s lack of enthusiasm for accommodating
foreign Catholics. ‘The King has of his own subjects Chronologers
and Mathematicians as good as any that Europe can boast off [sic],’
the Fellows protested patriotically; ‘If we reform let us go to ye root
of ye matter and not be led by any example hitherto extant. Our
King is as fit to arbitrate this business as any Monarch in Europe . . .’
Newton promptly set about going to ‘ye root of ye matter’, after sev-
eral attempts coming up with a mathematically elegant yet hope-
lessly nationalistic solution that would have put England ten days
ahead of the Continent. Britain remained out of step until 1752.42
In the Principia, Newton had laid bare the fundamental laws of
nature that govern the universe. Ten years later, in London, he
became convinced that he could bring similar harmony to the
apparently disorderly development of human civilization. In page
after ink-­splodged page, his tiny spidery scrawl calculates the reigns
of Israeli kings, the dates of ancient Greek poets, the genealogy of
Egyptian deities, the duration of the Trojan War, the invasion of
Judea . . . each sheet must have taken hours to write out, let alone to
research. Deciding that the key to ancient pagan chronologies lay in
the Masoretic Bible, the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Old
Testament, he worked out the time needed for repopulating the
world after Noah’s flood—then a hotly debated topic among
chrono­ logic­al cognoscenti. Relying heavily on numbers in the
Masoretic Bible, Newton drastically revised previous timetables,
redating key episodes such as the voyage of the Argonauts and the
reigns of the Egyptian pharaohs.
Unfortunately for historians trying to track his thought pro-
cesses, Newton adopted a very simple storage system: arrange
every­thing in large piles. He rarely dated his documents, and a sin-
gle page might include undergraduate inspirations alongside mean-
dering musings of old age on a completely different topic. Whether
genealogical tables or mathematical treatises or alchemical recipes
or shopping lists, his manuscripts are no longer piled up in loose
heaps: sheet by sheet, they have been systematically numbered and
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Family Trees  59

the originals are now carefully preserved inside air-­conditioned

archives scattered around the world. As an added resource, experts
have already embarked on the mammoth project of transcribing all
those documents—including the deletions, repetitions, and false
starts—and making them available digitally. But of course, however
easily this material can be accessed, making sense of it remains far
more difficult. Like Newton himself, scholars can only begin to decipher
his immense legacy after undertaking an arduous s­ elf-­tuition course
in ancient history and biblical hermeneutics.
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4
The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt

John Conduitt married into the family of England’s most famous

scholar, inherited his position at the Mint, and ensured that he would
himself be buried in Westminster Abbey close to the eminent relative
he had acquired. As a record for posterity, Conduitt commissioned
Hogarth to create this conversation piece, which includes—at the top
left—the only known painting of Conduitt himself.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it does not necessar-
ily tell the literal truth. The four children on the stage include John
Conduitt’s daughter, Kitty, but according to the script, she should not
have been there at that point: her father had requested that she be
included in the painting. On the chimney-­breast, Hogarth has repro-
duced the marble plaque from the base of Newton’s monument in
Westminster Abbey, although this plaster replica may or may not have
been installed in the real-­life drawing room; similarly, Newton’s bust
above it on the mantelpiece seems to be an imagined amalgam of
actual versions. Newton’s double presence above the hearth—symbolic
centre of the home—emphasizes that this is a dynastic portrait adver-
tising Conduitt’s prestige and noble ancestry.
The only two other surviving images of Conduitt appear on a medal
that was struck at the Mint after he died (Figure 4.1). While he features
on one side as a well-­fed Roman emperor, on the reverse he is being
­ceremonially presented to two residents of the Elysian Fields—Isaac
Newton and John Hampden, the Civil War hero who symbolized the
rights of Parliament. Accompanying them is a voluptuous, scantily clad
Goddess of Truth, but somebody has slipped up: Newton is clutching a
diagram that shows the planets orbiting in circles instead of ellipses, a
blunder that the former Master of the Mint would never have permitted.

* * *
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The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt  61

Figure 4.1  Medal of John Conduitt; designed by Gravelot, engraved by John

Sigismund Tanner, 1737

After Charles Darwin returned from his voyage on the Beagle, he

debated with himself whether or not to get married. To clarify his
thoughts, he drew up a list of pros and cons. It would, he noted, be
rather nice to have a docile companion who would take care of the
house and give him some children; on the other hand, his freedom
would be restricted, and he would have less money available to buy
books. But, he concluded, a wife was probably better value than a
dog, and he decided to take the risk.
In the summer of 1717, Newton and his niece were faced with a
similar quandary. Barton’s lover Charles Montagu had died two
years earlier, which left her in an awkward position. Born in 1679,
she was already old for a first marriage, and anyone who counted in
London was aware of her ambiguous reputation as a Kit-­Kat toast.
John Conduitt was eleven years younger than her, and although
handsome he came from an undistinguished family and had left
Cambridge without a degree. As two major points in his favour, he
had been abroad almost continuously for the past ten years, so was
less likely to be familiar with London scandal, and had probably
accumulated quite a bit of money while he was serving with the
army in Gibraltar. The exact details of his occupation overseas
remain obscure, but, like many military men, he somehow con-
trived to return wealthier than when he left. Bribery and corruption
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62  The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt

were the norm for landing lucrative contracts that benefited priv­il­eged
individuals but pushed up prices for ordinary consumers.1
The couple presumably met around the end of June 1717, when
Conduitt presented a paper at the Royal Society. Newton was in the
chair, learning about Conduitt’s one and only claim to academic
distinction: identifying Carteia, a hill-­top Roman trading city on
the southern tip of Spain. Fortuitously, this fitted in with Newton’s
investigations into ancient migrations through the Mediterranean
basin.2 Only a couple of months later, Barton and Conduitt were
granted a licence to marry, although the surviving document
reveals that she sliced six years off her age. Did he realize? For some
reason they were in a great rush, and the wedding was held only
three days later. The motive for the hurry remains mysterious: if
Barton was pregnant, she presumably suffered a miscarriage,
because their only recorded child, their daughter Kitty, was born
two years later.
One great advantage for Conduitt was that he acquired a rich and
eminent relative: Newton effectively became his father-­in-­law and
an extremely valuable patron. After three years, he (or Newton on
his behalf?) bought a large sixteenth-­century estate near Winchester,
and embarked on a new career as a Whig MP. When not in
Hampshire, the Conduitts lived in London, and as Newton aged,
they spent an increasing amount of their time caring for him. For
the year or so before Newton died in 1727, Conduitt was more or
less running the Mint on his behalf and seems to have been a fairly
constant companion. As well as listening to Newton’s reminiscences
and taking over his responsibilities, Conduitt tried to protect him.
For example, when a French scholar published a vitriolic attack on
Newton’s ideas about chronology, Conduitt commissioned a cen-
sored summary that excluded the most vitriolic remarks. To his
gratification, Newton did not embark on a campaign of vindictive
revenge, but tranquilly concluded that the author was ignorant.3
Newton realized that he was dying, and he planned for the future
by dispensing gifts to relatives and struggling to condense a pub-
lishable book from his millions of words on ancient chronology.
Frustratingly, as part of these preparations, he burnt some papers
whose contents will remain for ever unknown. Surprisingly, what
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The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt  63

he did not do was make a will. During the following ten years, until
his own death, Conduitt dedicated himself to sorting out Newton’s
estate as well as preserving and enhancing the fame of his relative
by marriage.

Creative Writing

As Newton aged, Conduitt made himself increasingly in­dis­pens­

able. That blunt summary might sound cynical, but taking advan-
tage of a family relationship does not preclude feeling genuine
affection and admiration. While Conduitt pursued his own parlia-
mentary career, he undoubtedly gained wealth and status by inherit-
ing Newton’s position at the Mint and boosting his reputation. Yet
he also showed deep commitment, immersing himself in the tedi-
ous administrative responsibilities of dealing with Newton’s estate as
well as commissioning written, sculpted, and painted tributes to
honour his memory.
Considering he prided himself on being such a methodical and
logical thinker, Newton did not have a very effective filing system
for his papers. When he died, he left behind him a huge assortment
of disorganized manuscripts, between them carrying around eleven
million words. Unsurprisingly, the members of Newton’s extended
clan were more interested in land and money (I wonder what did
happen to those silver chamber pots . . .) than in the teetering stacks
of scarcely decipherable documents. Conduitt struck a deal with
the other relatives. Because Newton had died in office as Master of
the Mint (even though Conduitt was already doing all the work), he
was in principle liable for the entire cost of producing Britain’s new
coins until (and if) they passed a compulsory quality test. Conduitt
agreed to take on this potential debt and to pay for any imperfec-
tions that were discovered. He also set aside some money to ensure
that Newton’s family could share in any profits from future publica-
tions. In exchange, he took charge of all Newton’s manuscripts.
As a versatile material, paper was put to many different uses. By
the time of Newton’s death, manufacturers had successfully persuaded
their customers to adopt a lifestyle based on lavish ex­pend­iture and
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64  The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt

conspicuous consumption. But he had been brought up to deem such

behaviour immoral, and the prevailing attitude more closely resem-
bled the ‘Waste Not–Want Not’ approach of wartime Britain. The
word ‘recycling’ had not yet been invented, although the concept was
certainly there—not because people were worried about global
­warming, but in the interests of optimizing God’s gifts to the human
race. As just one example of Newton’s own minor economies, he
squeezed some notes on ancient history into the spaces between
the lines of a letter from Marcus Tollet (presumably some relative of
the Tower Tollets) ­soliciting a favour for a friend.4
Other scholars repeatedly complained about women and ser­
vants who had purloined their latest masterpiece to slip under a pie
or cut into hair-­curling papers. Many learned manuscripts ended
up wrapped round fish, placed over food while it cooled, or twisted
into implements for loading powder into guns. It can be tempting
to mock Conduitt’s over-­egged adulation—‘his virtues proved him
a Saint & his discoveries might well pass for miracles’5—but on the
other hand, it is owing to his devotion that the bulk of Newton’s
papers were preserved. Without his intervention, many others
would have been destroyed in addition to those that Newton him-
self ordered to be burnt, perhaps eventually finding their way into
outhouses (‘bumf ’ was abbreviated from ‘bum fodder’ during the
First World War). Determined to protect Newton’s papers from
such a fate, Conduitt conserved everything he could find.6
Although paper was not exorbitantly expensive—as a rough
guide, a labourer could earn enough in a day to buy seventy-­five
large sheets—Newton rationed his out. The standard way of send-
ing a letter was to fold a large piece of paper in half, and then
write on only one side so that it could be folded over again for the
address. In preference to consuming several pages, correspond-
ents would thriftily continue in the margins, or even write trans-
versely across the original script (a challenge for historical
transcribers). For his personal notes, Newton folded his sheets in
four, but although he left one side blank for further thoughts, he
rarely dated anything. His habit of re-­using old documents and
notebooks from years earl­ier makes it very difficult for historians
to work out the timing of his ideas. Sometimes he scribbled his
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The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt  65

profoundest thoughts on the nearest available scrap—such as a

laundry list—or superimposed fresh inspirations on hastily
crossed-­out texts or tables.7
Newton’s mathematical approach to different topics that he juxta-
posed on the same page can be disconcerting. A single sheet of an
undated paper in the Royal Mint archives carries trigonometrical
arguments on one side, while the other has apparently consecutive
calculations on customs duty and on Herod’s Temple. The original
is peppered with illegible words and deletions, but if copied out
neatly, the result would look something like this:

Question
To find the net duty upon East-­India goods by 12 Ann
Answer
Let D be the duty per cent upon 100li by former Acts of
Parliament & say, As the value, 100li + D to the net duty D so is 1
to N. And the number N being once found the Question will be
thus answered. From the value by the candle subduct the
allowances for prompt payment & warehouse room & the
remainder multiplied by N will be the net duty desired
Proof
For let the Remainder by R & NR will be the duty per cent
upon R − NR, the remainder of that duty. For as the value
100li + D is to the net duty D, so is 1 to N, & so is the value R to
the net duty NR the remainder R is the value upon which the
net duty is to be paid & this value is to the net duty upon it
in a given proportion & this proportion is that of 100li + D to D
or 1 to N.
The Iews who first published the measures of Herods Temple,
omitted some measures on either side of the altar & the
summ of the cubits & the following Iewish writers dividing
the summ of the cubits omitted into two equal parts placed
the altar nearer to the south side of the court then to the
north side: whereas they should have divided that summ
­unequally so that the altar might have stood in the center of
the court.8
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66  The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt

As well as trying to instil some sort of order on Newton’s collection,

Conduitt also created more material of his own. After obtaining
professional advice on Newton’s unfinished works, he arranged
for two books to be published posthumously, one on ancient
chron­ology and the other on biblical prophecy. And although he
never did get round to producing a final version, Conduitt also
made copious notes for writing Newton’s biography, soliciting infor-
mation from colleagues and recording his own memories of con-
versations. Conduitt does hint delicately from time to time that
elderly raconteurs can be tedious, but he was clearly a good lis-
tener and his surviving hand-­written drafts provide the basic
source of many familiar anecdotes about Newton. Some of them
he heard directly, others he learnt from his wife, who seems to
have retained her youthful predilection for racy stories—she
gleefully told him an off-­colour joke about a nun that Newton
had found deeply offensive.
Conduitt exerted an enormous influence on how Newton was
remembered after his death. Rather than presenting Newton as a
wealthy metropolitan, he emphasized the frugality, purity, and
intellectual brilliance of the man who had already been in his mid-
seventies when they first met. Multiple drafts have been preserved
of letters that he sent soliciting information, as well as their answers.
Together, they demonstrate how Conduitt gradually refined
Newton’s legacy by withholding discreditable items, yet sim­ul­tan­
eous­ly releasing more flattering snippets of information that later
became incorporated in other memoirs. Reading his various
accounts feels like eavesdropping on countless conversations he
must have had during the twenty years between his first encounter
with Newton and his own death, only ten years after Newton’s. By
then, Conduitt had consolidated Newton’s reputation as a lone
genius who was also a model of patient perseverance.9
Conduitt was not embarrassed to portray a man who was notori-
ously forthright as a quasi-­saint. According to him, ‘An innate mod-
esty & simplicity shewed it self in all his actions & expressions, his
whole life was one continued series of labour patience charity gen-
erosity temperance piety goodness & all other virtues without a
mixture of any vice whatsoever.’10 Any rival who had been subjected
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The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt  67

to Newton’s vindictive accusations of plagiarism would have been

surprised to learn that ‘he was so little vain & desirous of glory’ that
if only colleagues had not talked him into objecting, he would have
‘lett others run away with the glory of those inventions which have
done so much honour to humane nature’.11
Most famously, Conduitt bequeathed one of the four accounts of
Newton’s reminiscences about sitting beneath an apple tree at
Woolsthorpe and (supposedly) conceiving the theory of gravity in a
flash of inspiration. He also listened patiently to Newton boasting
about buying his first prism at a fair just outside Cambridge so that
he could carry out optical experiments in his student room.
Apparently, after realizing he needed a second prism to confirm his
ideas, Newton had to wait until the fair returned the following
Saturday. A nice story, and one that is now solidly embedded in the
Newtonian mythology—but the dates prove that it could not have
happened exactly like that.12
Like all good anecdotes, Conduitt’s grew in splendour as he
repeatedly retold them. His first attempt at reporting Newton’s
birth is probably closest to the one he actually heard from
Newton—that the infant was so weak and tiny that he was not
expected to live. Soon that frailty had become a positive strength:
like other superior mortals, the lack of physical vigour indicated
that all available energy had been poured into intellectual splen-
dour. Before long, Conduitt was bracketing the Lincolnshire
super-­baby with Caesar and Homer. He also placed increasing
emphasis on the royal family’s appreciation, adding in superla-
tives and eventually claiming that the monarchs often spent
hours on end with Newton.13
As Conduitt tried to control Newton’s reputation, he began to
recognize the enormity of potential problems lying ahead. At the
same time as keeping French biographers onside, he had to worry
about damaging revelations from disillusioned British colleagues,
such as the Arian William Whiston, Newton’s former protégé and
successor as Cambridge’s Lucasian Professor. Looking through his
stacks of inherited manuscripts, Conduitt realized that glorifying
Newton was more complicated than he had thought. Unsanctioned
previews of his work on ancient chronology were already arousing
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68  The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt

controversy both at home and abroad—and how was the family

going to gloss over Newton’s Cambridge obsession with alchemy?
And what if word spread of his unorthodox religious sentiments?
Barton wanted to publish Newton’s theological writings, but was
that necessarily a good idea? Keeping quiet seemed the best policy,
and Conduitt only published two edited selections from the mass of
Newton’s papers, the first on ancient history, the second five years
later on biblical prophecy.
After the Conduitt couple died, Newton’s papers passed to their
daughter, who had married upwards into the nobility. Most of the
bundles got sent to the Hampshire country house of her descend-
ants, who stashed them away in obscure cupboards and guarded
the manuscripts closely. Favoured Victorian scientists were given
permission to retrieve documents on optics, gravity, and mathemat-
ics, but anything else was protectively deemed to be worthless and
retained in storage. That censorship finally ended in the 1930s,
when the family fell on hard times and auctioned off the entire col-
lection that remained in its possession. While the religious material
mostly went to Jerusalem, where it is still preserved in the National
Library archives, Newton’s copious alchemical writings were snapped
up by the Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes.
Because of the Second World War, the 1942 festivities for the
300th anniversary of Newton’s birth were somewhat muted, but
Maynard Keynes eventually revealed what many others had desper-
ately tried to conceal over the centuries—Newton had been a closet
alchemist while he was at Cambridge, a fascination that he retained
throughout his life and that affected his cosmological ideas. Shock
waves of disbelief reverberated through the international scientific
community, promptly followed by denial. Many physicists still find
it hard to accept that their greatest hero was not indulging in
alchemy as a mere pastime, but was so deeply committed to this
collection of ancient practices that its precepts pervaded his cosmo-
logical theories. By the twentieth century, Newton’s reputation was
so well established that his splendour was only slightly tarnished by
this controversial news, but he might never have achieved his status
of international scientific genius if Conduitt and other propa­gand­
ists had not decided to conceal his alchemical pursuits.
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The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt  69

Enlightenment Display

Conduitt never did publish his biography of Newton, but it would

probably not have been a best-­seller. Controversies sell books, and
he was aiming at bland panegyric. Even so, he ensured that many
millions of people learnt about his version of Newton’s prowess
because he also commissioned visual commemorations. As well as
Hogarth’s conversation piece and pictures by other artists, Conduitt
masterminded and paid for a magnificent monument in one of
London’s most important buildings, Westminster Abbey, which was
fast becoming a major tourist attraction. Conduitt’s sycophancy,
adulation, and perseverance paid off: he, his wife, and his daughter
were all honoured by being buried in the Abbey nave close to
Newton. Conduitt and Barton may have embarked on a marriage of
mutual convenience, but they both reaped eternal dividends.
For this impressive memorial to Newton, Conduitt picked a
prominent position at the head of the nave, where it would have
had a far greater immediate impact than it does now—during the
nineteenth century, an ornate decorative screen was installed, and
its coloured tracery clashes with the monument’s marble austerity.
The need to corral modern tourists has also detracted from the
view. Whereas worshippers used to enter through the great west
door, from where they could see the monument straight ahead of
them in the aisle, modern ticket purchasers are guided along a
winding route that obscures the grandiosity of the building’s ori­
gin­al design.
Newton’s large, expensive tomb was not the tribute of a grateful
nation to its greatest scientific hero. In the land of liberty, private
enterprise reigned over state benefaction, and Conduitt’s marble
edifice was a personal celebration of Newton paid for by the man
who had contrived to inherit his lucrative position at the Mint.
Conduitt scored quite a coup. For hundreds of years, the Abbey had
been essentially reserved for monarchs and saints, whose Gothic
stone tombs still lie to the eastern end of the Abbey behind the altar.
From the early eighteenth century, the nave in the western part of
the building became home to a new Enlightenment glorification of
intellectual and military achievement. Conduitt installed Newton
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70  The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt

as an early member of this secular male pantheon, whose diverse

assembly of privately commissioned marble monuments differed
from the uniform style imposed in France. Together, these new-­style
heroes displayed a strong political statement endorsing the maxims
of the Whig party that dominated British politics for much of the
eighteenth century—constitutional monarchy, anti-Catholicism, and
individual freedom.
Newton was, of course, being lauded for his individual achieve-
ments; nevertheless, in death as he had in life, he fulfilled political
and symbolic functions. Renowned for his scholarly work and his
Mastership of the Mint, he was also on display as a national icon
embodying Whig ideals. Newton’s monument is one of a pair, com-
plemented on the other side of the aisle by Lord Stanhope, whose
reclining posture is a mirror-­ image version of Newton’s. Like
Newton, this Whig military hero rests on one elbow dressed as a
Roman, but he is attended by winged cherubs to indicate an
exemplary Christian who has passed into the afterlife with his
works. While Newton personifies contemplative virtue on the
left, Stanhope provides the traditional contrast of active virtue on
the right.
The country’s oldest religious centre was being converted into a
national shrine for genius, and Newton was later joined by other
Enlightenment luminaries such as George Handel, David Garrick,
and Samuel Johnson (who successfully ousted a female actor tem-
porarily buried next to Shakespeare’s commemorative statue). Even
Newton’s physics meshed with ideals of political liberty. In his
gravitational model of the universe, independent particles resemble
citizens who interact to varying degrees with those moving around
them, each enjoying freedom of choice yet simultaneously con-
strained by a stronger central power. Britain—at least, so ran the
ideology—was a hierarchical country harmoniously bound together
by the gravity of love: just as wives and children respected the man
of the family, so, too, courtiers bowed to the will of the monarch,
who in turn was obedient to God.
Conduitt commissioned the prestigious artist and landscape
designer William Kent, also employed by the royal family, to draw
up the preliminary sketches. The carving was executed by Michael
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The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt  71

Rysbrack, the fashionable Dutch sculptor who had made the bust of
Newton sitting on Conduitt’s mantelpiece. In addition to the plaque
Hogarth showed in Conduitt’s drawing room, Rysbrack carved a
grand marble chimney-­piece for the new headquarters of the East
India Company.14
Since Conduitt was paying, he could specify which aspects of
Newton’s life should be featured most prominently. He had come to
know Newton only during the last decade of his life, when he was
devoting himself mainly to the historical and biblical studies that
have since been largely forgotten. Although Conduitt did choose to
depict the scientific innovations for which Newton is now far more
famous, he was himself more closely involved in other aspects of
Newton’s achievements. Neither Newton nor Conduitt had any way
of knowing that Newton would become celebrated as a secular saint
in a world dominated by science and technology. For them, the
physical world was inseparable from the divine cosmos, and the
second half of his career was not divorced from the first.
The Abbey monument is dominated by a large globe with a Greek
goddess draped across its top. She is Urania, muse of astronomy,
fulfilling the stereotypical female function of symbolizing a science
without being allowed to practise it. Like other celestial spheres,
this one displays a curved map of the stars as they would be seen by
an observer positioned at the centre of the earth. In an oblique ref-
erence to Newton’s Principia, it shows the path of the 1680 comet
that had proved crucial for his ideas about gravity. More surpris-
ingly for modern viewers, the constellations on Urania’s globe indi-
cate how Newton set out to calculate a more accurate date for the
voyage of the Argonauts. By using astronomical data, Newton con-
cluded that the expedition had taken place three centuries later
than usually thought—an adjustment that conveniently gave prior-
ity to the ancient Israelites, his favoured civilization. In the years
leading up to his death, Newton spent more time refining the
details of that analysis than in fine-­tuning the niceties of universal
gravity.
Newton’s elbow rests on four marble books, whose carved spine
labels imply that Theology and Chronology formed as crucial a
component of his intellectual legacy as Gravity and Optics. This
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72  The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt

parity reflected Newton’s own conviction that correcting the timelines

of ancient history and interpreting the Bible were no mere hobbies
to pass the time but formed a central component of his intellectual
endeavours. As part of his investigations into God’s world, Newton
obsessively researched the history of ancient dynasties from the
Persians up to Alexander the Great, collating a wide range of textual
and physical evidence. At the time, such topics seemed far from
arcane and he was internationally regarded as a great expert.
Edward Gibbon—famous chronicler of the Roman Empire—
thought that quantifying ancient history was a valuable initiative,
declaring: ‘The name of Newton raises the image of a profound
Genius, luminous and original. His System of Chronology would
alone be sufficient to assure him immortality.’ As another example,
Newton’s meticulous comparisons of textual variants were incorporated
into a massive critical edition of the Greek New Testament that
appeared in 1707.15
For Newton, the timetables of ancient history were intertwined
with biblical accounts and divine cosmology. Unlike earlier biblical
exegetes such as Archbishop James Ussher, he refrained from
assigning particular dates to the Creation or the Flood, but hoped
to establish a new timeline without explicitly contradicting the old
one.16 On his eighty-­third birthday—25 December 1725 on the
British calendar—Newton was visited by his admirer William
Stukeley, an expert on Stonehenge, the ancient monument that fas-
cinated them both. Newton maintained that long ago, before ori­
gin­al knowledge had been lost and when one single religion was
followed all over the world, Stonehenge had functioned as a temple
where worshippers could cluster around a central fire, like the
­planets revolving around the sun. That day, he chose to regale
Stukeley with his similar ideas about King Solomon’s Temple,
revered by Jews and Christians alike as ancient Jerusalem’s holiest
of holies. The Temple was, he thought, the physical manifestation
on earth of a divine abode.
The original Temple’s exact history is still uncertain, although
Newton maintained it was established in 1015 bc. Whatever the
precise date of its origin, well over two thousand years ago the
building was ransacked and burnt down by Babylonian invaders.
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The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt  73

Chatting companionably over Newton’s drawings, the two theo­lo­gians

agreed that his sketches were unlike any others (presumably a
­compliment from Stukeley to the uniqueness of Newton’s insights
rather than to any regrettable deviation from standard thinking on
the topic). They decided that the unknown architects had influ-
enced first their Egyptian and then their Greek successors, a his­tor­
ic­al sequence that was compatible with the reconstruction work
required after the biblical flood, which they also discussed.
Newton believed he had a lifelong mission to establish the
Temple’s structure, which had been ordained by God as a blueprint
of heaven—so the Altar represented the sun, but also God’s pres-
ence. As he put it, ‘Temples were anciently contrived to represent
the frame of the Universe as the true Temple of the great God.’ From
his historical and mathematical research, he concluded that the
Temple’s Altar of Burnt Offerings lay at the centre of a square with
sides of 500 cubits (according to him, the dimensions of the
Egyptian pyramids suggested that a cubit was 22 inches, or
55.8 centimetres). For Newton, the Temple was important not only
as a template for the cosmos, but also as a key to understanding the
Apocalypse and the millennial kingdom of God that would
follow.17
After Newton died, Conduitt confronted the tricky task of con-
verting Newton’s enormous archive of private research into public
knowledge. Eventually, after arduous processes of amalgamation
and condensation, he produced two related books posthumously
attributed to Newton: The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended
(1728) and Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel (1733). His first
step was to sort through the millions of relevant words scattered
among Newton’s piled-­up boxes of papers. The Master of the Mint
may have basked in a virtuous glow of economy when he scribbled
his latest intellectual insight on the back of an old letter, but
­presumably Conduitt found this lifelong habit frustrating. When
Newton jotted down a note about the Apocalypse on a Mint docu-
ment, was he sitting alone in his office or zoning out of a tedious
committee meeting? Or might it have been years later, after he had
economized by taking spare paper back home? People’s convictions
often change as they get older—and Newton’s certainly did—but
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74  The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt

without dates, such shifts are hard to track. What does seem clear is
that during the last ten years or so of his life, Newton picked up a
key phase of his earlier intellectual life at Cambridge by resuming
his passions for biblical studies and ancient history. As he aged, he
continually supplemented and also revised previous work, although
he never arrived at definitive versions.
Newton’s astronomical fame rested on calculating when an
eclipse or other celestial events might occur in the future.
Conversely, looking back into the past, he could give accurate dates
to events that had been described in ancient documents. For him,
numbers were what counted: words were slippery, as suspect as the
stories dreamt up by the counterfeiters he persecuted at the Mint.
As he ploughed on through historical records, he repeatedly
encountered puzzling complexities. Frustratingly, he discovered not
only that metaphorical terms were of limited reliability, but also
that mythological characters had often been confused and that con-
stellation maps were inconsistent.
This natural philosopher who famously scorned hypotheses
adopted a surprisingly cavalier approach towards his information.
‘I shall not stand to recite other men’s opinions, but propose as
shortly as I can what I take to be ye truth,’ he declared.18 To arrive at
his unique version of the truth, Newton invented a method of
mathematical averaging that was designed to overcome the short-
comings of inconsistent records inherited from the past. In a
re­itera­tive process of refinement, he checked conflicting facts one
against the other to adjust them in sequence and hence produce
new ones of supposedly higher reliability. Even his one-­time acolyte
and fellow Arian William Whiston was contemptuous, remarking
that Newton ‘seems to have digged long in the deepest Mines of
Scripture and Antiquity for his precious Ore himself; and very
rarely to have condescended to make use of the Thoughts or
Discoveries of others on these Occasions’.19 Eventually but contro-
versially, Newton sliced five centuries or more from traditional
chronologies, generating a version of humanity’s history that was
internally consistent but differed from those of his contemporaries.
Newton regarded biblical prophecy as being conceptually very
different from astronomical prediction. He condemned as false
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The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt  75

prophets those arithmetical exegetes who deciphered the scriptures

in order to provide an accurate forecast for the Day of Judgement or
the end of the world. Instead, he insisted, God foretold events not
so that human beings might know about them in advance, but so
that afterwards, interpreted in retrospect, they could be seen to
have fulfilled God’s intentions. Proclaiming his own superior
insight, Newton described how these divine plans had previously
been concealed, encoded in enigmatic pronouncements, and
obscured by textual corruptions. He discerned no firm boundaries
between the physical world and theological belief; similarly, there
was for him no disjunction between God’s prophecies as recorded
in scriptural texts, the successive civilizations of humanity, and the
unknown futures lying ahead—the new heavens and the new earth
promised in the Bible.
In his later years, Newton increasingly focused on the Book of
Daniel: the dog-­eared corners and well-­thumbed pages of his
own bible, now preserved in the University Library at Cambridge,
show how thoroughly he perused its chapters in his attempts to
recover their uncorrupted meanings. In particular, he searched
for divine testimony exposing Catholicism as a false religion,
although he gradually became less rabid in his denunciations.
Newton regarded himself as a divinely appointed interpreter, a
member of the intellectual elite who had been chosen by God to
unravel the obscure messages of the Bible and explain to lesser
mortals how the unfolding of human events confirms the predic-
tions of the scriptures.
As Conduitt sifted through reams of notes, he had to select for
publication sections that were neither too controversial nor too
arcane. For instance, he omitted Newton’s attempt to quash scare-
mongering rumours about the immediate end of the world by post-
poning until 2060 the apocalyptic fall of the corrupt Trinitarian
Church.20 In contrast, this sentence did pass Conduitt’s tests: ‘The
whole scene of sacred prophecy is composed of three principal
parts: the regions beyond Euphrates, represented by the two beasts
of Daniel, the empire of the Greeks on this side of Euphrates, repre-
sented by the Leopard and the He-­Goat; and the empire of the
Latins on this side of Greece, represented by the beast with ten
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76  The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt

horns.’21 It was then standard practice to identify the four beasts of

Daniel with four ancient empires.
Sometimes Newton opted for numerical or cabbalistic calcula-
tions, substituting numbers for letters to decode hidden references.
Most notoriously, this style of analysis meant that the number 666
could be equated with the name of the Beast with seven heads and
ten horns that emerges from the sea. The mystic significance of 666
is described in the last book of the Bible, Revelation: ‘Here is wis-
dom. Let him that hath understanding, count the number of the
beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred
threescore and six.’22
Newton’s personal fascination with the number 666 might well
have been sparked during the lead-­up to 1666, when he was an
undergraduate at Cambridge. As the fateful date grew nearer, dire
prognostications circulated about the doom to be visited on the
world. Confirmation of these pessimistic predictions duly arrived.
First came the Plague, which cut short the first run of John Dryden’s
Indian Emperour. And then in the year itself, the Great Fire of
London was accompanied by some disastrous defeats in naval bat-
tles against the Dutch. Dryden emerged as the spin doctor who
converted this gloomy despondency into a positive message.
Towards the end of 1666, the English fleet at last won a glorious
victory that enabled Dryden to reconfigure the year in a long and
enormously popular poem, the Year of Wonders or Annus Mirabilis.
This phrase is now often used to describe Newton’s apparently
miraculous period at Woolsthorpe, but Dryden knew nothing of
that. Patriotically, he insisted in what now seems a somewhat tor-
tured argument that the nation should be grateful to God for pro-
tecting England from even worse devastation, and for giving
Londoners the opportunity to rebuild their city and make it the
richest in the world. Here the third line refers to Mexico, imagined
location of The Indian Emperour:

Me-­thinks already, from this Chymick flame,

I see a city of more precious mold:
Rich as the town which gives the Indies name,
With Silver pav’d, and all divine with Gold.23
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The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt  77

Whether or not he was indeed God’s messenger on earth as he

thought, Newton certainly knew how to win enemies. He protected
his chronological theories as closely and as malevolently as his ver-
sion of calculus. During the last two years of his life, he became
involved in a vindictive row with the Venetian aristocrat Antonio
Conti. A decade earlier, during the Italian’s visit to London for the
solar eclipse, they had seemed to be the best of friends, but after a
leaked version of Newton’s chronological views was illicitly pub-
lished in Paris, he rounded on Conti, choosing to savage him in the
Royal Society’s journal, the Philosophical Transactions, which was
widely distributed and summarized overseas. Aggrieved, and
an­tici­pat­ing further accusations, Conti asked (the italics are his): ‘is
he not obliged, according to his own principle, to prove them, at the
risk of becoming guilty of calumny? Now how will he demonstrate,
as he would a geometric curve . . . my masquerade of friendship, my
clandestine intervention, and other chimeras with which it has
suited him to embellish the opinion he has formed of me?’ By chal-
lenging Newton to justify his sudden transition from close col-
league to bitter enemy, Conti had put his finger on a fundamental
paradox in Newton’s  behaviour: although he prided himself on
being a meticulous  scholar who relied  on logical  argument, he
apparently had no qualms about resorting to unsubstantiated
invective when it suited him, almost as if he already lived in a
post-­truth era.24
This dispute preoccupied Newton during the last few years of his
life and continued raging for a century after his death, as gossipy
philosophers distributed pirated accounts of his Chronology across
Europe. Although Newton had previously pursued his research in
secrecy, it seems that he could not resist boasting about it to
Caroline, Princess of Wales (wife of the future George II). Unable to
refuse her royal request for a summary, he drew up a short abstract
of around twenty pages. Before long, several versions—whose ori-
gins are unclear—were circulating around London, and further
details had also leaked out from other Newtonian confidants.
Conduitt was so terrified of Newton’s reaction that he concealed the
most vicious critiques, but it was Conti who formed the prime tar-
get of Newton’s fury.
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78  The Rise and Rise of John Conduitt

At first, chronological experts were delighted that such a

­distinguished mathematician as Newton had turned his attention to
an antiquarian subject, but disappointment soon set in. The accepted
timetable had been provided by Archbishop Ussher, the same cler-
gyman who decreed so influentially that the world was created in
4004 bc. Placing great emphasis on the voyage of the Argonauts,
Newton shaved several centuries from traditional outlines of Greek
history, and telescoped earlier kingdoms even more dramatically.
While critics competed to compile objections, their central ac­cus­
ation was that although Newton had achieved mathematical ac­cur­
acy by using astronomical calculations about the relative positions
of the sun and the earth (or to put it more technically, the retrogres-
sion of the equinoctial points across the constellation of Aries), he
had also been forced to use documentary and mythological evi-
dence, seen as far less reliable. Of what use were his sophisticated
techniques if he could only make informed guesses about the length
of a ruler’s reign?
Trying to calm Newton down, the Bishop of Rochester diplo-
matically suggested that the best way of vanquishing his mistaken
critics was to publish his own account. Shortly before Newton died,
the Bishop spotted a visitor leaving his bedroom—a bookseller who
later claimed that Newton had promised him the commission of
printing his Chronology. Stepping inside, the Bishop found Newton
contentedly revising, once again, the manuscript that Conduitt
published only a year later. By then, Caroline had become queen.
Never one to pass up a patronage opportunity, Conduitt obsequi-
ously dedicated Newton’s posthumous book to the new monarch,
whose ‘hours of leisure are employed in cultivating in Your Self
That Learning, which You so warmly patronize in Others’.25
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ACT II
THE AUDIENCE
ISAAC NEWTON IN LONDON SOCIETY

The true stars of Conduitt’s show are not the actors on the stage but
the three royal children near the fireplace. Dressed as miniature
adults, all three had already had regal responsibilities thrust upon
them. To set a good example for the nation, their mother Queen
Caroline risked their lives by insisting that they become test cases for
inoculation against smallpox. At that stage, the treatment was uncer-
tain and unpleasant, inducing a mild form of the illness that could
last for several weeks and might result in death or permanent scar-
ring. Caroline’s gamble paid off: following her initiative, thousands of
other small children were subjected to the same procedure, and she
gained credit for her maternal solicitude.
Hogarth’s title makes the hierarchy clear: this play may be being
performed in Mr Conduitt’s house, but the most important person
present is the Duke of Cumberland, the boy in the white wig and the
red jacket standing behind the makeshift box accommodating his two
small sisters. Based on the private sitting, Hogarth also produced a
virtually identical separate portrait of the young prince. Although
William Augustus never inherited the throne, he was his parents’
favourite, the darling they preferred to his older brother Frederick.
Born soon after three failed pregnancies—a miscarriage, a still birth,
and an early death—he was indulged throughout his childhood. Here
only 10 years old, William Augustus already possessed a string of titles
and an annual income of £6000. He owned his own laboratory as well
as a printing press down in the palace basement, while his astronomy
tutor was Newton’s friend Edmond Halley. When Newton died in
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80  Act II: The Audience

1727, the 6-­year-­old Prince had insisted on attending his funeral, but
as an adult he acquired multiple lovers and pursued a successful
­military career until he was wounded in the knee and grew so fat that
he died in his forties.1
In front of him are his two younger sisters, the princesses Mary and
little Louisa, who were brought up far less indulgently. Close by, the
woman wearing white is their governess Mary, Countess of Deloraine.
Recently appointed, she was kind but not very bright; prone to
­over-­drinking, she later became the king’s mistress, apparently on one
occasion pulling away his chair so that he fell on the floor. Here she is
accompanied by her own two daughters, Georgia and Elizabeth.2
Although one of them is captivated by the scene on the stage, the other
is retrieving a fallen fan that has succumbed to the power of
Newtonian gravity.
The elegant aristocrats in the audience come from the highest ech­
elons of London society: Conduitt was an ambitious social climber. In
the foreground, the man with a diagonal blue sash across his back is
the Duke of Richmond, keen cricketer and grandson of Charles II
(through the king’s extramarital relationship with Louise de Kérouaille).
He is leaning on the chair of his wife Sarah, one of the queen’s favourites,
and their eyes are fondly fixed on the stage actor dressed in white
satin, who is their oldest daughter Caroline. Their marriage was a
great success, even though it had been arranged when Sarah was only
13 but endowed with a large dowry to pay off the debts he had already
incurred.
Beneath the Conduitt portraits are three men who show little
­interest in the rest of the proceedings and are probably talking shop.
Standing with his back to the wall is the second Duke of Montagu,
who had inherited his father’s position at court as Master of the Great
Wardrobe. Belonging to the same extended Montagu clan as Newton’s
patron Charles, he, too, was a Whig politician. The other two are the
Queen’s Master of the Horse, the Earl of Pomfret—a new title created
personally for him by George I—and Thomas Hill, Secretary to the
Board of Trade, which King William had commissioned to promote
lucrative relationships with the American colonies. While Conduitt
was living in his Hampshire house, Hill visited Hogarth’s London
­studio and reported on this picture’s progress.
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Act II: The Audience  81

The person paying closest attention to the performance is the least

flashily dressed. Swathed in black, the clergyman John Theophilus
Desaguliers stands behind the stage, his back turned but his script
open at the right place for prompting the children if they fluff their
lines. As Newton’s henchman and a distinguished Fellow of the Royal
Society, he is here to ensure that Newtonian order prevails among the
play’s youthful cast.
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5
Fortune Hunters

Skulking in the back corner of Hogarth’s picture, Desaguliers may

appear an insignificant figure, but he is the lynchpin of these appar-
ently disparate groups. He worked closely with two of the adult aristo-
crats in the audience—the Dukes of Richmond and Montagu—as well
as being employed in the royal household. Moreover, he was Newton’s
chief propagandist both before and after his patron’s death, a key
performer who executed the Newtonian experimental programme at
the Royal Society, converted critics to the cause, and consolidated
Newton’s international glory.
Caricaturists emphasized his short-­sightedness, and here his nose is
buried close to his prompt book—yet ironically it was Desaguliers
who did most to promote Newtonian optics in Europe. Constantly
short of money, he was an expert in oily diplomacy, taking full advan-
tage of his wealthy acquaintances to consolidate his position and to
secure lucrative engineering contracts. An Enlightenment entrepre-
neur par excellence, Desaguliers showed the commercial world that
Newtonian physics was not merely the preserve of reclusive academics
but could earn money for ambitious investors and make Britain a
great industrial nation.

* * *
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, an intelligent young
man who wanted to earn his living without going into the army had
three professions from which to choose: the law, medicine, and the
Church. Desaguliers opted for the third, but he was not very ef­fect­
ive as a clergyman. Although he once took legal proceedings against
his parishioners for refusing to pay their tithes, his aristocratic
backer, the Duke of Chandos, pointed out how unreasonably he
was behaving: ‘A corpse has lain three days in the church waiting
Christian burial and neither you nor your curate thought fit to
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84  Fortune Hunters

attend till today.’1 In one engraving, Hogarth portrayed Desaguliers

preaching from a pulpit, peering myopically at his sermon through
a magnifying-­glass and holding forth long after the sand in the
hour-­glass beside him has run through to the bottom. The title says
it all: The sleeping congregation. Even a fat priest appears to be
dozing, although he is probably leering down the low-­cut dress of
the buxom but somnolent young woman reclining nearby.
Rather than carrying out his clerical duties, Desaguliers preferred
to spend his time performing experiments or designing roads and
fountains. Even so, religion was extremely important in his life. For
one thing, it was the reason why he was brought up in England and
not France. His parents were Huguenots, Reformed Protestants
who were subjected to increasing persecution by hostile Catholics.
Desaguliers was a toddler when his family fled across the Channel
in the early 1680s, settling initially in French-­speaking Guernsey.
As a child he grew up speaking French, but his life changed abruptly
when he was 9, and the family—now officially Anglican—moved to
London, where they survived on a combination of charity and his
father’s low-­paid teaching job. After learning to speak English like a
native, Desaguliers studied at Oxford and then settled in London,
where he lived for the rest of his life.2
A new word was coined to describe men like Desaguliers: ‘refu­
gee’. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Huguenots
migrated all over Europe after a shift in French law that removed
their official protection (the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
1685). Many of the wealthier families came to England, where
Charles II had already welcomed these affluent immigrants. Under
government encouragement, initial instinctive hostility to the
incomers faded. Even so, they were welcomed not from compas­
sion, but because the expertise of these skilled workers would
en­able more goods to be produced locally, and so reduce the need
for expensive imports. A Whig writer explained that by undercut­
ting competition from abroad, they could help to boost the British
economy: ‘We are now supplied from foreign parts with divers
Commodities, which, if the kingdom were replenished with Artisans,
they would furnish us with here at home.’ As well as dominating the
luxury end of the silver market, Huguenots transformed the silk,
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paper, and linen industries into efficient profit-­making ventures,

thus contributing to the emergence of Great Britain as an industrial
leader. By 1713, French commentators were envying their upstart
national rival, reporting that ‘the refugees have carried the manu­
factories to such a degree of perfection that even we begin now to
import some of their output.’3
A refugee with no family wealth behind him, Desaguliers rose in
Hanoverian society through intelligence, diplomacy, and syco­
phancy. Although honourable ancestry was still a great advantage,
in this competitive profit-­hungry age enterprise brought rewards.
In parallel with Conduitt, Desaguliers played a key part in Newton’s
London life and was crucial for establishing his international
reputation. Within only a couple of years, Newton had singled
Desaguliers out for special treatment, and he rapidly became one of
the Royal Society’s most active Fellows. Taking advantage of his lan­
guage skills, Desaguliers developed influential contacts across
Europe, especially in France and the Netherlands, while at home he
ingratiated himself into aristocratic circles. By cultivating wealthy
patrons, he demonstrated the practical value of Newtonian physics.
While some of his Huguenot compatriots were engraving fine
­silverware or manufacturing silk, he was using his engineering
expertise to transform London by modernizing water systems,
advising on Westminster Bridge, and renovating the antiquated
ventilation system in the House of Commons. And although this
short round man suffered from limited eyesight, he had the vision
to place himself at the forefront of a new and powerful English
organization—the Freemasons.

In Pursuit of Profit

The key to success during the Enlightenment was networking, and

masonic lodges provided the ideal environment for would-­be entre­
preneurs to meet influential aristocrats and wealthy businessmen.
One ambitious young fortune seeker who had recently arrived in
London condescendingly explained in a letter to his father that
‘Masonry here is upon another footing to what it is in the country;
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86  Fortune Hunters

it is not a dozen pots of beer, nor a dozen gallons of Wine’; instead,

membership gave access to those all-­important court circles and
‘no small advantage to a man who would rise in the world and one
of the principal reasons why I would be a Mason’.4 Desaguliers had
the same idea. Probably initiated in 1713, the year after coming to
London from Oxford, he became a leading figure in London’s new
Grand Lodge.
Hogarth was himself a Mason, and so were most of the men in
his conversation piece. (Or perhaps they all were: there are insuffi­
cient records to confirm the Earl of Pomfret, aka Thomas Fermor
aka 2nd Baron of Leominster aka Master of the Queen’s Horse.)
Montagu and his two friends, Hill and the Duke of Richmond (aka
Charles Lennox or the Duke of Aubigny) were all Freemasons, and
although the Duke of Cumberland (Prince William) was still too
young, in time he and his elder brother Frederick would both be
initiated. In 1719, Desaguliers became one of the earliest Grand
Masters, and his successor was the Duke of Montagu, the man in
the white wig and blue jacket standing just below Barton’s portrait.
Newton’s assistant Desaguliers played an important part in draw­
ing up the first official constitution of English Masonry, published
in 1723, or 5723 in the Masonic calendar (Figure 5.1). Its frontis­
piece shows Desaguliers on the far right wearing his black clerical
robes; like the other men, he may be holding his hands in symbolic
gestures. Dressed in his ceremonial costume as a Knight of the
Garter, the Duke of Montagu is presenting a scroll of the constitu­
tion and symbolic pair of compasses to his successor as Grand
Master, the Duke of Wharton, witnessed by various high-­ranking
personnel. On the tiled floor between them is a diagram of
Pythagoras’s theorem to illustrate Masonry’s foundation in geom­etry,
accompanied by a Greek inscription reading ‘Eureka’ (Figure 5.2).5
Freemasonry may or may not go back to the Rosicrucians, but
some basic facts are well established. England’s Grand Lodge, the
first in Europe, was founded in 1717, when four smaller London
lodges joined together. During the eighteenth century, Freemasonry
rapidly expanded throughout the country and also spread abroad.
Despite many satirical poems and caricatures, membership rose
rapidly. Initially, meetings took place in inns or taverns, but as the
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Figure 5.1  Title page The Constitution of the Free-­Masons; James Anderson, 1723
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88  Fortune Hunters

Figure 5.2  Frontispiece, The Constitution of the Free-­Masons, 1723; engraving

by John Pine

movement swelled, lodges were able to build their own halls, and
soon enterprising Huguenots and other skilled artisans were creat­
ing a lucrative masonic market for engraved drinking vessels and
ceremonial regalia. The Whig-­oriented Grand Lodge maintained
particularly close contact with the Netherlands, where the Duke of
Richmond and Desaguliers—who acted as Deputy Grand Master
several times—established a lodge in 1734. Recollecting his own
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impoverished childhood, Desaguliers steered the Grand Lodge

towards charitable activities, which included raising money for dis­
tressed brethren to settle in the new American colony of Georgia.
Apart from engaging in plenty of eating and drinking, the precise
activities of Enlightenment Freemasons are notoriously difficult to
pin down. They based their structure and activities on those of
trad­ition­al guilds, many of which had been in existence for cen­tur­ies.
Masonic brothers dressed elaborately, performed esoteric rit­ uals,
constructed lavish halls, enjoyed an annual Grand Feast and were led
by a Grand Master. In those respects, they closely resembled the
liveried guilds, many of which still retain elaborate ceremonial
occasions. The written rules specifically encouraged religious toler­
ation and promoted learning, but outlawed political discussions.
The lodges varied in character, and many of them provided ideal
opportunities for quiet business discussions. Unconstrained by the
restrictions of a routine nine-­to-­five job, eighteenth-­century gentle­
men frequented clubs and coffee houses to discuss the latest news,
boast about their recent expensive purchases, and engage in some
lucrative deals.
At one time—and possibly under Desaguliers’s influence—around
a quarter of the Fellows of the Royal Society were Freemasons,
including Martin Folkes, appointed by Newton as his vice-­president.
But that substantial overlap does not necessarily indicate any strong
ideological alignment between the two groups. Unlike now, Fellows
were often elected for their prestige rather than their scientific
expertise, and wealthy London gentlemen routinely belonged to
several different societies and clubs. Drinks and dinners provided
ample time for quiet chats in corners, irrespective of whether the
main event of the evening was an elaborate initiation rite in a
lodge or a dramatic demonstration at the Royal Society. There is
no evidence that Newton was a Freemason, nor that masonic
ideas permeated scientific theories. On the other hand, it was
definitely advantageous for Newton to have a strong advocate
with contacts all over Britain as well as in France and the
Netherlands. Desaguliers often travelled on masonic business,
when he could also arrange meetings, lectures, and experimental
displays vindicating Newtonian theories.
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Freemasonry was dominated by wealthy Whigs, including the

most powerful man in the government, Sir Robert Walpole. Like
his masonic colleagues, he turned the meetings to his own advan­
tage, infiltrating the membership with spies whose information
contributed to his exceptionally long ministerial regime—twenty
years without interruption.6 Whigs claimed allegiance to the 1688
Revolution that had toppled the Stuart monarchy, although in prac­
tice many of them endorsed rather than opposed traditional hier­
arch­ies. In a metaphor that prevailed throughout eighteenth-­century
Britain, Desaguliers compared the British constitution with the
orderly structure of a smooth-­running clockwork universe. He
judged ‘that Form of it to be most perfect, which did most nearly
resemble the Natural Government of our System, according to the
Laws settled by the All-­wise and Almighty Architect of the Universe’.7
He thus neatly introduced a masonic image of an architectural God
into a Newtonian vision of a monarch who ruled courtiers just like
the sun controls the planets and fathers direct their families.
Protected by this stable patriarchal system, individuals could seek
to improve their own position.
The Whig ideologues of the early eighteenth century—including
Newton—promoted trade and commerce, profit and competition,
liberty and self-­advancement. Ambitious social climbers bought
into the idea that, by making and spending money, their status
would improve; since wealth implied prestige, financial gain became
an over-­riding aim. Fortunes seemed to be there for the making,
but in the absence of stock market experience and legal protection,
they could also be lost. The most notorious example is the South
Sea Bubble, British investors’ first experience of a major crash.
Newton was used to keeping secrets, and he may well have con­
cealed the awkward fact that he lost over £20,000.
The initial success of the South Sea Company (referring mainly
to the South Pacific area) depended on a long-­standing European
fantasy that the Americas would yield wealth far exceeding the
financial investment required to get there. An expensive map com­
missioned from Herman Moll, one of Europe’s most distinguished
cartographers, was of little practical use for navigators, but it did
advertise the Company’s sole right to trade up to 300 leagues out to
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Figure 5.3  A New & Exact Map of the Coast, Countries and Islands within ye
Limits of ye South Sea Company; Hermann Moll, 1711

sea (Figure 5.3). British entrepreneurs felt they had a God-­given

mandate to take advantage of natural riches, but the Company also
specialized in buying and selling people. Claiming that profits of up
to 4000 per cent might be realized, Moll stressed the value of slav­
ery, emphasizing that ‘the greatest Trade, and the most beneficial
the English ever had with the Spaniards on the Continent, was for
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92  Fortune Hunters

Negroes.’8 Customers poured money into shares in the new

Company, never envisaging what would actually happen—their
price soared, but then abruptly collapsed, resulting in many bank­
ruptcies and suicides.
Insider trading, political bribery, false advertising: in retrospect,
the Bubble seems to have been a harbinger of the corruption and
sharp talk that still pervade international finance. Viewed with the
luxury of hindsight, Newton and his fellow investors appear to have
behaved stupidly, but decisions were hard to make during a crisis
that was unprecedented and evolved rapidly. Amongst eminent
Freemasons, the artist James Thornhill contrived to sell at the peak,
while the Duke of Montagu was so hopeful of still further profit
that he lost everything he had gained, although unlike many of his
fellow gamblers, he was sufficiently well connected to continue
accumulating honours and well-­paid positions. A contemporary
ballad summed up the mixture of pity and contempt felt by those
lucky enough to escape unscathed:

Jews, Turks and Christians, hear my song

I’ll make you rich before it’s long . . .
Farewell your Houses, Lands and Flocks
For all you have is now in Stocks.9

Finding out exactly what went wrong for Newton and so many
other investors is difficult, because the gossipy conversations that
induced first enthusiasm and then panic mostly took place secretly
in coffee houses, inns, and club corridors. Daniel Defoe contributed
to the rumour mill that precipitated the disaster, but a few years
later—and mindful of his own losses—he blamed greed: ‘Avarice is
the ruin of many people besides tradesmen; and I might give the
late South-­sea calamity for an example, in which the longest heads
were most over-­reached, not so much by the wit or cunning of
those they had to deal with, as by the secret promptings of their
own avarice.’10
For the first few years after it was set up in 1711, the South Sea
Company represented a successful financial experiment that tied
together the interests of individual investors, the government, and
wealthy merchants. The dream-­child of Tory politicians, it was
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designed to raise the vast sums of money needed to pay off the
­ever-­escalating national debt incurred by repeated wars. Britain was
engaged in military action for much of the eighteenth century, and
even when officially at peace, the nation was either recovering from
the previous conflict or preparing itself for the next one. A similar
system was launched in Paris, dreamt up by a Scottish opportunist
and escaped murderer, John Law, in an attempt to rescue the French
economy, which was also failing. His Mississippi Scheme, dedicated
to exploiting the French colony of Louisiana, made so much money
that in the autumn of 1719 a new word was invented to describe
him: millionaire. For 500 days, Law was the most powerful man in
France, but he lost his fortune when confidence collapsed and share
prices crashed.11
Whereas Law focused on French possessions in northern
America and eastern Asia, the South Sea Company was granted a
monopoly to trade in the South American region and transport
enslaved Africans when needed for working the silver mines or
tending plantations. According to Defoe, it was ‘a real beauty’ com­
pared with the ‘painted Whore’ of the Mississippi Scheme.12 Private
investors were lending money that would (in principle) be repaid
with interest, but other perks were also available. One of the navy’s
chief contractors, Abraham Crowley, had stopped supplying nails
to the Royal Navy because his bills were not being paid. After being
given enough South Sea stock to become a director, he resumed
deliveries that were essential for the nation’s ships.13 As an incentive
to preserve their human cargoes intact, for every 104 captives
de­livered alive, the ships’ captains were offered a bonus of four to
own as slaves, valued at £20 each.14
Many British investors regarded this venture as a wonderful
opportunity to increase their own wealth. Even the poet Alexander
Pope, who condemned slavery, boasted about his investments and
the amount of money he might have made (if only . . .) by selling at
the right time.15 Initially, Newton had begun buying shares as a
­stable, long-­term investment to provide him with a steady income,
but he gradually changed his mind and became profit-­hungry.
Acting on his own initiative, not on professional advice, he built up
his holdings until, by 1720, 40 per cent of his wealth was in South
Sea stock.
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By then, it was already becoming clear to those in the know that

the sums were not adding up. Recognizing too late that the scheme
was running into serious trouble, the Company and the govern­
ment attempted to forestall disaster by circulating hollow predic­
tions of the vast profits to be made. As sweeteners, influential
officials and royalty were offered special deals enabling them to buy
shares on credit at a particularly low price. With no need to hand
over money until later, they had a strong incentive to keep quiet
and help push prices up. Benefiting from insider knowledge, George
I quintupled his money, but as more and more speculators decided
to risk their funds, the share price rocketed: between January and
May 1720, it rose from £128 to £550. When the value rapidly
deflated in the summer—when the Bubble burst—any available
cash had already been spent in bribes, and the greatest losses were
suffered by private individuals.
Not everybody got burnt. Thanks to a fortuitous delay in the
post, Robert Walpole was prevented from buying more shares at
their peak price. Although shrewd Sir Thomas Guy owned around
five times as much stock as Newton, he began liquidating early on,
well before prices had rocketed, which yielded enough profit for
him to build the London hospital bearing his name. Newton ini­
tially hung on for slightly longer than Guy before selling, and so
reaped a still greater profit—but astonishingly, just as Guy was com­
pleting his sales, Newton bought in again at a higher price. He had
once flippantly remarked that he could calculate the movements of
the planets although not the madness of investors, yet at this late
stage, he mistakenly placed so much confidence in the scheme that
he also invested money on behalf of an estate for which he was an
executor. He even continued purchasing stock after the graph had
begun to plummet. At the end of September, shares that had
touched £1000 in July were worth only £200. Even sitting tight and
doing nothing throughout the Bubble period would have been
more profitable than buying, selling, and then buying again as
Newton had done.
The government worked hard to suppress the facts, which were
just too embarrassing for public circulation. By screening every­
one responsible from proper scrutiny, Walpole—mocked as the
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‘Skreen-­Master General’—managed to restore confidence, and the

Company continued to thrive. The following May, Walpole effectively
became Britain’s first prime minister, retaining power by filling
important posts with his friends and relatives, and by pushing
through savage laws that made any form of public protest pretty
much impossible. This was the Whig government, the champions of
liberty, which Newton had helped to put in power.

Engineering the Future

Like other talented young women, the poet Elizabeth Tollet may
well have enjoyed challenging herself with the mathematical puz­
zles that featured regularly in the Ladies’ Diary. Perhaps she pon­
dered a Prize Ænigma that appeared in 1725. If so, although she
would have been intrigued, she would probably have deplored the
anonymous author’s literary skills. These were the first two lines:

I Sprung, like Pallas, from a fruitful Brain,

About the Time of CHARLES the Second’s Reign.16

Eager readers had to wait an entire year before learning the answer:
a steam engine (then called a fire engine) originally designed to
pump water out of Cornish mines. At the time, Britain’s greatest
engineering expert was Desaguliers, who was a close friend of the
Diary’s editor and also a not very talented poet. Whether or not
he composed the poem’s nine heroic couplets, he definitely did
write the authoritative account that later introduced James Watt to
the power of steam.
The Huguenot refugees who settled in London followed many
different trades. As well as silk manufacturers and silversmiths, they
included apothecaries, distillers, brewers, inventors, and instru­
ment makers. Like many immigrants, they were ambitious and
hard-­working people who stimulated the economy by introducing
new skills and spotting profitable gaps in the market. Many of the
men were well educated: for example, the community of weavers
based in Spitalfields set up an influential Mathematical Society that
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96  Fortune Hunters

flourished well into the nineteenth century.17 Desaguliers was

un­usual in being a scientific lecturer with an Oxford degree, but he
shared his compatriots’ adaptability, initiative, and commitment to
practical money-­earning projects.
Only a year after he arrived in London, Desaguliers managed to
attract the attention of Newton, who promptly employed him to
devise and demonstrate experiments at the Royal Society. This
position of Curator had originally been held by Robert Hooke, and
both men succeeded because they were mechanically as well as
intellectually gifted. But as they both discovered, the Royal Society
salary would not fund the life they envisaged, and Desaguliers
sought out other means of support. By piecing together a variety of
different occupations, he contrived to earn a fair amount of money,
although he always spent more than came in and was constantly
short of cash. Patronage was crucial: Newton was helped by Charles
Montagu, John Conduitt benefited by acquiring Newton as a
­relative, and Desaguliers was supported not only by Newton but
also by profiteers who hoped to gain from his technical expertise.
Desaguliers found his first patron while he was still at Oxford, and
spent much of his subsequent career persuading wealthy contacts
to recommend him among their friends and to invest in schemes
that promised much, and sometimes delivered.
Desaguliers’s major industrial patron was the Duke of Chandos
(aka James Brydges or the Earl of Carnarvon). Although not por­
trayed in Hogarth’s picture, Chandos moved in the same circles as
its aristocratic audience—and he, too, lost a fortune in the South
Sea Bubble. Like many other Fellows of the Royal Society, he spent
his days looking after his investments, gossiping in coffee houses,
renovating his various estates, learning about the latest engineering
inventions, attending and throwing parties—basically, multiplying
his money and having a good time. A favourite of Queen Anne’s,
Chandos occupied several prestigious government positions, and—
as with many other opportunists of this period—question marks
hover over the sources of his great wealth. Apart from his titles, he
had inherited little from his father except responsibilities, although
he did adopt Conduitt’s tactic of marrying a wife who was older
than him and endowed with rich relatives.
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Wives have left few traces in history books. After a series of

­negotiations, it was through Mary Lake that Chandos acquired
Cannons, a large estate near Edgware. Now the site of North London
Collegiate School, its development became the central project of his
entire life, preoccupying him long after her death and soaking up
her fortune. Lake was, of course, a unique person, but her experi­
ences were not untypical for the daughter of a rich aristocrat. Of
their nine children, only two survived, and her husband failed to
attend any of the funerals. The first baby was born in London, but
that night he was busy entertaining several other women in
Hereford ‘and after dinner wee danc’t till 3 in the morning’.18
Chandos professed himself inconsolable when Lake died, but only a
couple of months later his lawyer was drafting documents for his
next marriage. Wives resembled landed estates in being posses­
sions, and the marble monument in the local church shows
Chandos standing in the costume of a noble Roman, a dead wife
kneeling in tribute at either side. The third wife was still alive, but
no record survives of her thoughts about the design.
Chandos’s first gift to clergyman Desaguliers was the chaplaincy
of that church (before the monument was erected), but both men
were more interested in the palatial mansion that Chandos was
building on his wife’s estate. Patronage brings power, and Chandos
had no qualms about ordering Desaguliers to sort out the smoking
chimneys, escort his two surviving sons around the country, and
take over the awkward task of firing a distinguished gardener sus­
pected of theft. At special dinners, Desaguliers was relegated to the
Chaplains’ table, kept apart from Chandos’s aristocratic friends and
their ladies. When it came to providing advice, Desaguliers was
expected to be omniscient. Chandos requisitioned him as consult­
ant on various schemes, which included supporting the African
slave trade as well as persuading an alcoholic Dutch baron to
divulge his secret recipe for refining gold.
But there were compensations. In particular, Desaguliers was
being paid to put Newtonian principles into action for the en­gin­
eer­ing work that he loved. With Desaguliers as his technical adviser,
Chandos developed the property of his wife’s family to create a
hyper-­extravagant edifice that was lavishly decorated by the finest
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artists from across Europe. In 1722, Daniel Defoe pronounced the

mansion at Cannons to be the most magnificent in England: ‘I ven­
ture to say that not Italy itself can show such a building rais’d from
the common surface, by one private hand, and in so little time as
this. The inside of this house is as glorious as the outside is fine; the
lodgings are indeed most exquisitely finish’d, and if I may call it so,
royally furnish’d.’19
A spectacular gilt statue of a gladiator stood in the gardens next
to the canal: if gold chamber pots were ever made, this house would
have had some (it seems that, unlike silver ones, they existed only as
a satirical whim in the imagined world of Thomas More’s Utopia).
Purchases included 150 oaks for the avenue, an organ and two
harpsichords, ostriches and flamingos, numerous blocks of Italian
marble, 200 geese, and water closets worth around £400. The inven­
tory of Newton’s bedroom was valued at about £80, while the best
bed chamber at Cannons ran to almost £2500. Yet, symbolically,
Chandos’s massive mansion was as ephemeral as the South Sea
Bubble, vandalized after thirty-­five years in a grand demolition sale
to pay off family debts. Various architectural features were recycled,
and its Palladian pillars still adorn the portico of the National
Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Little else survives from its overblown
splendour apart from the sales catalogues, the Chandos monument
in the church, and the Chandos Anthems composed by George
Handel while he was resident organist.
If Desaguliers read Defoe’s account (which seems likely), he
would have been especially gratified by the writer’s praise of ‘a large
basin or fountain of water, and the coaches drive round it on either
side’. Creating spectacular hydro-­effects was one of Desaguliers’s
specialities. Admittedly, things did not always go to plan. He once
unintentionally sabotaged a Thames barge full of elegant ladies and
gentlemen when his underwater rockets unexpectedly leapt up
right beneath them. More successful projects included designing
the ornamental fountains at Cannons, and fixing a problem with
pipes in Edinburgh when he was attending a Masonic event.
Even so, Desaguliers discovered that being a Newtonian entre­
preneur was time-­consuming and not necessarily profitable. For
example, although he produced wonderfully ingenious designs for
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constructing large London reservoirs, many of the schemes fell

through, the victims of conflicting interests, technical problems,
and insufficient private funding. Chandos and other rich investors
who were determined to make a business out of selling water were
trying to undermine each other and needed more efficient pumping
engines to reduce their expenditure on coal. Desperate to win a
contract, Desaguliers even resorted to publishing an anonymous
satire on one scheme, although only two months later, he switched
sides to extol his former rival.20 Unsurprisingly, proposals to divert
water were contested by local residents who would lose their own
source of power, while Desaguliers suffered from fines for leaking
pipes and late completion (naturally, he blamed the workmen).
And, of course, nobody wanted their part of town to be defiled by
the large and noisy steam engines needed to lift water from one
level to another.
Desaguliers was more successful with other Newtonian ventures.
Anybody who has ever lived in a house heated solely by coal fires
will appreciate the marketing appeal of his promise to remedy ‘the
usual Inconveniences of being obliged to creep near, or to sit at such
a Distance from the Fire that we are either starv’d before or roasted
behind’. After his improved fireplaces became popular, he was com­
missioned to produce one device for circulating warm air in the House
of Lords, and another to freshen up the atmosphere in the crowded
House of Commons. He went on to invent equipment for forcing air
down mine shafts, improving the below-­deck ventilation on ships, and
reducing fire risks by using steam for drying inflammable materials
such as gunpowder.21
Advertising his inventions presented a dilemma. Naturally,
Desaguliers wanted to make his machines sound the most desirable,
efficient, and cheapest available, but it was hard for ambitious
specu­lators to distinguish between Desaguliers’s untested yet poten­
tially profitable schemes and others that were intrinsically un­feas­
ible because they were based on unsound principles. He reminded
potential clients of his close links with Newton, griping that ‘I know
five or six persons who have been taken in . . . even after I had told
them that the Persons applying to them were ignorant Pretenders.
What they lost by them, and reading this, will make them
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remember it.’ He was particularly angry about the ignorance that

led to disastrous investments in perpetual motion machines: ‘These
bold Undertakers, who are generally Perpetual-­Motion Men, are so
ignorant as not to understand the Language whereby they should
be shown their Error.’22
Desaguliers also needed to avoid being confused with over-­
opportunistic opportunists and their unrealizable promises. He
must have known that in Gulliver’s Travels, Barton’s friend Jonathan
Swift mocked Newtonian projectors who vainly tried to extract
sunbeams from cucumbers so that greenhouses could be kept warm
during inclement summers. That inspiration sounds uncomfortably
close to Desaguliers’s ‘new invented Chimneys’ as recommended by
Lord Chandos’s gardener in his popular instruction manual: ‘noth­
ing can be contriv’d more for our Purpose of preserving Plants in
the Winter from Frosts and Damps, than one of them plac’d artifi­
cially in some Part of a Green-­House.’23 Satire is at its most effective
when painfully close to reality.
Liaising between investors and inventors, Desaguliers argued
that Newtonian physics would improve efficiency and protect
specu­lators from backing schemes that were bound to fail because
they defied the laws of nature. Following the massive losses sus­
tained during the South Sea Bubble, he warned wealthy opportun­
ists against over-­enthusiasm, against risking their money ‘to supply
boasting Engineers with it in the hopes of great Returns’.24 Familiar
with the details of Chandos’s expenditures and economies, Desaguliers
knew that his Edgware patron had managed to recover from his
disastrous venture. Was he aware that Newton had gambled and
won, but then gambled and lost?
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6
The Royal Society

Beneath their former president’s bust, Hogarth has included pictures

of four living Royal Society Fellows.
The Duke of Richmond (the man leaning on his wife’s chair) was
elected not merely for his aristocratic status but also for his learning.
Interested in medicine, he collected data about the success rate of the
new smallpox inoculations and reported to the Society on the latest
biological experiments.
Nominated by President Newton, John Conduitt was elected a Fellow
about eighteen months after his marriage to Catherine Barton, although
there is no record of his being a keen participant in Society business.
In contrast, Newton’s patron Charles Montagu had previously been
President of the Royal Society, but he does not appear in Hogarth’s
picture because he died about fifteen years before the children per-
formed their play. Otherwise, he might well have been included,
although in his absence his extended clan has been represented by
John, the second Duke of Montagu, the blue-­jacketed man furthest to
the left. Like Charles, John had strong connections with both Newton
and Barton, because he, too, was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a
member of the Kit-­Kat club. His London residence, Montagu House,
became the first home of the British Museum, established by the Royal
Society to care for the legacy of Sir Hans Sloane, Newton’s successor as
president.
Compared with those three Fellows, the fourth one shown here—
Newton’s experimental assistant Desaguliers—played a crucial part
in the Royal Society’s activities. Although half-­concealed at the back of
the stage, he is superintending the play—and he fulfilled an equally
important behind-­the-­scenes role in real life. Frequently overlooked,
this deceptively insignificant, liminal figure performed on several
Newtonian stages.

* * *
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102  The Royal Society

Newton would never have dreamt of expressing his gratitude to

Joanna Pudsey, but, like other scarcely visible women, she helped to
enhance his status both before and after his death. Her uncle was a
knight, but in 1712 she moved socially downwards by marrying an
impoverished French Huguenot, John Theophilus Desaguliers.
Her parents may well have disapproved: at that stage, they had no
way of knowing that the bridegroom would later become a leading
Freemason, hand-­picked by Newton for Fellowship of the Royal
Society. As a woman, Pudsey was excluded from those aspects of
her husband’s life. She did, however, have first-­hand experience of
helping him to earn his living.
Three years into their marriage, Desaguliers took Pudsey and
their first child to live in Channel Row, a run-­down area described
by Jonathan Swift as ‘a dirty street near the Parliament-­House,
Westminster’; Newton’s patron Charles Montagu had once lived
there, but moved out after marrying a widow with a fortune.1 The
Desaguliers couple stayed in that house for twenty-­five years, until
it was demolished to make way for Westminster Bridge, which—
ironically or self-­punitively?—Desaguliers had helped to design. By
then, five of their seven children had died, and Pudsey had had
enough of married life. Unusually for this period, instead of con-
tinuing to suffer, she went to live on her own while he retreated to
the Bedford Coffee House. Chronically short of money, he died in
extreme poverty.
For a quarter-­century, Pudsey’s domestic duties included run-
ning a residential school as well as a family. Any spare cash went on
buying expensive pieces of equipment for Desaguliers’s lectures and
experiments on Newtonian mechanics. Knowing that audiences
were impressed by dramatic displays, he tended to build large: his
space-­consuming bellows was eight feet wide, designed for clearing
fetid air from mines and ships. When he was on one of his frequent
trips away from London, either on business for Chandos or attend-
ing Freemasonry meetings, she was presumably left in charge of the
lodgers—and his frequent attacks of gout must inevitably have cast
greater day-­to-­day responsibilities on to her.
One unusual visitor was disconcerted by this Newtonian house-
hold—the celebrated bluestocking Elizabeth Carter, the woman
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The Royal Society  103

who boosted Newton’s reputation by translating a small popular

Italian book she called Newtonianism for the Ladies. ‘I have two
or 3 times been at his House which is the strangest looking place
I ever beheld & appears very much like the Abode of a Wizard,’
she wrote to a friend; ‘The Company that frequents it is equally
­singular consisting chiefly of a set of queer looking people called
Philosophers . . . Tis well if amongst all these conjurors I do not turn
Witch . . .’2 She made no mention of Joanna Pudsey, the non-­witch
who made it possible for her husband to become Newton’s leading
international propagandist, and for her son Thomas to expand his
father’s spectacular ambitions into Russia.

Experimental Demonstrations

Arrogantly assuming a privileged status as one of God’s chosen few,

Newton had little interest in communicating his theories beyond a
restricted academic sphere. For those outside the Royal Society, sci-
entific knowledge became a commodity to be bought. As part of a
larger shift towards commercialization, scientific experimenters
and writers developed new opportunities for turning a profit, so
that access to the latest discoveries depended on paying a fee to
attend a public lecture or buying one of the new Science Made Easy
educational books.
That Newton did become famous well beyond university walls
and scholarly societies was due less to his own efforts than to the
collective initiative of many disciples who energetically dis­sem­in­
ated his ideas. The greatest enthusiasts were those who saw scien-
tific education as a money-­ making opportunity, but by taking
advantage of the growing market in popular science, they also
helped to create it. Their tactics varied—performing experiments,
devising parlour tricks, writing books for women (sub-­text: if a
woman can understand science, then anyone can), and designing
machines. Together, they made it essential for any fashionable person
to be familiar with at least a smattering of Newtonian knowledge.
In 1703, when Newton became President of the Royal Society,
that process of packaging Newtonianism into commercial products
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104  The Royal Society

had scarcely begun. So far, he had published only one major book,
the Principia, which was written in Latin and stuffed with math­em­
at­ics so complex that even academics failed to make much headway.
Most Fellows of the Royal Society were even less capable of under-
standing it than their more learned university contemporaries. This
fee-­paying Society was primarily a metropolitan club for wealthy
gentlemen with intellectual pretensions who appreciated some
weekly entertainment. Half a century previously, Robert Hooke had
been appointed as the Society’s first Curator of Experiments, but by
the time Newton took over, the position was held by a former
draper, Francis Hauksbee. In retrospect, Hauksbee’s greatest in­nov­
ation was his electrical machine—an evacuated glass globe that,
apparently miraculously, glowed in the dark when it was rotated
between an experimenter’s hands. Preoccupied at that stage with
the properties of glass, Newton failed to spot one of the eighteenth
century’s key inventions, the device that stimulated intensive
research into the powers and properties of static electricity.
Newton did, however, identify an excellent experimenter to take
over the position permanently: Desaguliers. Although more highly
educated than his immediate predecessors, Desaguliers was chron­
ic­al­ly short of money, which meant that Newton could rely on him
to work hard and obey orders. As an added advantage, his position
as Grand Master of England’s Freemasons ensured valuable contacts
all over Europe. Newton was so appreciative that—conforming to
his role as patron—he agreed to become godfather to Desaguliers’s
third son, John Isaac (one of the five who died in infancy).
Presumably, Newton turned up for the baptism at Desaguliers’s local
church, duly admired the baby and his mother, and handed over a
suitable silver gift, such as an engraved mug. He could be confident
that on his side of the unspoken bargain, Desaguliers would assidu-
ously promote Newton’s interests.
Justifying Newton’s choice, at the Royal Society Desaguliers
worked hard to make himself indispensable and to maximize his
remuneration. Since he was paid for published articles, he made
sure that the Philosophical Transactions was kept regularly supplied
with his experimental reports. On top of performing demonstra-
tions to entertain the Fellows, he sold them one of his fireplaces to
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The Royal Society  105

remedy a smoking chimney, translated foreign documents, and

installed a ventilation system to protect the dried animal and vege-
table specimens in the Society’s museum.
Desaguliers was not unusual in lecturing and writing about
Newton, but he was uniquely placed as Newton’s experimental
assistant, and became the most influential of his early propa­gand­
ists, both in England and abroad. Earning money was a major pri-
ority. His endeavours as an engineer, Fellow of the Royal Society,
and lecturer were all oriented towards one personal goal: financial
survival. From the perspective of the future, Desaguliers helped to
ensure that Newtonian ideology would prevail. Fluent in English,
Latin, and French, Desaguliers translated important text books,
built instruments to demonstrate the principles of physics, insinu-
ated himself into the royal court, insisted on sound scientific prin­
ciples for engineering projects, and taught a high proportion of the
foreign lecturers who went on to spread Newtonianism around
Europe.
National politics mattered in science: although natural philo­
sophers boasted about a European intellectual community tran-
scending boundaries, in practice chauvinism was rife. Newton was
initially slated by French critics, but by rejigging some of his key
optics experiments, Desaguliers convinced them that Newton was
right, and that their own hero—René Descartes—was wrong. Like
many immigrants, Desaguliers was determined to prove his patri-
otism, and he loyally proclaimed that ‘It is to Sir Isaac Newton’s
Application of Geometry to Philosophy, that we owe the routing of
this Army of Goths and Vandals in the Philosophical World.’3

Presidential Power

The Royal Society was not in good shape when Newton became
president in 1703. The previous two presidents—one of them
Newton’s patron Charles Montagu—had been elected not for their
scientific prowess but because they were influential politicians.
Neither of them, however, had done much beyond murmur words
of encouragement, and it was the secretary, Hans Sloane, who
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106  The Royal Society

carried out all the work. Whatever the Society’s professed aspirations,
by the time Newton was elected president, it was an elite institution
whose membership was determined as much by social status as by
intellectual ability. Newton intended to keep it that way: the Royal
Society should, he insisted to Queen Anne, be housed near the
­government at Westminster so that it would be ‘more convenient
for persons of Quality’. Only applicants who passed a concealed
entrance examination were allowed to join.4
Sloane was probably responsible for getting Newton elected as
president, although Montagu may have intervened behind the
scenes. There was little enthusiasm among the Fellows for this can-
didate who had so far shown scant interest in the Society during his
seven years in London. According to a foreign visitor, he did very
little during the next seven years either: ‘The president, Newton, is
an old man, and too much occupied as master of the mint, with his
own affairs, to trouble himself much about the society.’5 That judge-
ment was over-­harsh, but the level of intellectual discussion was not
always high. Perhaps strategically, in 1705 Newton inducted the
Bishop of Carlisle, who noted that the highlight of the occasion was
hearing ‘an Account of an extraordinary involution of the Gutts;
which occasioned such an invincible Stoppage, that the patient had
not a Stool in seven months before his Death.’6 Even Newton joined
in such visceral discussions, reminiscing about worms he had
unearthed inside dogs’ noses and kidneys.
As soon as he became president, Newton judged the Society’s
weak financial position to be a top priority. He and Sloane were
both strong-­willed, stubborn men who repeatedly antagonized one
another, but they did join forces to remedy this situation. At the
Mint, Newton already excelled at chasing forgers, and now he began
clamping down on Royal Society defaulters. He launched legal
actions to recover rents that were due on property owned by the
Society, and demanded that members sign bonds to cover their
annual subscription. Although this strategy succeeded financially—
there was even enough spare cash for the Society to invest in South
Sea bonds—it meant that membership was determined by wealth
and influence as much as by scientific skills. Did Newton ever think
back to 1675, when his savings had run out and his position at
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The Royal Society  107

Trinity seemed increasingly untenable? He had become so

­desperate that he begged for a subscription waiver, writing, ‘For ye
time draws near yt I am to part wth my Fellowship, & as my incomes
contract, I find it will be convenient that I contract my expenses.’7
Presumably he read and dismissed similar pleas.
A second major administrative problem Newton faced was find-
ing new premises. While Hooke was alive, the Society had been
able to meet at Gresham College, where he was a professor, but the
Fellows were now facing eviction. Newton approached Montagu for
help, but there were limits even to his power. Christopher Wren
drew up ambitious plans for a government property that the Society
presumptuously assumed would be theirs free of charge, but a
­parliamentary committee turned down their request. Eventually,
spending £110 of his own money but making himself unpopular by
abruptly quashing opposition, Newton arranged for the Royal
Society to buy a house in Crane Court.
Regularly presiding over meetings, Newton gradually yet
systematically consolidated his hold over a Society that was
­
wracked by internal divisions. One ally wrote obsequiously that he
would like to make Newton ‘Perpetual Dictator of the Society’—and
that is effectively what happened.8 Unlike his p ­ redecessors, he
chaired most of the meetings himself, and also employed some
dubious tactics. By marking a list of council members with an
X against the names of those he wanted to replace, he successfully
squeezed Sloane out of office and substituted his own  ally,
Edmond Halley. One of his acrimonious enemies, the Astronomer
Royal John Flamsteed, reported that ‘There were high and furious
debates . . . Sr  I.  Newton sees now that he is understood.’9 He was
right: President Newton had made the fellows understand that he
was in charge, even changing the day of the weekly meetings to suit
his own diary. As council members resigned or died, he wheeled in
his supporters as well as allotting greater power to himself and
making the meetings more formal.
In 1714, when King George I of Hanover succeeded Queen Anne,
Newton promptly enlisted the new monarch as a Fellow (Anne had
been ineligible as a woman). Newton was now firmly in control and
beginning to behave with quasi-­regal grandiosity himself. ‘[T]here
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108  The Royal Society

were no whispering, talking, nor loud laughters,’ reported the

Stonehenge expert William Stukeley; ‘every thing was transacted
with great attention, & solemnity, & decency . . . indeed his presence
created a natural awe in the assembly.’10 The Royal Society was a
political as well as an intellectual organization, and Newton made
sure that eminent statesmen and distinguished visitors from Europe
were invited to join, even though—like the king—they had no obli-
gation to attend meetings. One particular proposed candidate was
refused election: Francis Williams of Jamaica. His British education
was said to have been paid for by a courtier in Hogarth’s painting,
John Montagu, but he happened to be black, and hence—like
women—lay low down the social hierarchy.11

Attacking Enemies

Newton was a serial slanderer: as soon as he had vanquished one

opponent, he moved on to the next. Considering that he became
embroiled in so many disputes, it is rather surprising that he pro-
fessed to hate them. After a long gripe to Edmond Halley about
Hooke’s perfidious behaviour, Newton reported that he would be
suppressing part of the Principia in the hope of avoiding contro-
versy. ‘Philosophy is such a litigious Lady,’ he commented, ‘that a
man had as good be engaged in Law suits as have to do with her.’12
Even so, he created many philosophical enemies over the years,
although the three that he particularly loathed and yet also feared
were Robert Hooke, John Flamsteed, and Gottfried Leibniz. While
he lived in Cambridge, his major foe had been Hooke, who died in
1703, only a few months before Newton became President of the
Royal Society. One of Newton’s earliest initiatives was to donate and
display his own portrait with a golden inscription proclaiming him
as president. Since other Fellows were invited to join him on the
walls—where they form the heart of the Society’s current collec-
tion—can it just be coincidence that no picture of Hooke survives?
Whatever Newton’s culpability may have been in excluding
Hooke from London’s painted pantheon of fame, he shamelessly
took advantage of his powerful position to sabotage the next two
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The Royal Society  109

rivals. At one stage he had enjoyed playing backgammon with

Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, but in 1704 long-­standing
coldness escalated into open confrontation. Their quarrel revolved
around ownership of astronomical observations that Flamsteed had
made at Greenwich Observatory, although it is difficult to work out
exactly what happened because all the accounts are biased towards
one side or the other. According to one interpretation, Flamsteed
was a lazy, secretive, bad-­tempered man who persistently refused to
supply Newton with the data he needed. In contrast, Flamsteed and
his supporters accused Newton of illicitly publishing the catalogue
that Flamsteed had compiled at his own expense, even altering its
contents.
With his long-­term reputation in mind, Flamsteed was deter-
mined to produce an ambitious historical review of astronomical
records. For that, he needed money to hire assistants who could
complete all the calculations. Through Charles Montagu, Newton
learnt that Prince George—Queen Anne’s Danish husband—might
be interested in financing the publication of Flamsteed’s catalogue.
Because he desperately wanted to get hold of Flamsteed’s data,
Newton welcomed that suggestion, which he felt would serve his
own interests: he was preparing a second edition of the Principia
and needed to sort out some problems with his calculations about
the moon. So he took a boat down to Greenwich, and—solicitously
but hypocritically—encouraged Flamsteed to contact Prince George.
Flamsteed may well have been a difficult man to deal with, but
Newton does not emerge creditably from this prolonged and savage
quarrel, whose complicated twists and turns are packed with invec-
tive on all sides. At first, the negotiations proceeded smoothly
between the Astronomer Royal and the Prince, but then—probably
with Montagu’s support—Newton created an opportunity for him-
self to intervene by electing Prince George a Fellow of the Royal
Society. That smooth manoeuvre effectively put Newton in charge
of the discussions, although he judiciously sheltered himself behind
a Committee of Referees packed with his own supporters. For the
next four years, vindictive letters flashed back and forth.
Fixated on obtaining the most recent observations, Newton
repeatedly ignored Flamsteed’s protests and made sure that all his
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110  The Royal Society

requests for funding were turned down. Leaning on Queen Anne’s

authority when it suited him, he arranged that Halley would print a
shortened version of Flamsteed’s catalogue. When this appeared in
1712, the information had been tailored to suit Newton’s require-
ments. The preface claimed (falsely) that Flamsteed had maliciously
withheld observations, and also suggested (again falsely) that Halley
had been obliged to correct many mistakes. Arranging that
Halley should take over some of the work but be paid more than
Flamsteed, Newton systematically eliminated references to Flamsteed
in his revised Principia, even though he had relied on Greenwich
­astronomical data for his crucial comet calculations.13 By exerting
his authority as president, Newton had apparently vanquished
Flamsteed, but many of their colleagues disapproved of his extraor-
dinarily dictatorial behaviour. When Montagu died in 1715, Newton
lost the protection of his patron, and Flamsteed took advantage of
his own contacts to obtain most of the Halley catalogues that had
been printed. Throwing them on a ceremonial bonfire, he ‘made a
sacrifice of them to Heavenly Truth’.14
At the Royal Society, as Newton aged he became increasingly
unpopular, failing to win high numbers of votes in Council elec-
tions. And when it came to key appointments in the mathematical
world, the positions often went to Flamsteed’s supporters rather
than Newton’s. Eventually, Flamsteed’s full catalogue was published
after his death in 1719—and that was thanks to his widow, Margaret.
Although women were banned from the universities and the Royal
Society, at home they regularly participated in skilled crafts such as
astronomy.
Margaret Flamsteed was a well-­connected lawyer’s daughter who
had been only 23 at the time of their wedding, just half John
Flamsteed’s age. Perhaps he would have liked to marry earlier, but
as his official salary was a meagre £100, from which he had to pay
the costs of running the Observatory, he was obliged to wait until
his father died and he inherited enough money to pay off outstand-
ing bills. Like Newton and Hooke, Flamsteed also had a young
niece tucked away in his residence. Ann Heming lived in Flamsteed’s
quarters at Greenwich Observatory for twelve years, where she pro-
vided company and help for his wife. Flamsteed also took on male
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The Royal Society  111

apprentices, but they had the inconvenient habit of leaving once

they had been fully trained. The advantage of dependent female
relatives was their obligation to remain until married. And, of
course, they also took care of the domestic responsibilities.
Margaret Flamsteed turned out to be an excellent choice as
bride—an entertaining hostess who made their home inside the
Greenwich Observatory an attractive meeting place where plans
could be hatched round the dinner table. She was a co-­founder of
Greenwich Girls’ Charity School, which was run by an all-­female
committee, and served as its treasurer for fourteen years, benefiting
from the mathematics she had studied at home so that she could
work with her husband. Like other female recruits—often known as
computers—she carried out the tedious calculations needed to con-
vert raw observations of stars into numerical coordinates that could
be entered into catalogues of the heavens. She must have been an
intelligent woman: her notebooks include several pages of calcula-
tions based on Newton’s mathematical techniques.
Unlike Newton, Flamsteed wrote a will before he died in 1719.
Although he carefully specified that his wife, Margaret, should
inherit her own jewellery, along with the silver plate that she had
been responsible for keeping polished, he left her less well endowed
than he had intended. Unfortunately for her, he had invested £1000
in South Sea stocks, and after the Bubble burst some months later,
her inheritance plummeted in value. When his successor as
Astronomer Royal arrived—Newton’s ally and her enemy, Edmond
Halley—she was forced to leave Greenwich Observatory. Making
her situation still more difficult, Flamsteed had failed to make pro-
vision for his instruments, and she became involved in a long legal
tussle over their ownership.
Even so, Margaret Flamsteed was determined to complete
Flamsteed’s ambitious star catalogue with the splendour he had
envisaged, and she spent years compiling data, commissioning
expensive maps, and campaigning against a truncated version pro-
duced by Halley. No mere assistant or downtrodden wife, Margaret
Flamsteed was an enterprising woman. After she had presented a
full set of her three-­volume catalogue to the Bodleian Library at
Oxford, she was not embarrassed to approach the vice-­chancellor
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112  The Royal Society

of the university and ask him to get rid of Halley’s edition: ‘I most
humbly entreat You will please to order that single volume to be
removed out of Your Public Library, the greatest part of which is
nothing more than an Erroneous Abrigment of Mr Flamsteed’s
Works.’15
Once Flamsteed had been successfully pushed aside, Newton set
about demolishing another long-­term antagonist, Gottfried Leibniz.
This fight was not about who owned observations but about math-
ematical methods: who invented calculus first? In this era before
protective legislation for intellectual property rights, priority was a
hotly contested matter. For material possessions, the situation was
brutally clear: the first-­born inherited everything. One of Hogarth’s
contemporaries, Arthur Devis, painted his own Newtonian conver-
sation piece, in which a plaque of Newton looks down from the wall
of a London drawing room packed with scientific objects. On one
side, the father of the family and his elder son are discussing a flute,
an instrument deemed improper for women to play. On the other, a
girl and another boy are building a house of cards, which symbol-
izes the fragility of fortune: this second male child knows that the
entire estate will go to his twin brother, who was born a few minutes
earlier.16
Claiming priority was tricky. While you were still developing an
idea, how could you solicit advice and advertise your ingenuity
without someone else stealing it? One solution was to write the cru-
cial part in code—and that was what Newton had done many years
earlier. In 1676, he sent a long Latin letter to Henry Oldenburg,
then secretary of the Royal Society, purportedly outlining the cal-
culus technique he called fluxions, but twice using encryption to
hold back vital information. ‘I have preferred to conceal it thus,’ he
warned: ‘6accdæ13eff7i319n4o4qrr4s8t12ux.’ A knowledgeable reader
would have recognized that this anagram referred to the Latin
summary of Newton’s theory, but be unable to work out the precise
details.17 In the meantime, Leibniz was independently carrying out
similar research of his own. Because he saw Oldenburg’s letters, and
also corresponded directly with Newton, he knew that Newton was
working on a closely related topic. When he published a paper in
1684 announcing his own very similar technique of differentiation,
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The Royal Society  113

he failed to mention Newton. And for the next fi ­fteen years,

nobody—including Newton and Leibniz—seems to have worried
about that.
But eventually, in 1699, apparently unprompted by Newton, Fatio
de Duillier decided to attack Leibniz on Newton’s behalf. In the pro-
longed battle that followed, his allies levelled increasingly vindictive
accusations of plagiarism. Newton seemed to lie low, but behind the
scenes he was orchestrating some anonymous ripostes. After a par-
ticularly vicious onslaught by an Oxford professor, Leibniz eventu-
ally snapped, firing off several letters of complaint to Hans Sloane,
now secretary of the Royal Society. And this is when President
Newton took advantage of his position to step in visibly, setting up
a supposedly objective committee that was in fact packed with his
own supporters. He leant on its members heavily, telling them
which letters to look at and what conclusions to draw. Reporting
back to the Society only six weeks later, in April 1712, under
Newton’s directions they went far beyond their original brief, not
only exonerating him from being offensive but also confirming that
he had invented calculus first. Before the end of the year, Newton
had scrutinized, rewritten, and published the report in Latin—all
paid for by the Royal Society, which distributed copies around
Europe. His summary in English took up over fifty pages of
the Philosophical Transactions, also produced under the aegis of the
Society.
For Newton, this was no mere academic dispute but a personal
fight to the death and beyond: he was once overheard remarking
(boasting?) that ‘He had broke Leibnitz’s Heart with his Reply to
him.’18 Long after Leibniz died in 1716, Newton went over and
over the details, fine-­tuning his revenge until he had covered
around 500 large sheets of paper. What neither of them could
ever know was that, in a sense, Leibniz became the ultimate victor.
During the eighteenth century, Newton’s British inheritors
obeyed his injunction to follow the example of the ancient Greeks
by focusing on geometrical techniques rather than algebraic
manipulation. Unconstrained by this embargo, Continental math-
ematicians developed Leibniz’s version of calculus, which became
particularly important in France and provided the basis for modern
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114  The Royal Society

analyses. Eventually, Cambridge lecturers were reluctantly pushed

into teaching calculus by a pressure group of undergraduates, who
demanded to be kept up to date with what was happening in
Europe.

Scientific Legacies

Newton took advantage of his position as president to promote

the two books for which he is now most famous—Opticks and the
Principia. Although the material in Opticks had never previously
been gathered together into a single book, it predominantly com-
prised Newton’s earlier work, some published in academic papers,
some retrieved from notebooks going back to his student years. In
contrast, the Principia had first appeared in 1687 while Newton
still lived in Cambridge; once securely ensconced at the Royal
Society, he generated revisions and additions for two further edi-
tions, ­daring—if tentatively—to make his theological position
somewhat clearer.
Newton had only been in power for three months when, in 1704,
he presented the Society with the first edition of his book on optics.
Murmuring appreciatively, the Fellows deputed Halley to peruse it
and prepare a summary for them (so much more convenient than
reading it for themselves). Although Newton had finished a longer
manuscript years earlier, it had languished in storage until after the
death of Hooke, who could have been guaranteed to sabotage its
publication by reviving his accusations of plagiarism. Still nervous
about revealing his more extreme suppositions, Newton prudently
sliced off a contentious introduction and final section, concentrat-
ing instead on producing an accessible version of experiments that
he had first performed decades beforehand. Although for the
Fellows there was little dramatically new, Newton’s 1704 English
Opticks had a large and immediate public impact. After this initial
success, he launched several further editions, gradually gaining the
confidence to include some of the controversial topics he had ini-
tially suppressed.
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Opticks featured three major aspects. Most obviously, it brought

together Newton’s pioneering research into prisms, lenses, and the
nature of light, including the discoveries he had presented at the
Royal Society over three decades earlier, as well as work he had car-
ried out since. Writing in English, Newton made his delicate ex­peri­
men­tal procedures sound like common sense, almost as if the
family could gather around and perform them at home. This is how
he opens his description of his seminal experiment on colours in
light: ‘In a very dark Chamber at a round Hole about one third of an
Inch broad made in the Shut of a Window I placed a Glass Prism,
whereby the beam of the Sun’s Light which came in at that hole
might be refracted upwards towards the opposite Wall of the
Chamber, and there form a coloured image of the Sun . . . I turned
the Prism slowly, and saw the refracted Light on the Wall, or the
coloured Image of the Sun first to descend and then to ascend.’19 In
practice, this deceptively straightforward account proved as trans-
parent as flat-­pack furniture assembly instructions: so many details
had been concealed that French researchers found it impossible to
replicate his results. Newton relied on Desaguliers to sort out the
situation by travelling to Paris and explaining more thoroughly how
the experimental apparatus should be set up to produce the results
claimed by Newton.20
Newton’s relaxed narrative style contributed to his second aim:
launching a disguised manifesto for the English method (the only
right one, naturally) of carrying out scientific research. ‘My Design
in this Book’, he announced in his first sentence, ‘is not to explain
the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove
them by Reason and Experiments.’ Unprovable conjectures or
en­tities had no place in Newton’s vision of the cosmos: he demanded
facts and hard evidence. The Royal Society promoted the ideology
of Francis Bacon, who taught that theories must be built up from
observations with an open mind, without making prior assump-
tions. It has always seemed to me that the only truly Baconian
observers are new-­born babies, and even they rapidly build up sup-
positions about how their environment works. For Newton and his
followers, the bottom-­up empirical approach provided a powerful
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rhetorical contrast with the rationalism of French philosophers

who—allegedly—deduced their conclusions by working downwards
from first principles.
The last section of Opticks is very different from the rest of
the book. It comprises a series of ‘Quæries’ added at the end of the
main text, which grew in successive editions from an initial six-
teen to a final thirty-­one.21 Those at the beginning of Newton’s
numbered list ruminate about how light might behave, but the
rest range over pretty well everything, including heat, gravity,
magnetic attraction, the nervous system, chemical reactions, and
electricity. Rhetorically, these Newtonian soliloquies were clev-
erly constructed, opening with a negative question anticipating a
positive answer—‘Do not Bodies act upon Light at a Distance . . .?’
or ‘Do not great Bodies conserve their heat the longest . . .?’—that
Newton could then unpack, sometimes providing his own solu-
tions at con­sid­er­able length. This conjectural format enabled
Newton to smuggle in a few of the wilder speculations from his
notebooks without exposing himself to too much risk: posing a
question did not imply the commitment needed to state a belief,
and so would make it easier for him to retract in the face of
opposition.
The first seven Quæries are only one or two sentences long, but
some of the later ones cover several pages. At one level, they set out
experimental information that investigators followed up after his
death. By citing Newton’s Quæries, relatively unknown researchers
could gain prestige by sheltering beneath the master’s reputation—
and conversely, such acts of loyalty consolidated Newton’s mono-
lithic hold over English science. For example, the clergyman
Stephen Hales was inspired by Newton’s observation that while
mercury rises only 60 to 70 inches (150 to 180 cm) in a barometer
tube, water may reach a height of over 60 feet (1830 cm). By carry-
ing out experiments on plants, Hales developed what is now known
as the cohesion theory, exploring how the water lost by evaporation
from a plant’s leaves can be replenished by fresh supplies rising up
through small capillaries in the stems.
Newton was also concerned to defend his contested conviction
that light is composed of particles, not waves. By the time he got to
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Quæry 29, he had found the courage to suggest this openly: ‘Are not
the Rays of Light very small Bodies emitted from shining
Substances?’ At some length, Newton considered one of the most
problematic phenomena for him to explain, the double refraction
properties of Icelandic spar (now identified chemically as calcium
carbonate). When you look at writing (or anything else) through its
crystals, every word appears twice, one diagonally displaced above
the other. His conclusion in Quæry 26 does not sound terribly con-
vincing: ‘Every Ray of Light therefore has two opposite Sides, ori­
gin­al­ly endued with a Property on which the unusual Refraction
depends . . .’ Newton had several eminent opponents, but despite
their strong counter-­arguments, he insisted that he was right—and
in the early nineteenth century, this obduracy proved embarrassing
when an English Newtonian demonstrated experimentally that he
had been wrong.
By far the most famous Quæries are numbers 21 and 31, both of
which raise metaphysical questions about the nature of the universe
that seem out of place for an experimental book on optics. In fact,
Quæry 31 is a longer version of an older draft that Newton had
originally intended for the Principia. It opens: ‘Have not the small
Particles of Bodies certain Powers, Virtues, or Forces, by which they
act at a distance . . . for producing a great Part of the Phænomena of
Nature?’ Such action from afar has now become the familiar man-
tra of Newtonian cosmology. However big or small—the earth and
an apple, the sun and the planets—everything in the universe
attracts everything else; this attractive force is stronger for objects
that are near to each other, and stronger for heavy ones than for
light ones (or more accurately, those of larger mass). Immediately
after this Quæry was published, Newton panicked, trying but fail-
ing to recall that entire edition of Opticks. Getting hold of as many
copies as he could, he cut out the final section of Quæry 31, in
which he asked: ‘Is not infinite Space the Sensorium of a Being
incorporeal, living, and intelligent . . .?’ But as he had anticipated,
Leibniz took great delight in attacking this suggestion that God is
eternally present throughout the cosmos.
In contrast, Quæry 21 proposes a totally different vision of how
the universe is held together. Here Newton revives the ancient
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118  The Royal Society

Greek notion of an omnipresent ether that swirls around in what is

apparently empty space. In his tentative, questioning style, Newton
rhetorically presents its nature: ‘And so if any one should suppose
that Æther (like our Air) may contain Particles which endeavour to
recede from one another . . . and that its Particles are exceedingly
smaller than those of Air, or even than those of Light . . .’ His hypo-
thetical minute ethereal particles repelled each other but attracted
ordinary matter, which brought Newton the great advantage that
light could be transmitted by particles of ether but would exhibit
wave-­like features like sound travelling through air.
In postulating a ubiquitous ether, Newton had a still more funda-
mental goal. He was responding to those readers of the Principia
who deplored action at a distance through empty space. Newton’s
opponents regarded remote attraction as a retrograde step, as a
reversion to older mystical notions that had already been success-
fully eliminated. One critic derided it as ‘a late Notion and Assertion
in Philosophy, that every thing attracts every thing, which is in
effect to say, that nothing attracts any thing’.22 Newtonian gravity
might now feel obviously valid, but what is taken to be knowledge
often changes—after all, it used to be an incontrovertible fact that
the sun travels around the earth. Nowadays, many people are happy
to accept that we live in a universe consisting mainly of empty space
and criss-­ crossed by invisible attractive forces. But for devout
eighteenth-­century Christians, this belief was sacrilegious because
it entailed attributing power to inherently inert matter. In their
dualist cosmos, there were basically two types of entity: lifeless
objects such as pieces of metal or rocks; and some sort of undefined
and possibly undefinable spirit able to endow matter with agency.
Whereas a billiard ball is destined to lie on the baize for ever until it
is struck by a cue, people and animals have been infused with a
spark of life, assumed then to come from God, enabling them to
control their own movements. Denying that difference would make
it possible for an extreme materialist to dispense with the concept
of a spiritual, immortal soul, thus threatening the basic tenets of
Christianity.
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Newton had already developed a more mathematical model of an

ether, but the manuscript remained unpublished until almost twenty
years after his death. His followers then adopted this proposal of a
ubiquitous ether that is weightless, invisible, and un­ detect­
able.
However weird that imagined entity might sound, during the nine-
teenth century it was deemed to be so real that scientists devised
experiments to demonstrate its properties. Eventually, Newton’s
ether faded into oblivion after Albert Einstein’s relativity theory of
1905 provided a different way of explaining the universe.23
None of the Opticks’ cautiously framed suggestions featured in
Newton’s revisions of the Principia. Taking advice from other
­scholars, including Fatio de Duillier, he had begun planning a sec-
ond edition almost immediately after the original version appeared
in 1687, even preparing a special copy with blank sheets bound in
between the printed pages so that he could note down corrections
systematically (similar to Figure 6.1). Despite frequent reminders
from colleagues, he continually procrastinated, repeatedly pleading
the well-­worn excuse that ‘just one last experiment’ was needed to
make it perfect. It was eventually published in 1713 as a result of
commercial pressures. Newton’s colleague Richard Bentley, Master
of Trinity College, was searching for profitable books to rescue the
ailing University Press, and he recruited a young Cambridge
mathematician, Roger Cotes, to take charge. Cotes leant over
Newton, ruthlessly prodding him through the corrections and
refusing to accept short-­cuts or approximations. Progress was at
best intermittent and ground to a complete halt while Newton was
absorbed in his quarrels with Leibniz and Flamsteed. Newton
rewarded Cotes with an engraving of his portrait as a visionary
Roman senator.
Because of Cotes’s frequent interventions, substantial changes
were introduced throughout the Principia, but many readers
noticed only two additions: an opening preface by Cotes defending
Newtonian action-­at-­a-­distance, and a General Scholium (scholarly
commentary) by Newton at the end. He constructed this short
appendix with great care, and it includes his famous phrase
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120  The Royal Society

Figure 6.1  Principia Mathematica (1713) with hand-­written additions and

corrections; Isaac Newton, after 1713

hypotheses non fingo—I feign no hypotheses. This formed part of

his insistence that he had no explanation for the cause of gravity,
and was not prepared to make one up (a covert dig at the French).
Newton was determined to keep theories as closely tied to facts as
possible. Whether it concerned religion or natural philosophy, he
believed that hard work was needed to control both the intellect
and the imagination: just as temptation could draw a virtuous man
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The Royal Society  121

away from the straight and narrow, so, too, hypotheses could
undermine his search for truth.
Based on private manuscripts compiled over many years,
Newton’s General Scholium was pitched at several audiences
simultaneously. Even those unfamiliar with philosophical and
theo­logic­al subtleties would appreciate that Newton was attack-
ing the ideas of his critics to defend his own belief that God is
eternally present throughout His own creation. The General
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122  The Royal Society

Figure 6.2  Frontispiece of Principia Mathematica (1726); George Vertue after

John Vanderbank, 1726
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The Royal Society  123

Scholium also carried concealed messages that could be accessed

only by a privileged elite—for those in the know, Europe’s great-
est scientific treatise smuggled in a refutation of orthodox
Anglican Christianity. Arguing that the orderly universe was
itself testimony of God’s power and independence, Newton sug-
gested that God was defined by dominion over His servants,
using terms reflecting his heretical Arian belief that Christ is not
divine, but is subordinate to God.24
Newton began making further corrections to the Principia almost
immediately, again ordering up a personalized copy with blank
interleaved sheets for his annotations (Figure 6.1). This time the
responsibility of goading Newton into completing his experiments
and calculations fell to Henry Pemberton, a young medical doctor,
although the revision process was carried out far less rigorously
than before. The completed volume was produced in 1726, the year
before Newton died. At least this time he included a proper tribute
to Pemberton and rewarded him with 200 guineas (a guinea trans-
lates into £1.05, but it was always written non-­decimally as 21 shil-
lings, or £1.1s.0d.).
To make sure that this final work would preserve his memory,
Newton liberally distributed luxurious presentation copies to influ-
ential colleagues at home and abroad. For the frontispiece, he chose
a flattering picture of himself as an elderly scholar wearing a fitted
jacket and white shirt, a tasteful costume that conformed to con-
temporary ideas of discreet masculine fashion for true English
gentle­men (Figure 6.2).25 Although the black-­and-­white printed
engraving could not replicate the glowing crimson of his velvet
coat, it did convey a sense of elegant dignity appropriate for the
President of the Royal Society. An American visitor was not
deceived. Defying the unspoken rules of Enlightenment politesse,
he commented bluntly in a letter back home: ‘by all those who have
seen him of late, as I did, bending so much under the Load of Years
as that with some difficulty he mounted the Stairs of the [Royal]
Society’s room. That Youthful Representation will I fear be con­
sidered rather as an object of Ridicule than Respect, & much sooner
raise Pity than Esteem.’26
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7
Hanover-­upon-­Thames

Distinguished from the rest of the audience by their special box, three
royal children are central to Hogarth’s conversation piece. From birth,
they had been surrounded by family hostilities that matched the
emotional intensity of the intrigues on stage. When Prince William
insisted that this performance be repeated at the palace, his father
may well have remembered the occasion, many years earlier, when he
had cancelled his visit to watch The Indian Emperour at the Drury
Lane Theatre: his own father, George I, was conducting such a strong
vendetta against him that he was concerned for the safety of any
actors who dared to appear on stage in his presence.
These three potential heirs to the throne had all been born in
England, but an older Germanic brother is—as the cliché goes—
conspicuous by his absence: Frederick. As the first-­ born son,
Frederick was legally the next in line, but his parents—King George
II and Queen Caroline—strongly preferred William, the boy shown
here, who was fifteen years younger. These smaller siblings scarcely
knew Frederick, whose family had left him behind to govern
Hanover when he was only 7 years old. His mother, Princess
Caroline, professed to be heart-­broken, but there was little contact
between mother and son for over a decade. When he did eventually
rejoin his family, relationships were strained, and the royal parents
continued to groom William, not Frederick, for the role of future
king. While these three children were being painted by Hogarth,
Frederick was living in his own separate palace, granted only a rela-
tively meagre allowance.
Caroline never knew that her scheming failed: instead of her
beloved William, it was Frederick’s son who became King George III,
long after her death.

* * *
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Well before Queen Anne died in 1714, Newton knew that her
­successor would be one of the royal relatives from Hanover, selected
mainly because they were Lutheran Protestants. The Hanoverian
kings are not renowned for their intellectual ability, but there were
some very smart women in the family. For several years, the most
likely candidate as British monarch was Sophia, powerful matriarch
of this extended Hanoverian family and, like Anne, a granddaugh-
ter of James I. Sophia’s elder sister Elizabeth had been such an acute
critic of René Descartes’s theories that he dedicated his last book to
her, crediting the young princess with understanding complexities
that others had failed to grasp. Similarly, Sophia engaged in discus-
sions with Newton’s other main philosophical peer, Gottfried
Leibniz, in a scholarly relationship that was perpetuated by her
daughter Sophia Charlotte.
Admired as an unusually intelligent and well-­educated woman,
Sophia participated in the invisible Republic of Letters, a private
correspondence network stretching across Europe. The Irish
religious philosopher John Toland reported that she ‘has long been
admir’d by all the Learned World, as a Woman of Incomparable
Knowledge in Divinity, Philosophy, History, and the Subjects of all
Sorts of Books, of which she has read a prodigious quantity. She
speaks five Languages . . .’1 But Sophia suddenly died six weeks
before Anne, and so Britain’s next ruler was not her, but her son,
who became George  I.  Even though there never was a Queen
Sophia, her influence lived on. Thanks to her behind-­the-­throne
negotiations, her grandson (who would later become George II)
had already married her protégée Caroline of Ansbach, mother of
the three royal children in Hogarth’s picture. She, too, was an
extremely clever woman—and after being transplanted to London’s
Hanoverian court in 1714, Caroline played a significant role in
Newton’s life and reputation.2
As Master of the Mint, Newton supervised the design and
production of George I’s coronation medal. He had been very keen
to emphasize the Hanoverian’s religious commitment, perhaps by
an open Bible or a hand coming down from a cloud, but instead the
final version showed a dour, fat-­cheeked man being crowned by a
voluptuous Britannia.3 Newton tried to gain George’s patronage by
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126 Hanover-upon-Thames

arranging to be presented at court, and by demonstrating his optical

experiments to the king’s long-­term partner, a German aristocrat.
But in general he allied himself with the next generation, the Prince
and Princess of Wales, and maintained less contact with George I
than he had enjoyed with either William or Anne. One difficulty
was that his influential supporter Charles Montagu, the Earl of
Halifax, died within a few weeks of George’s accession. Moreover,
throughout the thirteen years of his reign, the Hanoverian made
little attempt to ingratiate himself with his new British subjects,
shying away from public displays of regal splendour.
Newton and his allies welcomed George I not for himself, but
because of who he was not—he was neither a Catholic nor a Stuart.
Knowing little English, and speaking mainly in French, he
surrounded himself with familiar Hanoverian courtiers. His court
composer was yet another Hanoverian immigrant, George Handel,
who had first come over to England while Queen Anne was on the
throne. Following the traditional conventions of patronage, Handel
had contributed pieces to her birthday festivities, and dedicated to
her his new opera, Rinaldo, whose sensational staging featured
water fountains and a flock of live birds. Herself a talented musician,
Anne later granted him an annual pension of £200 as a reward.
While George was still the Elector of Hanover, he had fired Handel
for displaying his pro-­British political allegiance, but he was now
restored to favour, and arias from Rinaldo were performed during
the coronation ceremonies.4
Taking up residence in St James’s Palace, George I imported
many—but significantly not all—members of his Hanoverian
family. His wife, Sophia Dorothea, was left behind, having been
despatched many years previously to near isolation in a small
country village during their messy, acrimonious divorce. Although
in his eyes she had sinned by conducting an adulterous affair,
George did not believe in gender symmetry: his entourage included
not only his father’s illegitimate daughter but also three of his
own, along with their mother, the Baroness Melusine von der
Schulenburg. The couple never married, but lived together openly,
effectively ruling as king and queen.
George I arrived with his son, and after a few weeks permitted
his  daughter-­in-­law, Caroline of Ansbach, to join her husband,
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Hanover-upon-Thames  127

accompanied by their three little girls (older than the ones in

Hogarth’s picture). Whatever his drawbacks or virtues as a mon-
arch, there is no question that as a father-­in-­law he was insufferable.
On  top of separating Princess Caroline from her 7-­year-­old son
Frederick, George I was soon embroiled in open warfare with his
own son, her husband, who physically resembled the wife that he
had so cruelly abandoned. He both loathed and admired Caroline:
perhaps he felt threatened by this intelligent, beautiful woman?
Following months of escalating enmity, the king banished George
and Caroline from his court in St James’s Palace, and forced their
children to live with him. Eventually, they were all officially
reconciled, but this rupture had a profound psychological impact
that would ripple down through the royal generations.
Despite heading a dysfunctional family, when George I died of a
stroke in 1727 he left behind him a stable royal dynasty with a clear
line of succession. He also bequeathed a strong Whig government
headed by Robert Walpole, often described as Britain’s first prime
minister. To mark a definitive break with his father’s regime, George II
indulged in a flamboyant, expensive coronation. One valid if
­flippant summary of this Hanoverian’s long reign is this: George II
spoke only broken English, was openly unfaithful to his wife, and
died after drinking too much hot chocolate and collapsing in the
lavatory. On the other hand, he was militarily and politically
engaged in British affairs.
Most significantly, under Sophia’s guidance he had had the good
sense to marry Caroline of Ansbach, a shrewd and diplomatic
woman who assembled around her London’s leading intellectuals,
including Newton. The ambitious Hanoverian princess and the
elderly British knight took every opportunity to benefit from one
another, and Caroline’s patronage did much to boost Newton’s
metropolitan success.

Caroline of Ansbach (1683–1737)

From Newton’s perspective, Caroline was an excellent choice as

Princess of Wales. For one thing, there was no possibility of
doubting her strong anti-­
Catholic sentiments. Before marrying
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128 Hanover-upon-Thames

George, she had turned down a more prestigious proposal from

Archduke Charles of Austria, son of the Hapsburg emperor, a star
catch who was in line to become the king of Spain. But there
was  a cruel down-­side: marrying him would entail converting to
Catholicism. When this dazzling offer first arrived, Caroline had
been very tempted. Orphaned at a young age, she had been brought
up in various aristocratic households, but now 20 years old and
with no fortune of her own, she knew that she needed to find a
suitable husband. After months of private vacillation, she reneged
on her initial acceptance and decided to reject the Archduke.
Although she had anticipated criticism, after this agonizing period
of soul-­searching, she was widely praised for the sincerity of her
Lutheran convictions and her independence of spirit.
Astutely playing to her strengths, as soon as she reached London
Caroline began actively displaying her Protestant piety. She
regularly and publicly attended church, adopted the recent tradition
of religiously observing the anniversary of Charles I’s death (by
then described as ‘martyrdom’), and dispensed charitable gifts to
Christian causes. As time went by, she gradually converted her
earlier refusal to marry a royal suitor into proof of her virtue: when
the Bishop of London offered to discuss Anglicanism with her, she
imperiously declared him ‘very impertinent to suppose that I, who
refus’d to be Empress for the Sake of the Protestant Religion, don’t
understand it fully’.5
Another great advantage for Caroline was her evident fertility,
and she worked hard to acquire her nationwide reputation as an
exemplary mother, an icon of maternal domesticity. After the
uncertainties about succession during the reigns of William and
Anne, she inspired confidence that the British monarchy would
remain both stable and Protestant into the future. She already had
four healthy children when she arrived in London, and she went on
to have three more who survived—the three in Hogarth’s picture.
Whatever her psychological shortcomings as a mother, she ensured
they were well cared for physically and was—most unusually for
this period—so obsessed with hygiene that the family acquired over
twenty wooden bath tubs, some with wheels for moving them from
room to room.
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Hanover-upon-Thames  129

Female monarchs were regarded as being handicapped by two

innate shortcomings. Their bodies were (supposedly) frail and
subject to their emotions, and married queens were legally
­
­subordinate to their husbands. Elizabeth I had dealt very effectively
with both those problems by emphasizing her sexual power while
remaining single. Anne made it clear that she ruled over her hus-
band, and focused on her appeal as a nursing mother, striving—but
ultimately failing—to guarantee the succession. Alexander Pope
wrote admiringly in the Dunciad, ‘O! She was All a Nation could
require / To satisfie its Hope, or large Desire.’6
Caroline surpassed these predecessors by effectively running the
Court, producing seven potential heirs, and being acclaimed as a
buxom beauty (Figure  7.1). Only a couple of years after Hogarth
finished The Indian Emperor, Caroline commissioned the renowned
Italian artist Jacopo Amigoni to paint her own portrait as a gift for
the royal physician, Richard Mead, who treated Newton in his final
years. Amigoni made a point of including putti in his pictures, and
by Caroline’s left foot he showed two particularly chubby cherubs
holding up a cornucopia brimming over not only with flowers but
also with seven baby heads. These were a tribute both to Mead’s
medical skills and to her own fecundity.
Amigoni’s picture also includes two larger putti hovering above
her head bearing a crown and a wreath to symbolize her intellectual
interests. As a small child, Caroline had received only a patchy
education, and her handwriting remained poor throughout her life.
When she was 13 years old, she went to live with Sophia Charlotte,
sister of the future George I, whom she adored and emulated. Under
her tutelage, Caroline was introduced not only to the delights of
dancing, theatricals, and taking snuff, but also to the conversation
of leading Enlightenment scholars. One of these remained signifi-
cant throughout her life: Gottfried Leibniz, who introduced her to
Newtonian physics.
Although less immediately obvious as a catch than the rejected
Archduke Charles, George was already third in line to the British
throne when Caroline married him in 1705. Apparently he slept
through the wedding sermon, but the marriage proved a great
success—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she
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130 Hanover-upon-Thames

Figure 7.1  Caroline Wilhelmina of Brandenburg-­Ansbach; Jacopo Amigoni, 1735

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Hanover-upon-Thames  131

excelled at making it run smoothly. Sophia Charlotte may have

passed on Sophia’s excellent advice that a marital quarrel should
never escalate into a crisis—or, as she put it, ‘don’t make a
thunderclap out of a fart.’7 From the outside, George and Caroline
appeared genuinely attached to each other, and she bore plenty of
children while quietly tolerating his sexual affairs. As cynics
observed both in Hanover and later in London, it was clear who
was in power:

You may strut, dapper George, but ʼtwill all be in vain;

We know ʼtis Queen Caroline, not you, that reign . . .
Then if you would have us fall down and adore you,
Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before you.8

For her first married decade in Hanover, Caroline had little to do

except produce children and wait patiently until the older
generations had died off. With prudent forethought, she began to
train herself for the future that very probably lay ahead. Christened
Wilhelmina Caroline, she dropped the first name, and welcomed
English visitors to Hanover, who were naturally delighted to win
favour by teaching her the language and serving her tea, that
essential component of British life. Sycophantically, she called her
first daughter Anne, although the British queen systematically
rebutted such overtures from Hanoverian hopefuls.
Arriving in London soon after Anne’s death, Caroline immediately
began implementing Continental customs of intellectual patronage
and support for the arts. An avid collector, she sought out books by
the intellectual men attending her court (but was challenged by
anything in Latin), as well as accumulating gifts and patronizing
London booksellers. Like many immigrants, she was concerned to
make herself seem more English than the English. Her protégé
Desaguliers was so keen to demonstrate his new national allegiance
that he declared a horse could pull the same weight as either
five Englishmen or seven Frenchmen. Similarly, although Caroline
never lost her heavy Germanic accent and felt more comfortable
speaking in French, when she sent three of her children to watch a
play by John Dryden and be painted by William Hogarth, she knew
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132 Hanover-upon-Thames

she was endorsing two prominent defenders of her adopted

­country’s superiority.

Newton at Court

As part of her plan to embed herself within the nation’s affections,

Caroline strategically cultivated leading figures such as Newton,
pressing him to visit her at court and consulting him about
educating her children. Their mutually beneficial relationship was
publicly recognized: poetic references to Caroline as a source of
light who ‘darts her Beams’ were allusions to Newton’s Opticks.9 Left
behind in Hanover, Leibniz became increasingly concerned by her
tantalizing hints that she was being converted to Newtonian ideas.
‘I am in on the experiments, and I am more and more charmed by
colours,’ she wrote to him; ‘I can’t help being a little biased in favour
of the vacuum.’10 Newton naturally encouraged her royal patronage,
which helped him to promote the interests of the Royal Society and
also lent him status among his colleagues. He quietly boasted about
his grandiose connections by dispensing instructions to other Fellows
about where and when to arrive for an official reception at court.11
Caroline was, remarked John Conduitt, ‘the Minerva of her age’.
Such patent flattery was crucial for social survival but can make it
difficult to discern genuine feelings. In the first draft of his Newton
memoirs, Conduitt reported that ‘The Queen . . . frequently desired
to see him, & always expressed great satisfaction in his conversation.
She was graciously pleased to take part in the disputes he was
engaged in during his life, & has shown a great regard for every
thing that concerned his honour & memory since his death.’ As
Conduitt repeatedly revised his manuscript, he first added and then
deleted these words: ‘& yet [the Queen] had the goodness in his
[Newton’s] later years to forbear laying her commands frequently
upon him in consideration of his age’.12 Had Conduitt simply
been complimenting Caroline on her thoughtfulness? Or did he
recognize that she might be bored with accommodating a doddery
old man?
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Newton was delighted to discover that—whether sincerely or from

self-­interest—Caroline manifested fascination in his chronological
studies, enjoyed theological debates, and was willing to take his side
in arguments with Leibniz, her Hanoverian mentor. From her
perspective, her father-­
­ in-­
law George I and Leibniz were both
obstinate, elderly men rooted in Hanoverian culture; Newton was
also obstinate and elderly, but at least he was English and hovered
round the court of the younger royal couple. Clearly exasperated,
she reprimanded the two scholarly rivals: ‘But great men are like
women, who never give up their lovers except with the utmost
chag­rin and mortal anger. And that, gentlemen, is where your opin-
ions have got [you] to.’13
Caroline was determined to ensure that her husband, George,
appeared very different from his father, even though both of them
were in many ways stereotypical royals. They enjoyed being soldiers,
slept with other men’s wives, had few intellectual interests, ate too
much, and attended church out of duty rather than devotion. Both
Georges were also arrogant, obstinate, and hot-­tempered: when
George II was angry, he kicked his wig round the room like a
football. Thanks to Caroline’s manoeuvres, before long she and her
husband had endeared themselves to London’s elite by hosting
lavish and lively entertainments, while George I was publicly
maligned for retreating into the security of his private rooms.
Hostilities between the two generations intensified rapidly. In
July 1717, the younger couple failed to attend George I’s spectacular
première of Handel’s Water Musick, played by fifty musicians in
barges processing along the Thames. That November, cannon fire
announced the arrival of a second royal grandson, but George I
insisted on selecting the new arrival’s godparents. This superficially
trivial provocation had disastrous consequences. Relationships
between the generations had already reached breaking point, and
after several violent shouting matches, George I presented Caroline
with a bleak choice: she could either follow her husband into exile
from St James’s Palace and her children, or she could stay behind on
her own with her three little girls and the baby. An agonizing
decision—but she plumped for the option of following her husband.
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134 Hanover-upon-Thames

After her new-­born son died in the king’s household three months
later, her father-­in-­law remained intransigent, making himself still
more unpopular with his new subjects.
Conveniently for Newton, during their banishment the Prince
and Princess of Wales set up their own court in Leicester House,
very near to his home in St Martin’s Street. Since George I refused
to deal with anybody who visited the younger royals, by frequenting
Caroline’s court Newton was making a strong statement about his
loyalties. Carried across in his sedan chair, he became a regular
visitor at Caroline’s assemblies, to which she also invited London’s
other literati and glitterati—Mary Wortley Montagu, John Gay,
Joseph Addison, Jonathan Swift, John Evelyn—for discussions on
philosophical and religious topics. By importing fashionable
European salon culture, Caroline sought to gain popularity,
although her plan backfired to some extent because Pope and other
visitors she hoped to attract were suspicious of such overt royal
patronage, and circulated scathing comments about her intellectual
pretensions. Swift initially paid several visits to his ‘freind [sic] her
Royal Highness’ but, when the anticipated royal rewards failed to
materialize, he began openly criticizing her.14 Aware that consorting
with royalty brought advantages, Newton let himself be enticed.
Newton died shortly before Caroline came to the throne,
and—as so often happens—promptly acquired still greater glory
posthumously. She immediately set about recruiting this iconic
Englishman for her own campaign to confirm her acquired national
identity. First, she commissioned the Royal Mint’s engraver to
create commemorative medals in gold, silver, and bronze, priced at
three levels to suit different budgets; three years later, she included
Newton’s bust with those of other national heroes inside a fashion-
ably whimsical retreat designed by William Kent, the architect who
planned Conduitt’s monument to Newton in Westminster Abbey.
Located in what is now Kew Gardens, this pseudo-­ ancient
Hermitage nestled among rocks and shrubbery at the end of a tree-­
lined walk; adding to the conceit, she even installed a resident poet.
Inside, the main room was an octagonal chamber with niches even-
tually holding the marble heads of five men—including Newton—
described in a newspaper as ‘the glory of their country: they stampt
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a dignity on human nature: they were all well-­skill’d in those arts

which naturally tend to improve and exalt the mind, mend the
heart, or reform the life.’15
If only Newton had still been alive to bask in the glory! Later
demolished by Capability Brown, this building advertised Caroline’s
intellectual credentials. Perhaps more importantly for her, she was
lauded for abandoning Leibniz, her former friend from Hanover,
and instead installing Newton. If she happened to read this adulation
from a journalist, she would have felt a flush of achievement: ‘she
built herself a Temple in the Hearts of the People of England.’16 On
the other hand, by then she had lost control over the vengeful
pen of Jonathan Swift. Sceptically comparing her to Louis XIV of
France, the Sun King who bolstered his prestige by dispensing
munificent patronage, Swift accused Caroline of economizing by
commemorating the dead instead of supporting the living needy
(he was, of course, thinking of himself):

Lewis the living genious fed,

And raised the Scientific Head;
Our Q—, more frugal of her Meat
Raises those heads which cannot eat.17

Theological Differences

Newton’s first three marble companions inside Caroline’s Hermitage

were British philosophers renowned at the time, if not now, for
their engagement in theological debates—Samuel Clarke, John
Locke, and William Wollaston. The prominent central niche,
decorated with a sunburst of golden rays, was later occupied by
Robert Boyle, whose painted portrait dominated Caroline’s picture
gallery. Although Newton and Boyle are today celebrated as scientific
pioneers, it was their religious commitment that prompted Caroline
to award them a place in her hall of fame. In his will, Boyle had
left money to fund eight church sermons a year, with the intention
of consolidating the links between traditional Christianity and the
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136 Hanover-upon-Thames

latest innovations in natural philosophy. Many of these lectures

reinforced Newtonianism by making it compatible with the teach-
ings of the scriptures. Naturally, Newton was a keen supporter of
this initiative.18
Caroline enjoyed dramatic Newtonian demonstrations, and she
splashed out on expensive instruments later put on display in the
Queen’s Gallery at Kensington Palace, notably a large orrery whose
internal clockwork rotated to display the movements of the planets.
But when it came to serious salon conversation, she preferred to
focus on religion. Her personal copy of Kneller’s 1689 Newton
portrait showed him not with a telescope or a prism, but with the
biblical Book of Daniel, to which he devoted great attention in the
final decade of his life; this picture was, she declared, one of her
favourite possessions. According to Conduitt (presumably choosing
to gloss over the fracas with Conti), Newton had ‘often had the
honour to hear Her Majesty say before the whole circle, that she
kept the abstract of Chronology Sr Isaac gave her written in his own
hand among her choicest treasures & that she thought it a happiness
to have lived at the same time, & have known so great a man.’19
Caroline’s interest stemmed from her former life in Hanover,
when, as well as wrestling with the distinctions between Catholicism
and Lutheranism, she had become preoccupied with the difficulty
of explaining how a benevolent, perfect God can tolerate the
existence of evil and suffering. She often discussed this thorny
problem with Leibniz, who was such an expert that he even invented
the topic’s formal label—theodicy—for the title of his 1710 book,
which he wrote in French, the international language among
­scholars and aristocrats.
Leibniz never married, but three powerful women played crucial
roles in his scholarly life and reputation. The first was Sophia
(mother of George I), followed by her daughter Sophia Charlotte
(Prussia’s first queen), and then finally Caroline, the aristocratic
orphan the older women took into their care. While Sophia was still
alive, Leibniz tried to bolster his insecure position in the Hanoverian
court through Sophia, who recommended him to her influential
friends. Their bond turned out to be far stronger than a conventional
patronage arrangement: they exchanged over 300 letters, which
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Hanover-upon-Thames  137

reveal not only her support but also their shared interest in
philosophical debate (they also swapped snippets of gossip they
thought might come in handy). In his position as the Elector’s
librarian, Leibniz travelled around Europe collecting information
for his history of the royal family, an unwelcome task he never
completed, mournfully comparing himself to King Sisyphus, who
was eternally condemned to push a boulder up a hill and watch it
roll down again just before reaching the top.
From the next generation, Sophia Charlotte also proved a loyal
and influential patron. After persuading her husband, the king of
Prussia, to found a scientific academy, she made sure that Leibniz
was appointed as its first president. More confrontational than her
mother, she often invited Leibniz to stay at her palace, where she
continually pushed and probed further on theological questions,
forcing him to clarify his thoughts. After she died suddenly—
poisoned, according to the rumours—Leibniz retreated into
depression, repeatedly recycling their conversations in his head.
Eventually, he hauled himself together by converting them into his
book on theodicy, the only one he ever published.20
By then, Caroline had moved to Hanover, but she had first met
Leibniz in 1703, when she was living in Berlin with Sophia
Charlotte. Confronted with the possibility of marrying Archduke
Charles, it was to Leibniz that Caroline turned for advice about
converting to Catholicism. After she left for London in 1714,
Leibniz hoped for a strong ally right inside the English court,
although he soon felt that her loyalty was fading under Newton’s
influence. Where Handel had succeeded, Leibniz failed. He did visit
London, but George I despatched him back to his job as the Elector’s
librarian, a dismissal that suited Newton perfectly. It was very much
in his interests to keep Leibniz out of this transplanted Hanoverian
court next to the Thames so that he could maintain his own
supremacy as the royal scientific expert.
When Caroline tried to find an English translator for Leibniz’s
Théodicée, she was introduced to one of Britain’s leading theologians,
Dr Samuel Clarke, and he soon became a regular visitor to her court.
A clergyman and former Boyle lecturer, Clarke held unorthodox
views about the Trinity and leaned towards Arianism—so in some
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138 Hanover-upon-Thames

ways he resembled Newton, although less extreme and more

­diplomatic. Unusually, he understood the Principia so well that he
could debate its metaphysical concepts with Newton himself. Clarke
belongs on the very short list of people who could be described as
Newton’s close friends—although ‘paid acolyte’ might be a better
label, since Newton rewarded him with £500 for translating Opticks
into Latin.
While Princess Caroline was debating theology in her cor­res­
pond­ence with Leibniz, she was also engaged in conversations with
Newton and Clarke. In 1715, puzzling over her beliefs, she wrote to
ask Leibniz for advice about a point in Clarke’s theology, a step that
launched five rounds of angry letters between the two men. Acting
as intermediary, Caroline did far more than just watch from the
sidelines: she monitored the exchange and influenced its conduct.
Newton realized that he had an excellent opportunity for pursuing
his vindictive quarrel with Leibniz while staying out of the direct
line of fire. As soon as an answer arrived from Hanover, Caroline
would send it round to Newton for consideration, and she also
invited Newton to visit her privately with Clarke.
Torn between loyalty to Leibniz, her protector in Hanover, and
her desire to cultivate his arch-­rival, Newton, Caroline knew that
any association with the British hero would help her broader project
of endearing herself to her future subjects. Sensitive to her internal
tussle, Leibniz watched sadly as she slipped away from his side to
fall under the influence of Newton, Clarke, and their allies. The
exchange came to an end when Leibniz died, and soon Clarke
published an annotated, pro-­ Newtonian version of the entire
correspondence. Effectively a piece of propaganda, this book greatly
boosted Newton’s reputation. Many people assumed that Newton
was the sole author of Clarke’s replies, whereas this was a joint
production in which Caroline had played a crucial role while
Newton remained concealed back-­stage.21
God, government, and the cosmos were inextricably tied
together, so that, as Leibniz commented, the quarrel was not only a
personal one between him and Newton but also a national one
between Germany and Britain. It was impossible to disentangle
metaphysical controversies from political differences, whether
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concerning Newton v Leibniz, or the Tories v the Whigs, or the

French v the English, or non-­Conformists v Anglicans v Catholics.
Because the central question concerned God’s involvement in the
cosmos, the debates resonated across Europe. As Newton saw it,
God and the universe are inseparable: God constantly intervenes in
its operation and somehow (a one-­ word euphemism that here
stands in for reams of scholarly exegesis) pervades the whole of
space and time. Leibniz (and many others) found that view
impossible to accept, partly because it is hard to understand how a
purely spiritual being such as God can interact with material,
worldly objects that are inherently lifeless. Ostensibly attacking
Clarke, but really aiming at Newton, in his first response to Caroline
Leibniz delivered a beautifully formulated but insulting challenge:
‘Sir Isaac Newton, and his followers, have also a very odd opinion
concerning the work of God. According to their doctrine, God
Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise
it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to
make it a perpetual motion.’22
Leibniz was referring to the familiar image of a clockwork
universe, which—like all metaphors—operated in two directions.
The first cathedral clocks were constructed not primarily to tell the
time, but more to advertise God’s splendour in creating a universe
with steadily circulating planets. Reciprocally, natural philosophers
designed theoretical models in which planets circulated with the
mechanical regularity characterizing an accurate clock. Leibniz was
only too aware that, in real life, machines are intrinsically imperfect,
that ordinary clocks break down and have to be repaired. During
any time left over from arguing with Newton and fulfilling his
library responsibilities, Leibniz was struggling with the physical
problems of constructing an arithmetical calculator. As his assistant
kept purloining parts to mend a clock, Leibniz despaired of ever
getting his machine to work properly.
While he accepted the imperfections of human-­made instru-
ments, Leibniz judged it sacrilegious to imply that God could not
design the eternally rotating cog-­wheels he so longed to create
for himself. By building his calculator from clock components
that his assistant so annoyingly appropriated, Leibniz was following
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140 Hanover-upon-Thames

standard practice in a culture that relied on renewal. Materials were

constantly being used over and over again to repair what was
­broken or had worn out, and to supply what was needed for making
something new. Recycling was so ingrained that the word had not
been invented, and the concept permeates Newton’s life and cos-
mos. He ordered that old coins be melted down to make new ones;
he converted a child’s toy into an experimental prism; he eco­nom­ic­
al­ly used the heat from horse dung to warm his alchemical cru­
cibles. Contemplating the earth, Newton envisaged a repetitive
cycle of terrestrial airs ascending and turning into aether before
tumbling down again for reconversion, speculating that the world
resembles ‘a great animall or rather inanimate vegetable, draws in
aethereall breath for its dayly refreshment & vitall ferment &
transpires again wth grosse exhaltations’. Extending that notion of
constant circulation to the entire universe, he suggested that comet
tails consist of vegetative matter, as if they were energy-­laden repair
kits sent in by God to correct gravitational discrepancies.23
Leibniz accused Newton of positing a fallible God who had
created an imperfect universe, but there were advantages to a God
who is immanent throughout the universe and can affect how it
operates. A truly clockwork universe, one that never needs
adjustment, is ordained to rotate for ever, but in principle such
determinism precludes the possibility of free will. Newtonians
argued that a perfect God who is worshipped from afar is like a
human sovereign who rules with total authority and denies free-
dom to his subjects. The liberty of the people depends on having a
wise and loving ruler whose interests coincide with their own—a
resident God, as it were—so that any decisions are mutually
advantageous.
Both men were poker-­faced players in the international game of
patronage. While Newton stayed out of sight in his house near
Leicester Square, Leibniz tried to exert action-­at-­a-­distance from
Hanover by reminding Caroline that he intended to dedicate the
English translation of Théodicée to her. More ambitiously, Leibniz
hoped to unite several different non-­Catholic sects and, as one of
his tactics, he bracketed together Locke, Newton, and Clarke,
accusing them of following a heretical creed called Socinianism.
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These three men found themselves ranked together in Caroline’s

Hermitage, her demonstration of Anglo-­ Hanoverian loyalty to
Great Britain. As the editor of the Free Briton rejoiced, ‘not even her
own Leibnitz is allowed a place there’.24

Desaguliers and the Royal Family

While he was working on his large picture for Conduitt, Hogarth

was given permission to paint the royal family, although the
commission was cancelled after he had completed only two oil
sketches, which are essentially identical.25 The more finished of
these, still in the Royal Collection, shows George II and Queen
Caroline supposedly relaxing with all seven of their children next to
an ersatz temple in the gardens at Richmond. The project may well
have been prematurely cancelled because Hogarth’s design painfully
reveals the rifts ripping the family apart: if this outdoor conversation
piece had been made public, it would only have emphasized the
absence of polite Enlightenment communication amongst the
royals. In the front, the two youngest girls are teaching tricks to a
spaniel, while their parents sit apart from them on an ornate throne,
gazing out into the middle distance. Close to the king stands a small
ungainly boy—William, the favourite child—formally dressed as a
miniature adult and apparently protecting them all with his
outstretched sword. Far over on the other side of the picture stands
Frederick, the outcast technically due to inherit the throne but sep-
arated from his parents by the next three daughters.
As girls, Frederick’s five sisters represented a burden that had
either to be supported for life, or else negotiated over until a
sufficiently rich and influential husband could be persuaded to
assume responsibility for them. In a grand climax to many stormy,
tearful rows, the oldest—Anne—declared she would rather marry a
baboon than stay with her parents, and after a sumptuous wedding
she disappeared to Holland. The other two older siblings remained
trapped in the stultifying daily routine of silk embroidery, demure
walks, and mild gambling over card-­ games; succumbing to
­ill-­health and parental obstinacy, they never escaped into even an
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142 Hanover-upon-Thames

unhappy marriage. Of the two little ones in Hogarth’s picture,

Louisa became very popular as Queen of Norway and Denmark,
but died in her twenties of horrific complications resulting from
repeated childbirth. Her slightly older sister, Mary, soon moved in
to look after the babies, delighted to be freed from an abusive
marriage and determined to stay away from England.
When she was their age, Queen Caroline had been forced to obey
her father-­in-­law’s diktat that Frederick should be left behind in
Hanover. For over two decades, this first son was spurned by both
parents as if they were somehow obliging him to re-­enact their own
painful childhood experiences. Caroline was an orphan, and
George II probably never saw his divorced exiled mother after he
was 11 years old; similarly, Frederick was forced to live in a different
country from Caroline for fourteen years. There are no surviving
letters between them, and he was not invited to his parents’
coronation in 1727—and another full year went by before they
grudgingly offered him a cool reception in London. Courtiers
found Frederick to be very different from George II—artistic, shy,
and withdrawn, with no inclination towards military activities
(although he did like women and gambling). In London, he moved
into his own residence at Kew, and after a few years of contact and
public displays of unity, relationships broke down more or less
completely. One possibility is that he was not really their son: at his
birth, rumours circulated that the healthy boy of a Turkish footman
had been secretly substituted for a sickly royal girl.
Caroline and Frederick did, however, share an interest in
Newtonianism, and Desaguliers slipped in and out of both
households as he searched for patronage. His first official com-
mission seems to have been to lecture at Hampton Court in 1717,
shortly before the two generations of Georges became estranged.26
Perhaps hoping to alleviate the family tensions, Desaguliers enter-
tained the royals with spectacular experiments designed to impress
as much as to educate. Typical items in the repertoire of such scien-
tific salon performances were (literally) shocking spectators with an
electrical machine, displaying large clockwork models of the p ­ lanets
revolving around the sun, and silencing a ringing bell inside a glass
dome by sucking out the air. His presentations must have gone
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Hanover-upon-Thames  143

down well, because he successfully persuaded the Prince and

Princess of Wales to join George I in subscribing to his influential
book on Newtonian physics.
Desaguliers knew that his major royal prospect for obtaining
funds was Caroline. It is impossible to be sure how many times he
actually met her, because those seeking patronage had few qualms
about exaggerating the significance of minor events. Taking every
opportunity to demonstrate his allegiance, Desaguliers even made
public their shared birthday of 1st March—such a bore, he
remarked, having to wait an extra day every leap year—and possibly
it was under his influence that she donated some communion plate
to a Huguenot church in Westminster. To celebrate George II’s
coronation, he organized a firework display at Edgware, near the
estate of Lord Chandos, when ‘all the Inhabitants of the Town rode
out with Trumpets and Musick . . . the Reverend Doctor Desaguliers
at their Head, who play’d off a very handsome firework at Night, to
conclude the Rejoicings.’27
Desaguliers could hardly have expected Caroline to hear about
his Edgware performance, but as part of his bid to secure her
continued support, the following year he published a long
allegorical poem that flatteringly likened the enlightened new
monarchs to the powerful sun at the centre of a Newtonian universe.
In The Newtonian System of the World, the best Model of Government,
he portrayed the royal couple as liberated rulers radiating love. As
well as being self-­serving, Desaguliers’s poem was simultaneously
scientific and theological and political, those three inseparable
strands that threaded through so many texts of the time. Implicitly
contrasting the British model of government with top-­ down
regimes, Desaguliers praised the king and queen for guiding rather
than controlling the freely moving citizens of a democratic society.

That Sol self-­pois’d in Aether does reside,

And thence exerts his Virtue far and wide;
Like Ministers attending e’ery Glance,
Six Worlds sweep round his Throne in Mystick Dance.
He turns their Motion from its devious Course,
And bends their Orbits by Attractive Force;
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144 Hanover-upon-Thames

His Pow’r, coerc’d by Laws, still leaves them free,

Directs, but not Destroys, their Liberty . . .
ATTRACTION now in all the Realm is seen
To bless the Reign of GEORGE and CAROLINE.28

Desaguliers’s poem was published belatedly in 1728, the year

after the coronation, because he insisted on completing copious
astronomical explanations to accompany it. When Frederick was at
last recalled from exile in Hanover, Desaguliers began cultivating
this new source of royal patronage. Formally, he was employed as
one of Frederick’s chaplains, but by the time Caroline died in 1737,
he had ingratiated himself sufficiently well to become an established
member of Frederick’s household at Kew, helping him to soak up
the long, idle hours by teaching him natural philosophy. During the
mourning period for his mother, reported a lady-­in-­waiting, ‘The
Prince lives retired, seeing no company. We have a new amusement
here, which is both very entertaining and instructive. Dr Desaguliers
has a large room fitted up at the top of the house, where he has all
his mathematical and mechanical instruments at one end and a
Planetarium at the other . . . The Doctor reads lectures every day
which the Prince attends diligently.’29
By aligning himself with Frederick, Desaguliers alienated himself
from George II. But when Frederick’s son became George III, he
inherited his father’s instrument collection—now preserved in
London’s Science Museum—and remained interested in science
throughout his reign. Newton and Desaguliers both set out to
further their own immediate interests, but by picking such power-
ful royal patrons, they also influenced the sciences of the future.
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ACT III
THE PLAY
ISAAC NEWTON AND ENGLISH IMPERIALISM

Restoration playwrights jettisoned melodramatic heroes to create

more realistic, complex characters whose failings laid bare the under-
lying nature of human life; like William Hogarth’s paintings, the mir-
ror world of the stage reflected realities of human existence and held
them up for inspection. First performed in 1665, John Dryden’s The
Indian Emperour remained a perennial favourite for decades, even
though literary critics delighted in identifying grammatical slips and
dramatic shortcomings.1
Restoration theatre was political theatre, and this story about love,
honour, and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was also a
commentary on current affairs—the splendour of the royal court,
England’s commercial and territorial battles against Dutch rivals, the
decline and fall of once-­mighty empires. Lacking accurate knowledge,
and conflating various interpretations of ‘Indian’, theatrical designers
applied Eastern stereotypes to depict American peoples with little con-
cern for verisimilitude. Early productions featured the king’s lover
Nell Gwyn (not one of her best performances, according to Samuel
Pepys) as well as an exuberant feathered coat from Surinam contrib-
uted by the playwright Aphra Behn.2
Even if later repeats were less exotic, the script included sufficient
plot twists, musical interludes, and macabre incantations to grip
generations of spectators. By the time of its performance in
Conduitt’s drawing room, Dryden’s play seemed rather old-­fashioned.
Restoration drama was being increasingly parodied, and that year
Henry Fielding’s Tragedy of Tragedies opened, watched by two older
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146  Act III: The Play

sisters of the small royal children shown here. Fielding’s play—published

with a frontispiece by Hogarth—satirized Dryden’s poetic style and
addressed more modern themes by mocking women as ferocious
consumers both of commercial products and male suitors.3
Yet, politically reinterpreted, The Indian Emperour had become
freshly relevant in the early eighteenth century, when the South Sea
Company was promising huge rewards from trading in the southern
Americas. In its first four lines, some Spaniards arrive on the Central
American coast. Setting out their plans to conquer the land and its
riches, they marvel at the unspoilt abundance lying around them, an
obvious parallel to the lucrative opportunities for British adventurers
in Africa and other distant parts of the globe:

On what new happy Climate are we thrown,

So long kept secret, and so lately known;
As if our old world modestly withdrew,
And here in private had brought forth a new?4

Playing fast and loose with the historical facts, Dryden’s convoluted
plot explores the tussles for power between the Mexican emperor
Montezuma, an equally fictionalized version of the Spanish conqueror
Hernán Cortés, an anachronistic Francisco Pizarro, and some largely
imaginary subsidiary protagonists. Basically, all the key characters
are in love with and/or loved by two people, but not always recipro-
cally. Few of them come out of it well. Montezuma commits suicide
rather than receive Spanish charity, Cortez follows the flawed orders
of his distant king, and the Indian princess Almeria stabs both herself
and her rival for Cortez’s heart. The details of these conflicts are less
important than the moral dilemmas confronted by the characters,
who are repeatedly forced to choose between honour, love, and lib-
erty—ideals as important in Conduitt’s time as in Dryden’s.
As its name suggests, The Indian Emperour is permeated with
what now seem to be racial slurs and stereotypes of indigenous
­peoples, although it was then standard to regard non-­Europeans as
primitive. Even so, at times Dryden’s Indians display high moral
standards and theological sensitivity, while the major villain of the
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Act III: The Play  147

piece is ruthless, rapacious Pizarro. In Cortez, Dryden presents an

appealing hero who honourably subordinates his own desires to the
greater interests of king and country. In comparison with Pizarro and
the other Spanish characters, he is civil and magnanimous, innocent
of the horrendous torture that is imposed by a Roman Catholic priest.
Following French fashions, to explore his imperial and religious
themes, Dryden decided to compose a poetic tragedy in heroic
coup­lets. During the eighteenth century, these pairs of rhyming lines
in iambic pentameter (five stressed syllables) became a particular
favourite for English poets. This typical example is spoken by
Montezuma, who (in contrast with the European invaders) insists
that he places less importance on being the Emperor of Mexico than
on his love for Almeria, daughter of the late Indian queen:

But of my Crown thou too much care do’st take,

That which I value more, my Love’s at stake.5

While the younger children in Conduitt’s living room could relish the
rapid twists and turns of fortune, the older ones might have contem-
plated the moral questions being posed. Should a leader surrender or
let his people starve? Should a young woman save the life of the
brother she loves by agreeing to marry the one she loathes? Is it better
to die for your country or to marry the person you love? Should you
kill the person who deserts you for somebody else? How can a woman
revenge herself on the ardent older suitor who killed her mother?
These were extreme versions of dilemmas encountered by young
British aristocrats in their lives outside this temporary theatre.
Revered as a great national poet, Dryden composed a feel-­good
play for English audiences, although his rivals criticized him for exag-
gerating New World wildness. ‘This Zany of Columbus’, wrote the
poet Richard Leigh, ‘has discover’d a Poeticall World of greater extent
than the Naturall, peopled with Atlantick Colony’s of notional crea-
tures.’ By deliberately emphasizing South America’s exoticism, Dryden
strengthened his exposure of Spanish barbarism and cruelty. The play
opens with an Aztec mass sacrifice, but that takes place discreetly
off-­stage; in contrast, the final act directly confronts the audience with
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148  Act III: The Play

a horrific spectacle of Montezuma being stretched on a Spanish rack

by a relentless Catholic priest. Leigh regretted that Dryden’s heroes were
‘more lawless than their Savages,’ but that was one of the playwright’s
aims. By making the Spaniards appear as uncivilized as the Aztecs, he
flattered his English audiences, who could feel cultured and honourable.
No English people appear on the stage, an absence implying their
refusal to participate in such depravity. After watching this play,
Conduitt and his colleagues could vaunt themselves as in­trin­sic­al­ly
superior.6
Dryden excelled at making the English look special. A couple of
years after The Indian Emperour first appeared, he published the
long poem—1216 lines—that made him famous: Annus Mirabilis or
The Year of Wonders, which endorsed mercantile capitalist expan-
sion and predicted a prosperous future for England under a strong
monarch. Following the twin scourges of the Plague and the Great
Fire, London would, he optimistically predicted, become the centre of
global trade:

Now, like a Maiden Queen, she will behold,

From her high Turrets, hourly Sutors come;
The East with Incense, and the West with Gold,
Will stand, like Suppliants, to receive her doom.7

By the time his imperial drama was performed in Conduitt’s drawing

room almost seventy years later, Dryden’s ambitious dream was in the
process of being realized. European leaders had split the world into
three areas to colonize, exploit, and fight over: Asia, the Americas,
and Africa. For Conduitt’s chauvinistic friends, the metropolis was
the lynchpin not only of Great Britain but also of the entire globe. By
commissioning Hogarth to paint The Indian Emperour, Conduitt
was advertising his pride in being British and also his loyalty to the
Whig ideals he shared with Newton and the government.
The Whig buzzword ‘liberty’ appears throughout the play and
becomes crucial towards the end, when Alibech proudly rejects
Cortez’s offer of power—‘Our Liberty’s the only gift we chuse,’ she
declares.8 Yet freedom is a problematic ideal. ‘The word Liberty’, com-
mented one eighteenth-­century theatregoer at another play, ‘never
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Act III: The Play  149

failes of a Whigg Clap but more especially in one Place where Cato
laments the Loss of Rome & Liberty more than that of his son who
lyes dead before him.’9 British liberty could also be interpreted by
Whig merchants as the freedom to pursue profit for their own benefit,
regardless of the consequences to others.
The Whigs that Newton helped put in power aspired not to global
harmony but to British supremacy, openly embracing slavery in the
interests of commercial profit. Queen Anne scored a diplomatic coup
by signing the Treaty of Utrecht, which included a political sweetener
transferring trading rights from the French to the British in the
Americas. As she explained, the ‘Contract for furnishing the Spanish
West-­Indies with Negroes shall be made with Us for the Term of Thirty
Years, in the same manner as it hath been enjoyed by the French for
Ten Years past.’ Thomas Tickell—the poet whose party loyalty earned
him the nickname ‘Whigissimus’ (the most Whiggish), succinctly
(if not very elegantly) summarized his party’s attitudes:

Fearless our Merchant now may fetch his Gain,

And roam securely o’er the boundless Main.10
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8
Making Money

When the royal children and their aristocratic elders watched the
performance in Conduitt’s drawing room, Dryden’s play was almost
seventy years old, but it reiterated a familiar fantasy—that inexhaustible
supplies of gold lay across the oceans waiting to be discovered by
European adventurers. In the opening scene, Vasquez expresses the
collective wonder of the Spanish travellers:

Methinks, we walk in dreams on fairy Land,

Where golden Ore lies mixt with common sand;1

Like Englishmen arriving on the coast of West Africa, the intruders

assume that God has given them—privileged Europeans—the right to
take whatever they desire from countries that are waiting to be pos-
sessed, despite being already inhabited:

Heaven from all ages wisely did provide

This wealth, and for the bravest Nation hide,
Who, with four hundred foot and forty horse,
Dare boldly go a New found World to force.2

Dryden gives Vasquez the lines of an arrogant colonialist perceiving a

Primitive Other:

No useful arts have yet found footing here,

But all untaught and savage does appear.

Cortez is rather more sophisticated. For him, the Indians are indeed
different, but they possess the innate nobility of those who have not
yet been corrupted by civilization:
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152  Making Money

Wild and untaught are Terms which we alone

Invent, for fashions differing from our own:
For all their Customs are by Nature wrought,
But we, by Art, unteach what Nature taught.3

Conduitt’s guests watched this scene only a decade after Newton and
other unwary British investors had poured money into the South Sea
Company, which predicted great dividends from exploiting the south-
ern Americas. That scheme’s failure did little to dampen expectations.
Attention now focused on Africa, whose natural resources—people,
minerals, ivory—circulated around the globe in a triangular trading
loop that promised to produce endless profit for wealthy Londoners.
That concept of perpetual productivity was appealing and meta-
phorically familiar. Faith in paper money relied on believing that
wealth can always be generated, resembling the machinery of Newton’s
cosmos that never winds down but is maintained in constant motion
by God. At the Mint, Newton recycled old coins into new ones, a con-
tinuous process that the economist Adam Smith deemed ‘somewhat
like the web of Penelope; the work that was done in the day was
undone in the night. The Mint was employed not so much in making
daily additions to the coin as in replacing the very best part of it which
was daily melted down.’4 Nicholas Barbon, the ruthless entrepreneur
who grew rich from shoddy housing schemes, maintained that ‘the
Stock of a Nation [is] infinite, and can never be consumed; For what
is Infinite, can neither receive Addition by Parsimony, nor suffer
Diminution by Prodigality.’5
The spectators in Conduitt’s drawing room could also interpret
Dryden’s play to confirm their chauvinistic prejudices about British
superiority over the lazy and imprudent Spaniards. Landing in the
southern Americas, they had seized the precious ores that were read-
ily available and then spent the profits. In contrast, British imperial-
ists congratulated themselves on not simply grabbing the gold but
behaving industriously and sensibly by improving natural resources.
Governed by what Max Weber much later termed the Protestant work
ethic, they concentrated on getting rich through virtuous labour. In
the northern Americas, which lacked valuable minerals, settlers
developed their new territory’s agricultural potential. Similarly, astute
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Making Money  153

financiers with global ambitions maximized the benefits of African

gold by using it to boost Britain’s flagging economy.

* * *
In June 1696, a couple of months after Newton arrived at the Mint,
two men in a draper’s shop on London Bridge embarked on one of
those familiar conversations about everything in the country going
downhill. A customer, Robert Morgan, began moaning about the
widespread economic hardship that he—like many others—attributed
to the Glorious Revolution. Coins were in short supply, he com-
plained, and he only had a few old clipped shillings in his pocket.
‘Was not the tradeing better when King James was here than now?’
he demanded of Edmund Baker, the apprentice behind the counter.
‘[T]hen our Lives must have paid for it’, replied Baker, who rated
freedom from royal tyranny higher than wealth. But ‘our Livelyhoods
& Lives goes now,’ grumbled Morgan, who suspected that the new
government had ruined trade while establishing networks of spies
and informers to stifle opposition.6
Newton would have sided with Baker in this argument, but
Morgan did have a point: those who had already been poor were
suffering more than the wealthy. After a relatively prosperous and
peaceful era under the Stuarts, the new government had begun
imposing heavier taxes to replenish the nation’s depleted coffers
and finance a series of expensive wars. In addition, poor harvests
were causing food shortages, immigrants were being blamed for
unemployment, and chaotic attempts to reform the currency had
precipitated a financial crisis that resulted in many wages being
stopped. Money, tax, and trade became the three buzzwords that
dominated coffee-­house conversations and journal articles. This
was the situation that Newton inherited at the Mint and spent the
following three decades trying to sort out.
Newton’s long-­term economic influence was significant globally
as well as nationally. During his lifetime, heading the Mint was a
government appointment that commanded more wealth, prestige,
and influence than any of his scholarly activities. How else could he
have met Czar Peter of Russia? Newton was responsible for manu-
facturing coins efficiently and accurately, but he also monitored the
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154  Making Money

country’s economy, taking on a role somewhat comparable to

­governing the Bank of England today. Benefiting from the influx of
African gold, he earned nearly £3500 during his fifth year as Master
of the Mint, whereas his salary as Lucasian Professor had been
£100, and the presidency of the Royal Society was an unpaid
position.
The Royal Society was less important than its Fellows would have
liked it to be, and it was only in the nineteenth century that they
became powerful players on the national stage. It was at the Mint,
not the Royal Society, that a wrong prediction by Newton had inter-
national consequences. Thanks to the policies he implemented, in
1717 Britain became the first country in the world to adopt gold as
its standard. Remaining in power until he died, Newton took deci-
sions that affected Britain’s international trade, reputation, and
imperial expansion.

Recoinage

Modern theories of economics are extremely sophisticated, yet, as

demonstrated by financial collapses, they do not always produce
the right answers. Newtonian mathematics can predict the date of
an eclipse or the path of a comet with spot-­on precision, but—as
Newton found out for himself during the South Sea Bubble—
stock-­market fluctuations are harder to confine within an algebraic
formula. When he started work at the Mint in May 1696, the country
had been wracked by financial problems for several years, but no
mathematical models of supply and demand, or of inflation and
depression, were available. The implications of making interven-
tions had to be thought through from scratch, and bitter disagree-
ments repeatedly culminated in procrastination. By the mid-­1690s,
Parliament had finally accepted that doing nothing was not going to
resolve a situation spiralling downwards out of control. Newton was
called in to implement a remedy with which he disagreed—and
despite his ruthless thoroughness, it failed to work.7
The non-­ decimal and mutually incompatible currencies of
seventeenth-­century Europe now seem arcane, although the British
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Making Money  155

system survived until 1971. Newton covered many, many pages

with calculations, and this brief extract from one eight-­ page
­hand-­written memorandum is a typical example: ‘From Decemb.
31 1689 to Decemb. 31 1699 there has been coyned in Gold
2059384. 06. 07. If an eighth part thereof be subducted as weighty
guineas culled out & sent back to the Mint & to the remainder be
added the French & Spanish Pistols & Guineas which came hither
from abroad {w}hen Guineas were at 30s a piece & afterwards at 22s
& all which (considering that above a million has been coyned here
out of forreign Gold monies & that Pistolls are here at a higher
value then Guineas) I’le reccon at about a million & an half . . ..’8
In this extract, Newton refers to the value of guineas—recently
invented coins minted with gold from the African region of
Guinea—in shillings, which he abbreviates as s. For understanding
the challenges he faced, the modern unfamiliarity of shillings and
guineas is relatively trivial: what really matters is that coins were
conceptually different. Instead of being tokens with no intrinsic
value, they were made of precious metal: in principle, although
often not in practice, a coin labelled ‘pound’ was worth a pound
after being melted down and converted into bullion. As an added
complication, coins were not all made of the same metal. Traditionally,
international values were based on silver, but now African gold was
being used for large purchases, which led to still more difficulties.
As the Council of Trade reported, ‘For it be impossible, that more
than one Metal should be the true Measure of Commerce; and the
world by common Consent and Convenience [has] settled that
Measure in Silver; Gold . . . is to be looked upon as a Commodity
[whose] value will always be changeable.’9
Another problem was crime. Years before Newton arrived at the
Mint, the system had already begun breaking down because coins
were tampered with by clippers, criminals who filed away slivers
from the edges and compensated by hammering the metal thinner.
When an abandoned bag of silver coins was dug up in Bristol some
250 years later, it weighed only two thirds of what it should have
done. Ironically, modernization had made the problem worse.
Under Charles II, French equipment had been installed to replace
the skilled craftsmen hammering by hand. The precise design of
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156  Making Money

Figure 8.1  ‘The Art of Coining’, Universal Magazine, 1750

this imported machinery was guarded as a state secret, and this

engraving of 1750 (Figure 8.1) seems to be the earliest British illus-
tration of operations hidden away behind the Tower’s stone walls.
Heavy screw presses, controlled with rotating levers by two strong
men, stamped the coin’s pattern on to blanks put in place by a third
man (plenty of opportunity for squashed fingers). When Newton
was vetting performance, the strike rate shot up to almost once a
second. Another machine, shown at the back right, created milled
edges that were virtually tamper-­proof.
Because the precious-­ metal content of these machine-­ tooled
coins was guaranteed, people either saved them in case of future
need or melted them down to make an immediate profit by selling
the bullion abroad. As a consequence, everyday transactions were
increasingly being carried out with older, damaged, hand-­made
money. Nothing was fixed in this shifting monetary arrangement,
which reached crisis point in 1695. Golden guineas were worth far
above their face-­value, while silver coins were in short supply, either
hoarded away as an investment or shipped abroad as melted-­down
bars to pay for luxuries. Clipped money remained in circulation,
but good coins were effectively dead cash, unavailable for public
use. Agricultural prices were rising, the exchange rate was falling,
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Making Money  157

and the new Bank of England was spending around £200,000

a  week just to support the army. Even ordinary shopping could
involve long processes of bargaining, because traders were ‘necessi-
tated first to settle the Price of the Value of the very Money they are
to Receive for their Goods; and if it be in Guineas at a High Rate or
in Bad Moneys they set the Price of their Goods accordingly.’ People
began carrying portable scales to weigh the money they were being
offered.10
The Secretary of the Treasury, William Lowndes, decided to con-
sult some experts, including Christopher Wren, John Locke, and
Isaac Newton. Their opinions differed. Still based in Cambridge,
Newton agreed with Lowndes that there should be parity between
bulk metal and minted money—that the silver (or other precious
metal) in a coin should be worth the same as its face-­value, neither
more nor less. As he explained, if the silver content were too high,
then traders would melt down the coins to sell the raw metal, and
the Mint would be losing money by buying expensive silver and
converting it into less valuable coins. ‘It seems reasonable that an
Ounce of Bullion should be by Parliament Enacted of the same
Value with a Crown-­Piece of Milled Money,’ he wrote in response
to Lowndes’s questionnaire, ‘thereby to prevent the Melting or
Exporting it, and to make the Milling of Bullion Practicable
­without Loss.’11
There were, and there still are, ardent debates about the pros and
cons of the various remedies proposed, which had political as well
as financial implications. For Whig supporters of King William
such as Newton, defacing the currency was symbolically equivalent
to harming the monarch, and the financial crisis could be inter-
preted as a Tory conspiracy. Some modern economic historians
argue that Newton was right, and they vaunt him as a prescient
advocate of devaluation, even though that term was not introduced
until the early twentieth century, when markets operated differently.
Although Newton recommended reducing the silver content of
coins, he was outvoted in Lowndes’s advisory group, notably by
Locke, who contended that the value of silver could not in itself rise
or fall: an ounce of silver was an ounce of silver, and was worth only
what people were willing to exchange for it. He maintained that
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158  Making Money

there should be a complete recoinage—that all the clipped money

in the country should be melted down and reissued in coins that
contained the same amount of silver as their face-­value. This strat-
egy was adopted, although modified by Newton’s insistence that the
procedure should take place gradually rather than instantaneously.
At last, after yet more prevarications and hesitations, in December
1695 Newton’s patron Charles Montagu persuaded Parliament to
vote for all clipped coins to be recalled, made illegal as tender, and
converted into new money. The chaos was immediate, despite sev-
eral pieces of emergency patch-­up legislation. One immediate diffi-
culty arose because the timetable for withdrawing the clipped silver
coins was unrealistically rapid and scheduled in complicated steps.
Uncertainty reigned right from the beginning, so that nobody
would accept old money as payment in case it soon proved to be
worthless. All over the country, tradesmen were unable to settle
their bills or buy raw materials because their money had in effect
lost its purchasing power. Even those lucky enough to own valuable
golden guineas found them of little use for paying a daily wage of
thirteen pennies or buying a pound of beef for three.12 In contrast,
rich metropolitan merchants knew how to offload their coins rap-
idly at face-­value, even gaining rather than losing in the process.
And then there was the question of paying for the recoinage,
which was an extremely expensive operation entailing not only the
administrative costs of collection and production but also the
replacement of all the silver that had been literally shaved away
from the currency by clippers. Normal Mint expenses were covered
by charging duty on imported liquor, but to deal with this excep-
tional case, Parliament imposed an ingenious sliding-­scale tax on
windows, to be paid not by a house’s owners but by its inhabitants.
That tax lasted for well over a century, and its legacy can still be
seen in the bricked-­up windows that helped people avoid payment
but did little for their health and their eyesight.
Even though he had argued against recoinage, Newton gratefully
accepted Montagu’s offer of taking over as Warden of the Mint,
moving to the Tower in April 1696. Despite disagreeing with official
policy, he threw himself into salvaging the situation. From the
outset, this job provided him with ample opportunities to adopt the
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Making Money  159

same approach as for star positions or dynastic reigns—to scrawl

over sheet after sheet drawing up tables, copying out memoranda,
adding up numbers. At first, there was little visible progress: in
June, John Evelyn worried that riots would break out, provoked by
the ‘Want of current money to carry on the smallest concerns, even
for daily provisions in the markets . . . and nothing considerable
coin’d of the new and now onely current stamp . . .’13 Newton piled
on the pressure. For twenty hours a day and six days a week, three
hundred men and fifty horses operated ten mills at the Mint. By
personally monitoring worker performance and scrutinizing quota­
tions from external contractors, Newton ensured that production
rates shot up and costs went down. He did, however, insist on an
increase in his own salary.
By the summer of 1698, the recoinage had been completed,
although what should have been a success proved to be a failure.
Nearly seven million pounds’ worth of silver coins had been minted,
but they disappeared almost immediately, melted down to buy foreign
imports or privately hoarded as security against an uncertain future.
International financiers agreed that, in principle, it was silver that
should be the invariable standard for conducting trade, with gold and
other metals shifting in value against it. But over the next couple of
decades, the cost of gold soared and silver coins remained scarce. The
fate of English money, Newton explained repeatedly, was tied to the
demands of international trade, especially with China.
East Asians valued gold and silver not for currency, but for creat-
ing beautiful objects that would display the owners’ wealth and
power, while also acting as a portable insurance policy in the case of
disaster. Although delighted to sell luxuries such as spices, tea,
and silk, Chinese merchants had no interest in trading them for
European iron, wool, or furs, let alone clocks or other instruments
that were less sophisticated than their own. What they mainly
wanted in exchange was silver. This demand acted as a constant
drain on the British economy, because if a coin had less symbolic
purchasing power at home than the international value of its phys­
ic­al metal, merchants would melt it down for export as bullion.14
Asked to help rectify the unforeseen and unprecedented emer-
gency, Newton repeatedly compiled reports in which he compared
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160  Making Money

the world’s major currencies against gold and silver. Perhaps he

­relished the time-­consuming arithmetical challenge of converting
various non-­decimal systems of weights and money between one
another: he certainly performed the task meticulously. In 1717, he
issued his most momentous recommendation—that the value of a
guinea should be set by Parliament at twenty-­one shillings, even
though it had originally been introduced as a sovereign (a pound)
of twenty shillings. Just as he did for the natural world, Newton
assumed that the future would behave like the past. The guinea had
recently been coming down in value from its peak of around thirty
shillings, and he predicted that this decrease would continue. ‘If
things be let alone,’ he declared confidently, ‘the gold will fall of it
self.’15 But he was wrong: for over 200 years, until 1931, while gold
remained steady at £3 17s. 10½d. per troy ounce, the price of silver
fluctuated violently.

In Pursuit

Persuading gullible investors to buy risky stocks may have been

morally reprehensible, but lying to obtain money was not in itself a
criminal offence. Responsibility lay with the victim, a principle first
officially laid down in a key trial of 1703, when an unfortunate
Mr Jones borrowed £20 from a friend, and later returned it to a third
man whom the friend had sent to collect the debt. At least, that is what
the third man claimed: in reality, he was perpetrating a con, and kept
the money for himself. In a landmark decision, the judge dismissed
Mr Jones’s case, arguing that he should have been more sensible; it is
wrong, he said, ‘to punish one Man because another is a Fool’. A
deceit, he decreed with long-­lasting influence on unwary share pur-
chasers, should be deemed a crime only if it was ‘such a Cheat as a
Person of an ordinary Capacity can’t discover’. From then on, indi-
viduals were responsible for protecting themselves, so that it
became legal to market wrongly labelled products, to steal from
someone who was asleep, or to sell a horse with only three legs.16
Fake coins were different. Unlike a three-­legged horse, their defi-
ciency was not immediately apparent, and with Newton at its head
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Making Money  161

the Mint pursued forgers and clippers remorselessly, however

­piti­able their status. Before the recoinage, Parliament had tried to
stem the collapse of England’s currency by passing increasingly
ferocious legislation, and when Newton came to power, counterfeiting
a coin was regarded as high treason, punishable not merely by
hanging at Tyburn Gallows (near where Marble Arch was later
relocated at the top of Oxford Street), but also by being eviscerated
while still conscious. Harsh punishment—but such crimes threat-
ened to undermine an established hierarchy based on birth and
wealth. Because the right to vote was restricted to male landowners,
forgery signified not only defacing the monarch but also revolu-
tionizing society by giving power to the poor.
Initially, Newton tried to avoid the dangerous, time-­consuming
task of tracking down offenders, even though it was specified in his
job description. Three months after arriving at the Tower, he was
summoned before a special committee and officially ordered to
investigate the mysterious case of the missing dies—moulds for
making coins that had been stolen from right inside the Mint. Once
he had agreed to take on the search for fraudsters, Newton pursued
the hunt assiduously, characteristically starting by compiling all the
relevant documents he could find and writing a history of Mint
prosecutions. Over the next eighteen months, he cross-­examined
200 informers and suspects, including many who were struggling
on the breadline, themselves the victims of crime and poverty. False
accusations were encouraged by rewarding witnesses and despatch-
ing potential informers to spend a few weeks in Newgate. This
notorious prison had been rebuilt after the fire of 1666, but the ele-
gant Wren façade concealed a cramped warren of cells resembling
the hold of a slave ship. The corrupt and poorly paid warders
demanded money to provide food and a bed, or to have manacles
and neck collars removed. Even within the protected confines of
Newgate, wealthy prisoners fared better than the poor.17
Newton later told Conduitt to burn many of the depositions he
recorded, but enough survive to indicate that many thousands of
illiterate men, women, and children suffered hardship during the
recoinage. Desperate for survival, petty criminals attacked the
Mint’s agents, abused their own families, and turned in everybody
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162  Making Money

they could to save themselves. For instance, Ann Pillsbury had

already been manhandled and body-­searched in a bread shop when
she was taken to Newton’s office with her small daughter. After he
ordered them both to be examined again, a few coins were found
hidden in the child’s clothing. Her mother’s crime? She had tried to
pass on to the baker a counterfeit sixpence palmed off on her by the
butcher, who then refused to take it back.18
The Mint records reveal that Newton also dealt with more profes-
sional criminals—gangsters who thrived on forgery, pimping, and
extortion rackets. Capturing them cost money as well as time, and
Newton charged the Treasury well over £600 for a couple of years’
work. He kept his accounts meticulously, at one stage calculating
his expenditure to be exactly £56 5s. 8¼d. more than his income
from melting down forged coins sent in by agents placed around
the country and in Newgate. Because these crooks were sharp
dressers, Newton spent £5 on a smart new suit for Mint employee
Humfrey Hall, who was sent out in disguise to scour the local tav-
erns. Other expenses included paying for travel to places as far away
as Wales and Worcester, as well as many small sums for informers
who may well have technically been criminals themselves. As just
one example, over several months Newton committed almost £30
to securing the services of John Gibbons, a porter at Whitehall
Palace, who acted as a double-­agent and specialized in terrorizing
women.19
Newton the scientific sleuth soon discovered that he had his own
Professor Moriarty, a serial offender whose ingenuity rivalled his
own and whom he pursued with the same vengeful ferocity that he
unleashed on Hooke, Leibniz, and Flamsteed. William Chaloner
first learnt to forge small coins as a nail-­maker’s child apprentice in
Birmingham, but after walking to London, he acquired further
skills—making dildoes, japanning (imitating Asian lacquer work),
gilding silver coins to look like guineas. These various activities
proved so profitable that he bought a large house in Knightsbridge
and passed himself off as a loyal citizen, a guise that enabled him to
collect large rewards from the government by betraying Jacobite
supporters. For several years, Chaloner was simultaneously coun-
terfeiting coins, publishing proposals for rescuing the rapidly
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Making Money  163

declining currency, and printing forged Bank of England £100

notes. To protect himself, he collected payments for denouncing his
colleagues and other informers, who were then sent to Newgate
and/or the gallows.
By early 1695, Chaloner had ingratiated himself into political
circles so successfully that King William authorized him to be
paid £1000, but a few months later, he was himself in Newgate.
Eventually, after a series of inspired manoeuvres, he secured his
release by condemning the Mint for internal corruption and
denouncing its chief engraver as a Jacobite. For the next couple of
years, Chaloner embarked on increasingly audacious schemes, even
suggesting that he should be employed by the Mint to produce
unforgeable coins. Repeatedly buying himself out of trouble with
large bribes until he ran out of money, he also accused Newton of
negligence and lies. Meanwhile, Newton plodded on indefatigably,
collecting around fifty witness statements and—mirroring Chaloner’s
own tactics—planting informers, who warned him of his target’s
plans and reported verbatim his threat that ‘he would pursue that
old Dogg the Warden to the end so long as he lived . . .’20
Chaloner was tortured and hanged for high treason on 17 March
1699. Having ignored his pleas for mercy, Newton continued to
assemble evidence against other informers who had helped him to
secure Chaloner’s execution, but had now switched sides to pursue
their own careers as counterfeiters. That year, he also welcomed
another long-­anticipated death—the Master of the Mint, Thomas
Neale, the former ‘Lord of Lotteries’ who had received bonuses
totalling £20,000 for the recoinage implemented by Warden
Newton. On Christmas Day, his fifty-­seventh birthday, Newton was
promoted to the Mastership of the Mint, and for almost three dec-
ades received an annual salary of £500 on top of a handsome fee for
every pound of metal that was coined.

The Master’s Trials

Managers who weed out corruption, fire employees, and increase

efficiency are rarely popular. During his three decades at the Mint,
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164  Making Money

initially as Warden and then from 1699 as Master, Newton became

involved in a succession of vitriolic controversies. With op­por­tun­
ities for deceit at every stage, everybody associated with making
coins had to demonstrate not only their expertise but also their
honesty. Newton aimed to clean up the Mint but he was dealing
with traditions going back four centuries, when two main centres
were established to manage London’s money manufacturing trade:
the Royal Mint inside the Tower, and Goldsmiths’ Hall on Maiden
Lane (now in Covent Garden), near the dense network of city
workshops.
Since his own income depended on the quantity and quality of
coins that were minted, Newton was in a vulnerable position. Some
abuse was straightforward: one imprisoned victim of his campaign
to expunge forgery swore that the new Warden was ‘a Rogue and if
ever King James came again he would shoot him and the sd Ball
made answer God dam my blood so will I and tho I don’t know him
yet Ile find him out.’21 Other accusations were more subtle, such as
this witty but anonymous verse insisting that nobody is immune
from the internal gravitational attraction of personal greed:

The Principles by which Men move,

Are private interest, base Self-­Love;
So far their Love or hate extends
As serves their own contracted Ends.22

As President of the Royal Society, Newton was proud of being

regarded as an elite natural philosopher. But as Master of the Mint,
he operated not only as an administrator, but also as a practitioner:
like goldsmiths and other skilled craft workers, he belonged to an
extended experimental community stretching throughout the city
and straddling social hierarchies. The processes of refining and test-
ing precious metals involved the same chemical procedures and
knowledge as isolating new elements, or producing drugs, or
searching for the philosopher’s stone. The main textbook on
­metallurgy, published at the same time as Newton’s Principia, was
written by John Pettus, a distinguished politician and Fellow of
the Royal Society for twenty years. Despite such links, Newton
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Making Money  165

condescendingly declared that ‘the Assaymaster acts only as a

manual Artificer’, even though his effectiveness as Master depended
on an intimate knowledge of the skills that he was so ready to dis-
miss as merely manual. When four men applied to become assay
master at the Mint, Newton supervised ‘a Comparative Trial before
the officers they made each of them Eight Assays of Gold in four
successive Fires, two in artifice, and as many of silver . . .’ To pick the
right candidate, he needed practical experience to judge how well
they performed and how much they knew.23
One major production problem was to determine which coins
were valid—the right size, the right weight, the right metal. Small
variations were permissible. The tolerance, confusingly called the
remedy, was 3.5 parts per 1000, and it was needed because precious
metals contain traces of other substances; in any case, completely
pure gold and silver would be too soft for repeated financial trans-
actions. Newton inherited a system originating in the tenth century,
when it was agreed that coins should comprise 925 parts of silver to
75 parts copper, although by his time the precious-­metal content
had been reduced to 916.6. A pound weight of this sterling mixture
was sliced into 240 pennies, making a total of a pound in money.
Newton still followed this format when he recommended to
Parliament not that a sovereign should weigh a particular amount,
but that a weighed piece of metal should be divided into a certain
number of coins.
Newton was responsible for making sure that the nation’s coins
matched up to agreed standards. Whether at the Mint or in
Goldsmiths’ Hall, opportunities for fraud occurred at many differ-
ent points in the process—measuring the quality of the metal,
weighing the coins, and tallying the accounts of income and
expenditure. For example, goldsmiths or bankers who brought in
bullion were recompensed in golden guineas, but up to a quarter of
these coins were heavier than they should have been; they were
called ‘Come-­again Guineas’, because they could be melted down to
generate still more profit. Newton insisted that close and potentially
combative scrutiny was required at every stage: ‘it’s easy for an
Assayor to give a Turn to the assay of a quarter of a Grain, or an half
penny weight or above for or against the Master. And if any such
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166  Making Money

thing be expected, the Assayer must Repeat his Assay, till the
Officers of the Mint are satisfied of his acting with skill and
candour.’24
By tightening up procedures, Newton reduced deficits at the
Mint, but antagonized those who lost their profitable sidelines. His
probity was at stake, but so, too, was the value of the national cur-
rency, a matter of great state importance. Every year, independent
tests were carried out publicly during a ceremony that dated back to
1282. In this ‘Trial of the Pyx’ (which still takes place), a fifteen-­man
jury from the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths assessed a ran-
dom sample of the year’s coins that had been collected in the special
Pyx Chest. They were compared against part of a golden trial plate
(Figure 8.2) that was stored in the Chapel of the Pyx; one made
under Newton’s supervision on 25 June 1707 was inscribed ‘This
Standard comixed of XXII Carretts of Fine Gold and II Carretts of
Allay [sic] in the Pound wt Troy of Great Brittain.’25 As an additional
check against cheating, the original plate was distributed in six
­rectangular sections with zig-­zag edges that had to fit together at
the Trial like jigsaw pieces.
During Newton’s reign, the ritual remained essentially the same,
although the Treasury trimmed back the entertainment allowance.
Early on a summer morning, the Pyx Chests—accompanied by
sheaves of documents as well as charcoal for melting selected

Figure 8.2  Gold assay plate, 1707

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Making Money  167

coins—were rowed by two boatmen wearing velvet jackets and

scarlet stockings from the Tower to Palace Yard at Westminster, the
traditional site of executions. Newton and other Mint officials fol-
lowed behind, while a similar but grander boat transported the jury
from the wharf near St Paul’s Cathedral. By 9 o’clock, they were all
in place waiting for the Lord Chancellor to deliver a speech and
swear in the jury. Watched by Mint officials, the goldsmiths com-
pleted their analyses and gave their verdict. Finally, the Mint paid
for a lavish dinner at a nearby inn, afterwards often pleading pov-
erty and recouping the cost from the Privy Purse.
In 1710, the serenity of this annual ceremony was noisily dis-
rupted when the jury announced that the year’s coins were
­sub-­standard. Violent arguments broke out, and the Mint officials
were angrily ejected from the assaying chamber. Naturally, Newton
was incensed at this slur on his competence, but it turned out that
the new assay plate he had authorized three years earlier was made
of finer gold than usual. When measured against the old plate, the
coins passed the test, but they failed to meet the requirements
imposed by this new one. Newton’s alchemical expertise came in
handy for carrying out his own refining experiments, which led
him to blame the assayers and tell them where they were going
wrong: ‘If this aqua fortis be poured off & fresh aqua fortis be
poured on, this second water (especially if it be a little stronger then
the former) will eat away a little more of the silver & leave the Gold
finer than before. And a third water will leave it still finer, & a fourth
still finer. But Assaymasters & Refiners proceed no further then to
two waters.’ And so on. The 1707 plate was never used again, but
recent tests have shown that Newton’s recorded measurements
were faulty.26
Trips along the Thames or through the streets of London were
probably Newton’s only journeys on Mint affairs, although he did
take responsibility for some distant outposts. To speed up the
recoinage, five temporary Mints were established around England,
each with their own staff. Following the unwritten rules of patron-
age, Newton made sure that Edmond Halley was rewarded with a
lucrative position in Chester, where the local infighting turned out
to be even more savage than in the Tower. After a clerk threw an
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168  Making Money

ink-­stand across the room, Halley asked Newton for help in sorting
out fraud and absenteeism. An official warning from London
headquarters indicates how far the situation had degenerated: ‘the
Mint will not allow of the drawing of Swords, & assaulting any, nor
ought such Language, Wee hear has been, be used any more
amongst You.’27
With Newton in charge, Mint business was political business. He
avoided undertaking a still longer journey to Edinburgh in 1707,
when Scotland was fused with England and Wales into a new king-
dom, Great Britain. This Act of Union confronted him with a diplo-
matic problem, because it stipulated that Scottish money should be
made under Tower rules. Newton delegated his mathematical ally,
the Scot David Gregory, to oversee the tricky transition from
Scottish pounds to English ones, which looked different and were
worth about twelve times as much. After spending eleven days
on  the road from Oxford, Gregory discovered that essential
machinery had not yet arrived, but—despite several other
glitches—the unpopular recoinage was eventually completed. This
time, Newton found himself out-­manoeuvred. Even when the work
had been completed, Edinburgh officials continued to draw their
salaries—and when Scottish customs officers refrained from
­collecting import duties on liquor, the Tower had to foot the bill.28
Britain remained defined by the seas around its edge rather than
any internal unity. Even negotiating with Cornwall entailed pol­it­
ical expediency. The distant county returned more MPs than
London, so in the hope of gaining political influence Queen Anne
had agreed to buy a substantial amount of tin every year at an
un­usual­ly high cost. Unsold supplies rapidly built up at the Mint,
and Newton found himself negotiating sales all over Europe, while
worrying about being undercut by competitors. As Newton
explained, when interest and freight charges were taken into
account, the crown was losing hundreds of thousands of pounds by
buying Cornish tin at an unreasonable rate; on the other hand,
lower­ing the price too far would ruin the miners. This was a prob-
lem he never managed to resolve, and the piles of surplus tin con-
tinued to grow until his death.29
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Making Money  169

Newton became more publicly (and humiliatingly) involved in

demands for Irish autonomy. After the Act of Union, Ireland
remained a separate country, although it was ruled from London.
A  fresh controversy arose in 1722, when, without consulting
Dublin, the British crown granted the request of an Englishman,
William Wood, to mint 360 tons of copper coins and ship them
over. To help secure this licence, Wood had bribed Baroness
Melusine von der Schulenburg, George I’s illicit partner from
Hanover, and accusations of corruption soon began circulating.
This was a sensitive topic. The Tower had already quashed several
demands from Dublin for its own Mint, at least once on Newton’s
own recommendation.30 Moreover, in 1698, the English Parliament
had condemned as seditious a forceful argument for the legal
independence of Ireland by William Molyneux, Newton’s near
equivalent in Ireland.
A close friend of John Locke, Molyneux was a Fellow of the Royal
Society, a renowned expert on eclipses, mathematics, and optical
instruments, and had founded Dublin’s Philosophical Society. Like
Newton, Molyneux was a thorough man who undertook extensive
historical research to support his case. He was particularly angry
about recent restrictions on wool exports, which were ruining Irish
cloth manufacturers, and he insisted that Ireland should not be
bound by laws enacted in London. Following his well-­established
habit, Newton copied out long sections of Molyneux’s tract, but he
reached the opposite conclusion—that London over-­ruled Dublin:
‘it lies in the breast of an English Parliament,’ he wrote, ‘to interpret
& declare the meaning extent & force of all the Irish laws not
excepting those by which they claim any power to themselves.’31
When Wood’s patent was announced, Jonathan Swift fanned
Irish resentment by railing against Britain’s imposition of a non-­
Irish manufacturer. Newton laid himself open to further criticism
by refusing to inspect Wood’s factory, instead asking him to send a
selection of coins to test at the Tower. Even though there was a dis-
tinct possibility that Wood had submitted an unrepresentative sam-
ple, Newton decreed the coins to be valid. In retaliation, Swift
stepped up his campaign, and critical Irish pamphlets began
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170  Making Money

appearing, claiming ‘how Visible and Plain must it appear to all the
World, That Mr Wood and his Friends have Imposed upon Sir Isaac
Newton [and his staff], by bringing them Specimens of said Coyn,
and Tryall-­Pieces so different in Value and Weight from what is
daily seen in Ireland.’32
Swift continued to slate Newton for unfairly backing an English
colleague, and laced his next satire—Gulliver’s Travels—with hostile
invective. For example, during his visit to the imaginary Academy
of Lagado and the flying island of Laputa, Gulliver professes himself
mystified that other-­worldly astronomers should keep interfering
in politics, to which they are so clearly ill-­suited. Gulliver remarks
that he had ‘observed the same Disposition among most of the
Mathematicians I have known in Europe’ (Newton is an obvious
candidate here); they seem to think—wrote Gulliver/Swift—‘that
because the smallest Circle has as many Degrees as the largest,
therefore the Regulation and Management of the World require no
more Abilities than the handling and turning of a Globe.’33 A few
chapters later, Swift imagines the ghost of Aristotle predicting that
gravity will go the way of all once-­fashionable doctrines: ‘Attraction,
whereof the present Learned are such zealous Asserters . . . would
flourish but a short Period of Time, and be out of Vogue when that
was determined.’34
Over the following years, Swift published further scarcely veiled
attacks. Since Newton died only a few months after Gulliver’s Travels
was published, he presumably never realized that Catherine Barton’s
former friend was undermining her husband’s sustained promo-
tional activities. While Conduitt’s iconographic agenda identified
Newton as a unique genius, Swift’s literary campaign questioned
Newton’s intellectual reputation as well as emphasizing his political
and economic motivations.35
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9
Knowledge and Power

Women dominate the plot of The Indian Emperour and have some of
the best lines. Yet like the biblical Eve, they are blamed for causing the
downfall of their men. In the scene portrayed by Hogarth, Montezuma’s
daughter Cydaria believes that she has caught her admirer Cortez in
the act of declaring his love for another royal woman, Almeria.
Dressed in pink, Almeria stands in front of the diminutive handcuffed
Cortez; her pose is reflected by Cydaria, clad in white satin and in
real life Caroline Lennox, the oldest daughter of the admiring
Richmond couple to the left of the picture, the only adults watching
the play. The girl standing behind her is the Conduitts’ daughter Kitty,
included even though, according to Dryden’s script, no third woman
should be present on stage at that point.1
The scenery portrays a grim prison cell, but authenticity is limited:
the Aztec royal women are wearing Spanish-­style costumes with a
token feather in their hair, while following thespian conventions
Cydaria addresses the audience rather than the other actors—and
because this is a play, they all declaim in English heroic couplets. The
triangular tussle on stage is a reprise of the scene Hogarth had recently
chosen to depict in The Beggar’s Opera. There, the rival lovers Lucy
and Polly were both pleading for the life of handcuffed Macheath,
while now, Almeria and Cydaria are vying for the chained Cortez. In
both scenarios, the man echoes Hercules, forced to choose between
Vice and Virtue.
Woven through The Indian Emperour is a sub-­ theme about
another woman, the Indian queen Alibech, who vacillates between
two suitors, Guyomar and Odbar, both sons of Montezuma. Two
scenes earlier, Alibech has temporarily rejected Guyomar’s insistence
on honourable patriotism and turned towards her more ardent lover
(naturally, she chooses the more virtuous man in the end). In a ‘Does
the end justify the means?’ dialogue, she maintains ‘That ill is
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172  Knowledge and Power

pardoned, which does good procure.’ Guyomar immediately objects:

‘The good’s uncertain, but the ill is sure’. This interchange forms the
prelude to a discussion about the rights of monarchs, a sensitive topic
in those early years of the Restoration, when royalists were trying to
obliterate the previous twenty years from public memory and behave
as if nothing untoward had happened.
Seventy years later, when children performed this play in Conduitt’s
drawing room, the political situation was very different: the Stuarts
had been deposed in the Glorious Revolution, and the country was
governed by Hanoverians with a reduced amount of power. But, how-
ever much rulers liked to ordain collective oblivion of the past, there
were strong continuities as well. Presumably this couplet by Alibech
stirred spectators’ reservations about the current monarch, George II:

When Kings grow stubborn, slothful, or unwise,

Each private man for publick good should rise.2

* * *
In 1725, a new map of Africa was published by the printer John
Senex, already one of London’s most successful cartographers and
soon to become a Fellow of the Royal Society (Figure 9.1).3 On the
lower right, Senex pays homage to an elderly British knight,
Sir Isaac Newton. Taking his inspiration from Renaissance icon­og­
raphy, Senex portrays Newton as an eternal star amidst a halo of
golden rays, honouring this semi-­deity with his full panoply of
titles: ‘Sr Isaac Newton Kt, President of the Royal Society and
Master of her Majesties Mints’. Queen Anne had died more than a
decade earlier, but following regular money-­saving practices, for
this cartouche Senex has recycled an earlier plate engraved when he
was her royal map-­maker.
This map looks very different from one that Senex had published
in a large atlas only four years earlier, although no major new dis­
coveries had been made since then. His revised version not only
emphasizes Newton’s importance for Britain’s imperial ambitions,
but also uses colours to show how the African continent was being
carved up and appropriated by European powers. In the cartouche
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Figure 9.1  Africa: Corrected from the Observations of the Royal Society at London and Paris; John Senex,
1725
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174  Knowledge and Power

on the bottom left, Africa is visualized as an exotic land inhabited

by unfamiliar beasts, dangerous snakes, and muscular men. The
cornucopia, ivory, and golden pieces of money indicate that, for
invading Britons, the continent is a land of plenty—and that is one
of the reasons why the Royal Society was interested in being linked
with imperial cartography. Most of the place names lie along the
coast, because voyaging across the ocean was easier than hacking
out new paths overland: this is not a map designed to help explorers
travel around the continent, but one that displays its riches. A large
inland tract, coloured yellow, is labelled Negroland to indicate a
mysterious place rarely entered by foreign travellers. To its south
lies Guinea, which was artificially divided into territories named
not after their local inhabitants, but for the plunder to be found
there: gold, ivory, slaves. Politicians promised that, under the new
Whig freedom, these African imports would revive England’s flag­
ging fortunes.
When Newton became President of the Royal Society, he took
over an organization that professed itself dedicated to discovering
truths of nature—but it was also committed to promoting Britain’s
global interests. Like Newton, many Fellows supported Whig ideals
and invested in the new trading companies that depended on trans­
atlantic slavery to sustain the national economy. Newton did not
settle permanently in London until 1696, but he had already
embraced the global attitudes that he implemented throughout the
course of his metropolitan career. Even in the 1660s, he was solicit­
ing information from English merchants overseas, and his involve­
ment in imperial enterprises continued to strengthen. Once at the
Mint, he relied on securing the most advantageous deals in African
gold. Privately, he invested in companies promising enormous
­profits from trafficking people. And at the Royal Society, he reigned
over an institution that had encouraged overseas exploration and
exploitation since its foundation.
The growth of Enlightenment science was rooted in the Royal
Society’s Restoration origins. Conventional versions of its history
feature the Fellows’ supposedly disinterested search for knowledge
about the natural world, but reappraising Newton’s activities during
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Knowledge and Power  175

his three London decades entails telling a different story about the
Society’s origins and uncovering still further links between
Hogarth’s picture, Newton, and imperial Britain.

The Early Royal Society

At the end of Dryden’s play, a messenger from the gods appears on

stage to deliver an epilogue in rhyming couplets. The Indian
Emperour, he declares, is an entertainment designed for everybody,
whether man or woman, ‘of Court, of Coffee-­house, or Town’.4 In
Restoration London, coffee houses were not just familiar places for
refuelling or mitigating a hangover. Instead, they were a recent
innovation that fostered a substantial shift in English society. Open
to any man with loose change in his pocket, they provided un­pre­ce­
dent­ed opportunities for exchanging ideas, hatching plots, securing
patronage, and effecting introductions—they helped to make public
opinion important. Charles II felt so threatened that he tried to ban
coffee houses, but the crown’s authority was shrinking in the face of
increasing government power. Defying the royal will, these hot­
houses for democracy survived, regulated by a state-­run licensing
system.5
Dryden was a leading actor in this new sphere of urban convivi­
ality. London’s most popular playwright, he was the star attraction
of Will’s, a leading coffee house on Russell Street, a key location
between the City and Westminster. Samuel Pepys described the
novelty of dropping in to Will’s on his way home from work, where
he met Dryden and other London wits gathering together over
newspapers and drinks (hot chocolate was a favourite for fash­ion­
able gentlemen). Negotiating with coffee-­house colleagues, Dryden
tried to establish a college for improving the English language,
modelled on the French Académie in Paris. Although that project
never came to fruition, Dryden and his allies—notably John Evelyn,
Thomas Sprat, and Abraham Cowley—soon became influential in a
Restoration product that had a long life ahead of it: London’s Royal
Society.
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176  Knowledge and Power

According to the standard story, the Royal Society was born in

1660, when Charles II reclaimed the throne. Symbolically, that year
became enormously significant for his supporters as they competed
to demonstrate their enduring loyalty. In reality, several had rapidly
switched allegiance. Within the space of a year, Dryden wrote poems
celebrating both Oliver Cromwell and Charles II—and Pepys cannot
have been the only professed monarchist who sat miserably through
a dinner-­party agonizing that an old school-­friend might reveal his
childhood jubilation at the beheading of Charles I.6
The metropolitan roots of the Royal Society have now been
traced back to well before the Restoration, but the conventional
account begins in royalist Oxford, a buzzy city where England’s first
coffee house had opened in 1650, two years earlier than in London.
Several of the Royal Society’s future Fellows—young researchers
such as Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and
Thomas Willis—met there regularly, gradually shifting their discus­
sions to London’s Gresham College, where Wren was appointed
professor of astronomy in 1657. A recent graduate, he was building
up a reputation as a mathematician and experimenter, but had not
yet become a famous architect: nobody knew that St Paul’s
Cathedral would burn down less than a decade later. It was appar­
ently in Wren’s rooms, on 28 November 1660, that the friends
decided to establish an experimental society.
However high their expectations may have been, they had no
way of foreseeing that their enthusiastic speculations at Gresham
College would later be viewed as a key turning-­point in the history
of science and technology. They knew nothing of the future, and
had no idea that they would later be celebrated as scientists, a word
that was not in common use until the early twentieth century. There
were no university degrees in science, no professional organiza­
tions, no journals, no ready-­made career ladders for young gradu­
ates to climb. Experimental investigations were still far from
prestigious, and one of the Society’s major problems was mockery:
Pepys reported that Charles II laughed at them ‘for spending time
only in weighing of ayre, and doing nothing else since they sat’.7
The first Fellows of the Royal Society were laying ambitious plans
for the future, but they were also concerned about their own
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immediate problems of earning money, remaining politically safe,

and persuading sceptics that this new style of research would yield
dividends—both economic and factual. For years, the Society’s
function remained unclear, its survival uncertain. Should the
Fellows set up a college, regulate inventions, aim to make a profit?
Many such possibilities were proposed but abandoned.8 People in
power gave priority to other objectives—accumulating money,
dominating world trade, and gaining global territory. To flourish,
the Royal Society needed to demonstrate that it, too, could contrib­
ute towards those goals.
The Society got off to an inauspicious start. In 1662, Charles II
agreed to award it a Royal Charter, but he soon started complaining
about the lack of visible progress. When the Fellows realized that
the king’s initial spark of interest was fading and that no financial
support would be forthcoming, they decided it was time to generate
some publicity. The main driver seems to have been Dryden’s
coffee-­house friend John Evelyn, now most famous for the reveal­
ing diary that he kept for over sixty years. But that was only pub­
lished posthumously, and among his contemporaries he was known
as a staunch royalist who was also an expert on trees and coins.
The Fellows’ bid for self-­promotion was temporarily stymied by
committee hiccups, authorial procrastination, and the Plague, but
eventually Thomas Sprat—a rather stolid clergyman who had been
involved in Dryden’s failed language academy project—published
his History of the Royal Society in 1667. Writing sporadically and
under pressure from different factions, Sprat proved an unreliable
narrator whose text reinforced the concept of sudden birth in 1660.
Diplomatically flattering the king, he emphasized the importance of
his royal patronage and glossed over experimental activities that
had been taking place during the previous regime. Sprat’s book did
indeed contain prescriptions for experimental research, but it was
also a self-­serving document that reflected the immediate desires of
the Society’s members to placate the king, gain influence, and
replenish the nation’s empty coffers.9
One striking feature of Sprat’s long, digressive account is that he
wrote relatively little about the content of scientific knowledge.
Instead, a major concern was to win over critics by persuading
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178  Knowledge and Power

them that the Society would help to make the country rich and
powerful. Since the organization had only received its Royal Charter
five years earlier, his book was more of a manifesto than a historical
account, although he did reproduce several research papers to dem­
onstrate that—despite the king’s scepticism—the Fellows were
capable of obtaining results. Recruited for his writing skills rather
than his scientific expertise or influential contacts, Sprat produced
a persuasive narrative that was idiosyncratic but must have been
vetted to some extent by Evelyn and other senior fellows.
While Sprat was putting the final touches to his History, Newton
was isolated in a Lincolnshire farmhouse, reputedly absorbed in
carrying out crucial experiments with prisms and wondering why
apples fell from the tree in the garden. Five years later, in 1672, he
dazzled the Royal Society (and antagonized Robert Hooke) with his
first paper on optics, which overturned previous theories by show­
ing that the colours of a rainbow are already invisibly present in the
light coming from the sun. By the time he was elected president in
the early eighteenth century, Newton was becoming a major player
in metropolitan society. Like the country and the Society, he had
absorbed the policy expressed by Sprat and his mentor Evelyn:
‘whoever commands the trade of the world, commands the riches
of the world, and whoever is master of that, commands the world
itself.’10 English gentlemen, Sprat preached, have a moral responsi­
bility to spread the benefits of civilization to other parts of the world
by exporting material benefits as well as their Christian religion.
Trade was the best way not only to make individuals rich but also to
expand England’s imperial possessions.
Many historians have glossed over those messages, preferring
instead to scour Sprat’s text for the roots of modern science. And
they have unearthed what they were looking for: Sprat does indeed
also describe a dedicated group of experimenters committed to the
precepts of Francis Bacon. At one time England’s Lord Chancellor,
Bacon had died half a century earlier, but the Fellows declared alle­
giance to his ideology as if he were a patron saint. Their guiding
motto was nullius in verba—take nothing on authority or, to put it
more colloquially, don’t believe everything you read in books.
Theories should, Bacon insisted, be built upwards from raw data,
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rather than be derived by arguing logically from premises that

might or might not be valid. For him, there was only one route to
true knowledge: observation, observation, observation.
Modern scientists credit Francis Bacon with inventing ‘the scien­
tific method’, but in practice its principles are rarely followed. He is
also famous for declaring that ‘Knowledge is power’, but although
he expressed the concept, he did not himself coin that neat aph­or­
ism. Sprat’s History strongly endorsed Baconian method, while also
exhorting its readers to promote England’s commercial and im­per­ial
ambitions. Sprat proposed that the entire nation—farmers, ­sailors,
surveyors, miners, physicians—should collect all the information
that they could find and send it up the social scale for processing by
the elite group based in London.
From its foundation, the Royal Society vaunted itself as a
Baconian organization that would base knowledge on facts—but
the Fellows were also hungry for the power that came with it. As
expounded by Sprat, Baconianism entailed scientific projects—
mapping the world, collecting specimens, recording physical phe­
nomena—but it also aspired to gaining wealth and global influence.
‘Trafic, and Commerce have given mankind a higher degree than
any title of Nobility,’ Sprat exhorted his readers, ‘in those Coasts,
whither the greatest Trade shall constantly flow, the greatest Riches,
and Power will be establish’d.’11 Playing to contemporary arrogance,
Sprat maintained that the English were God’s chosen people: ‘So
that even the position of our climate, the air, the influence of the
heaven, the composition of the English blood; as well as the
embraces of the Ocean, seem to joyn with the labours of the Royal
Society,’ he enthused; ‘Nature will reveal more of its secrets to the
English, than to others; because it has already furnish’d them with a
Genius so well proportion’d, for the receiving, and retaining its
mysteries.’12

Twin Sisters of the Restoration

Naturally, Sprat reserved his more flowery eulogies for Charles II.
Comparing him to King Solomon (creator of the temple admired
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180  Knowledge and Power

by Newton), Sprat congratulated the restored monarch on improving

the nation’s financial situation ‘with great vigour, by the Foundation
of the Royal Company’. He was referring to the Company of Royal
Adventurers Trading into Africa, which ori­gin­ated in 1660, the
same year as the Royal Society, and was already reaping huge profits
by marketing gold, ivory, and people. This company was, Sprat
wrote sycophantically, ‘the Twin-­ Sister of the Royal Society’ to
which ‘we have reason as we go along, to wish all Prosperity. In both
these Institutions begun together, our King has imitated the two
most famous Works of the wisest of antient Kings: who at the same
time sent to Ophir for Gold, and compos’d a Natural History, from
the Cedar to the Shrub.’13 Rather like golden El Dorado, Ophir was
a mythical land, but travel writers competed to give it a precise
location. ‘Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa’ readily identified
Ophir with Guinea, regarding their Royal Society colleagues as the
modern-­day counterparts of Solomon’s natural historians.14
For its first few years, the Royal Adventurers flourished.
Plantation holders in the West Indies welcomed African labourers,
who were cheap to feed and clothe, and lacked the social cohesion
that enabled imported English servants to rebel. After plague
reduced England’s population, it seemed even more important to
deter emigration and encourage the mass transfer of captives from
elsewhere. But the Dutch Wars had been expensive, and as debts
mounted, the Adventurers put up their prices. Pressure on the royal
monopoly came from two sides: private merchants, who resented
being excluded; and the plantation owners, who claimed to con­
template ruin unless they could buy forced labour at a low cost. In
1670, the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa was
obliged to wind down, but only two years later, it re-­emerged as the
Royal African Company, which was essentially the same organiza­
tion, although with diminished royal involvement.
The twinned royal sisters were linked together by their political
leaders and their global aims. To gain knowledge was to gain
power—and that was a national aspiration. The Royal Society was
packed with men who were ambitious for themselves as well as for
England. Around a third of the early Fellows were aristocrats,
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Knowledge and Power  181

court­iers, and politicians dedicated to promoting the interests of

England’s landed classes. They absorbed from Sprat’s History the
messages they wanted to hear. Some of them were probably con­
vinced that knowledge is worth acquiring for its own sake, but
many were swayed more strongly by the rhetorical, almost pro­
phetic, tenor of Sprat’s chauvinistic predictions that England could
achieve a glorious destiny by following Baconian prescriptions.
The Royal Society has outlived its twin sister, but it remained the
weaker sibling for decades. By using the imagery of birth, Sprat
reinforced the notion that these two organizations had sprung out
of nowhere, as if created solely through the king’s initiative. He also
cleverly boosted the Fellows’ importance by linking the two
together, even though, as a modern-­day Solomon, Charles had
already manifested far more interest in the Ophir-­company promis­
ing gold than in its poor relation who could only offer learned
information about cedars, shrubs, and other marvels of nature.
Whereas Louis XIV, the French Sun King, hoped that liberally
funding scientific research would enhance his glory and strengthen
Parisian control over his nation, the English monarch awarded little
to London’s Royal Society beyond a regal label.
One apparent exception was the king’s creation in 1675 of a new
post, the Astronomer Royal, to be based (with a meagre salary) at
an Observatory on top of a hill in Greenwich. This ostensibly scien­
tific initiative illustrates how Charles’s primary goal was to augment
English power by improving navigation, trade, and military
strength. Charles was persuaded into the project by a woman, his
long-­term lover Louise de Kérouaille (the grandmother of Charles
Lennox/Duke of Richmond in Hogarth’s painted audience), who
made him realize that the French king might be gaining a strategic
advantage from astronomical research at his new Paris observatory.
Charles commissioned a London equivalent to be built by the
Tower’s Ordnance Office, which, in the absence of realistic royal
funding, was forced into thrifty economizing. Paid for by selling off
some decayed gunpowder, the building was constructed by re­cyc­
ling bricks and metal from a disused fort in Tilbury, supported
by timbers retrieved from an old Tower gatehouse.15 The new
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182  Knowledge and Power

telescopes, clocks, and other essential equipment were all paid for
privately, not by the crown—and the building was unhelpfully
aligned at an angle of thirteen degrees to the line of longitude.
The Royal Society and the Royal Adventurers were founded dur­
ing the Restoration, but their trajectories were fashioned by earlier
events, and their influence continued into the future. Both these
organizations were crucial to Newton’s metropolitan success. His
name is indelibly linked with the Royal Society, but in addition he
relied on the trade networks established by the Royal Adventurers
and other commercial companies (notably the East India Company),
benefiting from them in three major ways: collecting worldwide
data from international merchants; importing the African gold for
which he was responsible at the Mint; and building up his own per­
sonal fortune.
During Charles’s reign, England’s major enemies were the Dutch,
a long-­lasting hostility that permanently penetrated the English
language with expressions such as ‘Dutch courage’ (gin allegedly
induced belligerence). Both powers wanted to trade in gold and
intervene in the lucrative spice and textiles trade dominated by
Asian merchants. Even in the interludes when officially at peace,
they fought on African battlegrounds to retain the overseas
monopolies that they both presumptuously claimed as their own.
Recognizing the value of Dutch financial initiatives, England
strengthened its resources by emulating its enemy, and when
Newton arrived in London, the English economy had already been
boosted by public–private enterprises from which everybody was
supposed to benefit. The Bank of England and London’s major
Companies—East India, South Seas, Royal African—were based on
financial strategies imported from Holland.
Before the twin sisters were founded, Charles had been carefully
planning his return, and the Company of Royal Adventurers
Trading into Africa received a Royal Charter almost straightaway,
two years earlier than the Royal Society. In October 1660, Pepys
‘heard the Duke speak of a great design that he and my Lord of
Pembrooke have, and a great many others, of sending a venture to
some parts of affrica to dig for gold=ore there. They entend to admit
as many as will venture their money, and so make themselfs a
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Knowledge and Power  183

company. 250l is the lowest share for every man. But I do not find
that my Lord doth much like it.’16 Despite his Lord’s reservations,
the plans went ahead. Three successful years later, the Royal Charter
was extended, giving permission for the Company to trade in
human captives as well as gold, ivory, and other goods.
Royal Charters were awarded for ventures combining private and
public gain, but they needed to be renewed and could be revoked;
the British Broadcasting Corporation is one of the few surviving
examples. Although Charles never did come through with the last
£6000 of the capital he had originally promised, he offered generous
support by leasing to his Adventurers a large tract of his West
African territory (well, he said it was his . . .) for 1000 years at an
annual rent of two elephants. He also gave the Company the exclu­
sive privilege of trading in wood, ivory, and other materials, as well
as one third of the rights to the gold mines. And on top of that, the
Charter gave the Company unusually strong powers by authorizing
it to appoint governors, train military forces, and administer
martial law.17
Like the Royal Adventurers and other international trading com­
panies, the Royal Society contributed to an undefined experimental
community that spread across London. Whether motivated by
accumulating knowledge or making their goods more profitable—or
both—its participants shared an interest in collecting and analysing
information and materials from around the world. Benefits accrued
in every direction. For example, the Royal Society invested money in
the East India Company and elected some employees as Fellows;
conversely, when Edmond Halley wanted to set up an observatory
on St Helena, he travelled on a company ship.18 Similarly, the Royal
Society was well placed to cooperate with its sister, and stressed the
links between them. Like several other aristocratic directors of the
Royal Adventurers, the Duke of York was a Fellow of the Royal
Society. The twins also had some more active personnel in common.
Of the sixty-­six people named in the second Charter endorsing slav­
ery, nine were (or became later) Fellows of the Royal Society. These
included the Duke’s private secretary, Sir William Coventry of the
Admiralty—and he was succeeded in that post by Henry Brouncker,
the brother of the Society’s first president, William.19
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184  Knowledge and Power

As fervent Baconians, the Fellows were keen to garner information

from around the globe, and trading networks provided ideal oppor­
tunities for them to achieve that aim. Advertising for contributions
to its own stated project of improving natural knowledge, the Royal
Society issued ‘Directions for Sea-­men, bound for far Voyages’, and
over the years, travellers sent in reams of information about flora
and fauna, winds and tides, magnetic and astronomical phenom­
ena. Whatever individuals might have thought privately, collectively
the Society tapped into the king’s search for wealth and imperial
power. Sailing under the flag of knowledge, the fellows of the Royal
Society could regard the entire globe as a giant cabinet of curiosities
waiting to be retrieved for display in metropolitan showcases.
Their enquiries reflected the imperial interests that the Royal
Society held in common with the Royal Adventurers. For example,
Robert Boyle was eager to learn about other peoples—‘their Stature,
Shape, Colour, Features, Strength, Agility, Beauty (or the want of it),
Complexions, Hair, Dyet, Inclinations, and Customs that seem not
due to Education’.20 In addition, the Society maintained personal
links with individual Royal Adventurers based in African trading
posts. A letter to a Mr Floyd of around 1670 was packed with
rumour. Is it true that new-­born African babies are a yellowish-­white
colour? Do Africans regard stinking fish and rotten elephant meat
as great delicacies? But Floyd was also requested to send concrete
information about the location of the best gold mines. The writer
was clearly well informed, demanding details of internal routes
from Acania to Assingrad and on through Alance to Accabel.21
The Society’s mercenary interests were protected by the wealthy
merchant Abraham Hill, who was an elected official—including
treasurer—for twelve years, but made no contributions to scientific
knowledge. He did, however, compile a questionnaire designed spe­
cifically for travellers to Guinea, which reveals not only the curios­
ity of the Fellows but also the unreliability of information based on
hearsay. Is the rain, he asked, so hot that it rots cloths and generates
worms? Is an African’s eyesight far keener than that of a European?
Are the people different shades of brown and black? More prac­tic­
al­ly, Hill also wanted to know how to find the best gold, prepare
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poisoned arrows, and distil grain alcohol—no coincidence that this

Royal Society Fellow later became a Commissioner for the Board
of Trade.22
At the beginning of Sprat’s History, an emblematic frontispiece
displays a multitude of Baconian instruments. One of the most
prominent is a triangular sea-­clock, which the Fellows hoped would
keep time so accurately that it could be used to measure a ship’s
longitude at sea. After some preliminary trials, the Society used its
contacts at the Royal Adventurers to send two experimental ver­
sions on an expedition to Africa led by Robert Holmes (the flam­
boyant naval officer who later had an affair in the Isle of Wight with
Hooke’s niece Grace). His official military orders, drafted by
Coventry of the Royal Society, were to defend the Company of
Royal Adventurers and build a fort, but he was also told privately
that he should look for a rumoured mountain of gold. Holmes sur­
passed royal expectations by taking the opportunity to claim terri­
tory, blockade ports, and seize enemy ships. ‘I hope I have nott
exceeded my instructions, they being to concerve our commerce,’
he protested with mock innocence.23 Continuing to follow
Coventry’s guidelines, Holmes embarked on further aggressive
campaigns against the Dutch and, despite some calamitous set­
backs, ended up being a royal favourite.
The Fellows were proud to associate themselves with such im­per­ial
success, especially when they could make money from it. The very
first issue of their new journal, the Philosophical Transactions of
1665, carried an article describing how well their clocks had per­
formed on Holmes’s voyage. The inventors were, the author boasted,
both Fellows of the Royal Society and the experiment had been
arranged by ‘some of our Eminent Virtuosi, and Grand Promoters
of Navigation’.24 But the Society’s future existence was still uncer­
tain. The main instigator had been Hill, who in his position as
treasurer helped to boost the Society’s financial situation by giving
his name to patents for profitable inventions, including not only the
longitude clock but also carriages, guns, and pistols. By registering
these patents to Hill, continuity would be ensured, should the Royal
Society collapse.25
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186  Knowledge and Power

But the neophyte society did survive. Four decades later, when
Newton took over as president, its activities were still closely tied to
the nation’s global trading ambitions.

Into Africa

The African Company’s motto made Charles’s motives clear—Regio

floret patrocinio Commercium, commercioque Regnum: Business
flourishes with royal patronage, and the kingdom flourishes with
business. One of the king’s main advisers was George Downing,
Treasury Secretary and spy-­master who acquired so much power
that he gave his name to a London street as well as a Cambridge
college. Brought up in America, he was widely mocked as the ‘Judas
of Downing Street’ who had launched his career under Oliver
Cromwell but after the Restoration contrived to reinvent himself as
a wealthy royalist. The spitting is audible in the diaries both of
Samuel Pepys—‘perfidious rogue . . . most ungratefull villaine’—and
of John Evelyn: ‘Sir George Downing, one that had been a
great . . . against his Majesty [his dots], but now insinuated into his
favor; and, from a pedagogue and fanatic preacher, not worth a
groate, had become excessively rich.’26 It was through Downing that
Dutch influence remained strong from Cromwell to William and
beyond. His reforms were crucial for enabling the credit-­driven
economy that characterized England during Newton’s regime at the
Mint—he stressed the importance of commerce, strengthened the
position of the Treasury, and established a state based on credit and
indirect taxation.27
As a joint-­stock company, Charles’s Royal Adventurers Trading
into Africa was a new financial invention (there is much scholarly
debate about whether it deserves the accolade of being England’s
first). Before the Restoration, there were two major types of com­
mercial organization. Oldest were the guilds, associations of mer­
chants that could acquire a monopoly by giving money to the
monarch. Next came chartered companies. Named after different
parts of the world, such as Hudson Bay or East India, they enabled
merchants to exploit newly discovered areas by obtaining exclusive
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trading rights from the crown. Although definitions vary, the new
joint-­stock companies brought together the interests of court and
city: the crown had substantial control, but private investors could
buy and sell shares. This concept of trading shares in a combined
royal and commercial enterprise had been introduced by the Dutch
East India Company at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
but it was only later that the English India Company adopted the
structure.28
Chartered in 1660, the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading
into Africa exemplified England’s mercantile policy—to maximize
exports under a government that controlled the economy and
sought to enhance its international strength. Joint-­stock companies
seemed like a win–win proposal: the great appeal to investors lay in
promising high returns but at the same time spreading risk; for
Charles II, strongly swayed by Downing, the main lure was gaining
revenue and reducing his dependence on a Parliament that was
reluctant to finance all the crown’s ambitions. With a profitable base
in Africa, the king could develop lucrative trade deals with the
cash-­rich Spanish Americas—and at home, he hoped to tighten his
grip by gaining the allegiance of grateful financiers as well as of
politicians who would guarantee his security in order to advance
their own careers.
The Royal African Company, which was active during Newton’s
regime at the Mint, retained the same heraldic insignia as its prede­
cessor (Figure  9.2). During a session at Whitehall, Pepys ‘saw a
draught of the armes of the company, which the King is of and so is
called the Royall company—which is, in a field argent a Elephant
proper, with a Canton [a heraldic term] on which England and
France is Quartered—Supported by two Moores; the Crest, an
Anchor Winged I think it is . . .’29 The ancient symbol of a war ele­
phant carrying a castle-­like howdah on its back can still be found in
some medieval churches, and it long predates the Elephant and
Castle area of London. Although very few Europeans encountered
this animal from Africa’s inland regions, the iconic elephant was
engraved onto imported ivory (Figure 9.3), guns, golden coins, and
company ledgers. It came to provide familiar evidence of England’s
increasing imperial strength.
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188  Knowledge and Power

Figure 9.2  Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa, coat of arms,
1663

Standing on either side of the shield in the Royal Adventurers’

coat of arms, two supporters conform to English stereotypes of
fierce chieftains, made widely available in a 1670 book by John
Ogilby, which remained the standard source of misleading infor­
mation about Africa for decades. This former dancer reinvented
himself several times, first endearing himself to Charles II by
orchestrating the coronation festivities, followed by a spell working
as a surveyor with Wren and Hooke. Next, Ogilby was appointed
royal cosmographer, but—like many self-­styled authorities—never
travelled himself to the remote regions of the world that he
described so evocatively. Creatively translating and plagiarizing
older works, he reinforced prejudices about naked savages who
needed to be tamed and civilized by English settlers.
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Figure 9.3  Ivory imported by the Royal African Company, 17th or 18th
century

Ogilby and his readers would have been astonished to learn that
some African kings worked in offices decorated with Dutch tapes­
tries, Indian cloths, and silverware made from New World ores.
During the sixteenth century, local rulers along the western coast
had become rich and powerful by playing off two major trading
networks—Atlantic and Saharan—that were seeking access to gold.
In a sophisticated market economy, valuable imports—iron, fruit,
copper, maize—were being exchanged for gold, whose commercial
value rose as demand increased. Much of it was carried to the ports
from inland areas by enslaved Africans, who were then forced to
undertake the return journey laden down with purchases. The
entire region flourished as its small independent kingdoms profited
by trading with India, Brazil, Portugal, and each other. But in the
middle of the seventeenth century, this mutually beneficial stability
rapidly deteriorated after Europeans intervened. They introduced
guns as a new form of currency, and—like golden coins—African
people became tokens of exchange for desirable goods. Deprived of
their labour force and now armed with lethal weapons, local leaders
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190  Knowledge and Power

stopped cooperating and began fighting internal wars that were stoked
by Europeans hoping to obtain more human captives for export.30
The guineas made from African gold carried the Royal
Adventurers’ elephant and castle symbol on their reverse. Even
before Newton left Cambridge for his metropolitan career at the
Mint, he must have been familiar with that royal sign of an
­elephant and castle inscribed on the nation’s currency. There is no
evidence that he ever met Charles or James, but he was familiar
with both kings’ faces, which appeared on the golden coins next to
the motto Dei Gratia—by the Grace of God—as if English mon­
archs were divinely sanctioned to plunder gold or convert people
into slaves. The physical or melted-­down value of these guineas
soon soared to well over twenty shillings (which made a pound),
and eventually in 1717—during Newton’s regime at the Mint—the
guinea was fixed as a new unit of currency at twenty-­one shillings.
This arith­met­
ic­
al­
ly inconvenient amount still featured in legal
documents and primary school arithmetic questions a quarter of a
millennium later.

The Door of No Return

When Lemuel Gulliver was at last safely home from his travels, he
parodied Whig-­speak by describing how the king’s global plans
might have played out: ‘the British Nation . . . may be an Example to
the whole World for their Wisdom, Care and Justice in planting
Colonies; their liberal Endowments for the Advancement of
Religion and Learning; their Choice of devout and able Pastors to
propagate Christianity . . . to crown all, by sending the most vigilant
and virtuous Governors, who have no other Views than the
Happiness of the People over whom they preside, and the Honour
of the King their Master.’
Actuality had, of course, been different. Swift’s account may be
jaundiced and exaggerated, but it sounds horribly authentic: ‘A
Crew of Pyrates are driven by a Storm they know not whither; at
length a Boy discovers Land from the Top-­mast; they go on Shore
to rob and plunder; they see an harmless People, are entertained
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with Kindness, they give the Country a new Name; they take formal
Possession of it for the King . . . Here commences a new Dominion
acquired with a Title by Divine Right. Ships are sent with the first
Opportunity; the Natives driven out or destroyed, their Princes tor­
tured to discover their Gold, a free Licence given to all Acts of
Inhumanity and Lust; the Earth reeking with the Blood of its
Inhabitants.’31 Operating in the king’s name and with exclusive legal
access, when Newton became Master of the Mint the Royal African
Company alone had sent over 500 ships, built eight coastal forts,
transported 100,000 prisoners to plantations in the Americas,
imported 30,000 tons of sugar, and provided gold for 500,000
guineas.32
In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift included diagrams, navigational speci­
fications, and anthropological descriptions that were patently ficti­
tious, but the geographical accounts on which real monarchs and
traders relied were often low on facts. Seventeenth-­century maps of
West Africa were even vaguer than Senex’s Newtonian tribute (see
Figure  9.1), their labels indicating what Europeans could purloin
for their own benefit—Grain Coast, Gold Coast, Slave Coast.
England was far from being the only European country that
assumed a God-­given right to settle in other places and seize other
people to exploit as slaves. In 1661, Portugal simply transferred
Tangier and Bombay (now Mumbai) to Charles II as part of a mar­
riage deal that also included rights to Portuguese ports in Africa
then occupied by the Dutch. It was Tangier, not Bombay, that was
the jewel in Charles’s crown, a thriving port only a fortnight’s sail
away, compared with three months to the American colonies or six
to India. Strapped for cash, Charles immediately leased Bombay to
the East India Company, but built up a military garrison at Tangier
to protect the Mediterranean, which then remained more lucrative
for British trade than distant continents. This commercial profit
came at a human cost: during Newton’s lifetime, around 6000
Britons were captured by Mediterranean pirates for forced labour,
many of them dying young from disease or the hardship of endur­
ing twenty-­hour days shackled to the oar of a galley-­ship. That fig­
ure may sound high, but of course it was minuscule compared to
the numbers of enslaved Africans.33
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By the time the Royal Adventurers began operating, some

­permanent trading settlements had already been established in
West Africa, although tropical diseases and dense vegetation
deterred the more intensive colonization taking place in America
and the West Indies. English ships had been intermittently travel­
ling to and from Africa for over a century. The first documented
voyage was in 1533, but by the end of the seventeenth century,
England had already shipped almost half a million human beings
from Africa to the Americas. Precise figures are hard to establish,
but they continued to rise steadily.34
The long western coast of Africa was strung with European
settle­ments, many of them within sight of each other, although the
highest concentration lay in what is now Ghana, 7500 kilometres
almost due south of London. Forts were built both to protect their
European occupiers from the land-­based attacks of resentful locals,
and also to provide defence against the ships of foreign invaders.
British trade centred on Cape Coast Castle (Figure 9.4), perched on
a rocky headland and originally a mud-­brick Swedish trading base;
after being claimed by both the Dutch and the Danish, it was seized
by Holmes and his English troops in 1664. By 1721, when Newton

Figure 9.4  Cape Coast Castle

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had been in charge of the Mint for over twenty years, the Castle
encompassed ‘a Smith’s Shop, a Cooperage, Store-­houses, a Chappel,
and Houses for the Officers and Servants . . . A Bastion runs out
from it that has a very pleasant Prospect to the sea, discerning with
a Glass the Ships coming down the Coast . . .’35 Upkeep was expen­
sive. African rulers charged high rents and handsome rewards were
necessary to ensure political cooperation; daily survival depended
on maintaining smooth relationships with local suppliers and
labourers. Malaria and yellow fever were rife, the iron guns imme­
diately went rusty, and frequent lightning strikes melted the gold in
its bags and the soldiers’ swords in their scabbards (fortunately, the
gunpowder in the basement was so damp that it never ignited).
Restored after Ghanaian independence from Britain in 1957,
Cape Coast Castle is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site: the vul­
tures still circle, but the tropical diseases have vanished. Although
resembling a powerful coastal fortress, the Castle functioned as a
warehouse used for storing goods and people in transit. Inside, it
felt like an ocean-­going ship, structured in a vertical hierarchy with
luxurious upper-­deck cabins for the senior officers, ranging down
to cramped slave holes below the waterline, where a thousand
captives could be conveniently stashed at a time. Tourists can now
visit these gloomy dungeons, still pervaded by stinking fetid air.
Most of the early captives were men, thrown down through a small
opening to share a single damp space. Women were crammed into
smaller cubicles enabling guards to ogle them through holes in the
wall, while the tiny condemned cell temporarily housed prisoners
being starved to death after trying to escape. Nearby lay the
­one-­way exit to the Americas through ‘The Door of No Return’.36
African trade in people, gold, cotton, and other resources was a
global concern: events along the Guinea coast sent ripples round
the world and, conversely, were affected by affairs elsewhere.
Because sugar plantations in the West Indies were rapidly expand­
ing, European owners demanded more slaves to run them, and pri­
vate profiteering flourished. Robinson Crusoe was a fictional
character, but his experiences were closely based on those of real-­life
adventurers who were making small fortunes. After borrowing £40
to buy the standard assortment of trinkets, Crusoe set off for Guinea
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194  Knowledge and Power

and ‘brought Home L. 5. 9 Ounces of Gold Dust [worth] almost 300 l’.
Scaling up again, he took a cargo of English manufactured goods to
Brazil, selling it for four times his original stake—and ‘the
first thing I did, I bought me a Negro Slave, and an European Servant
also . . . ’.37
Defoe had carried out his historical research thoroughly—
indeed, his hero insists on the authenticity of his tale and ‘the real
Facts in my History’. In August 1651, Crusoe embarked on a slave-
­trading voyage, only to be shipwrecked a month later on the island
that became his kingdom. These dates accurately mark the period
when Charles II was preparing to take back the throne.38 The restored
king started by awarding a Charter to the Royal Adventurers for
trading in goods, but then—like Crusoe—upsized three years later
to include humans, even lending the Company three royal ships.
Steered by Downing, he promised the Company that it ‘shall for
ever hereafter have use and enjoy all mines of gold and silver which
are or shall be found in all or any the places above mentioned, and
the whole entire and only trade [to those parts] for the buying and
selling bartering and exchanging of for or with any negroes slaves
good wares and merchandises whatsoever to be vented or found at
or within any of the Cities.’39
This new Charter had far-­reaching consequences for captured
Africans, and promised large profits for a select group of wealthy
Englishmen who could afford to buy subscriptions at £400.
Although the Royal Society was enthusiastic about its twin-­sister
company, private traders were incensed, because under Downing’s
directions the crown squeezed out the Crusoe-­style merchants who
had been operating independently. In 1667, the same year as Sprat’s
History, a group of merchants petitioned Parliament to remove the
royal monopoly on enslaved Africans. They protested unsuccess­
fully that enhancing the king’s revenue would damage their own
livelihood and put plantation owners out of business: ‘That formerly
there hath always been a freedom of Trade for all His Majesties
Subjects for Negroes on the whole coast of Guiney, by reason
whereof the said Plantations have been plentifully supplied with
Negroes of the best sort, and at an indifferent rate, to the great
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encrease of the said Plantations, and the advantage and profit of this
Crown and Nation.’40
Instead, Charles appointed his brother James, later king but then
the Duke of York, as the governor of the Royal Adventurers. James
spread his dukedom around the world by ousting the Dutch and
converting New Amsterdam into New York. The initials DY were
permanently branded with a burning iron on the right breasts
of  people shipped across the Atlantic from West Africa to the
Americas—over 100,000 during the twenty-­eight years he was in
charge. Every year, thousands of captive Africans—women as well
as men—were confined in the dungeons of holding stations such as
Cape Coast Castle and Gorée to be haggled over between local
traders, European merchants, and African rulers. Like ivory tusks
and nuggets of gold, they became branded Company commodities
that could be bought in exchange for European guns or iron bars
and sold at a profit.41
Sprat gave the twin-­sister societies a common birth, and links
continued to be forged between them. When the Royal African
Company was founded, one of its first participants was the philoso­
pher John Locke, fellow of the Royal Society and secretary to the
Council of Trades and Plantations. By the time Newton became
President of the Royal Society, the crown’s direct powers had been
further curtailed, and the government had instituted financial con­
trols that enabled private enterprise to flourish by buying and sell­
ing human beings. As head of the Royal Mint as well as of the Royal
Society, Newton was in a strong position to promote the interests of
the Fellows, the nation, and himself. He knew that trade, war, sci­
ence, and empire were inextricably tied together.
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10
Going Global

The children in Conduitt’s drawing room are dressed to resemble

adults, but they must have found The Indian Emperour rather heavy
going at times. They were probably paying most attention at the
beginning, when the Spanish invaders marvel at the treasures
promised by this newly discovered land:

Each downfal of a flood the Mountains pour

From their rich bowels rolls a silver shower.1

Any spectators (young or old) who dozed off as the play progressed
through its five acts must surely have woken up during the final scene,
which takes place in the prison cell. Although—bar a few corpses—
there is a moderately happy ending, before that the audience had to
watch a long session of physical torture. Hardly suitable for children,
one might think, but given the harshness of their upbringing, perhaps
the small royal spectators were so inured to cruelty that they enjoyed
seeing somebody else suffer.
Stretched in agony on a rack, Montezuma emerges as a noble hero
who will neither convert to Christianity nor reveal where his gold is to
be found. Dryden depicts this Mexican emperor as being more civ­il­
ized than his Spanish conquerors, whom he denounces for engaging in
primitive behaviour by indulging their craving for wealth:

The gods will Punish you, if they be Just;

The gods will Plague your Sacrilegious Lust.

Similarly, the Catholic priest exhibits the savagery more commonly

attributed to indigenous peoples, mercilessly ordering his men to
slaughter the honourable Indian leader:
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How wickedly he has refus’d his wealth,

And hid his Gold, from Christian hands, by stealth:
Down with him, Kill him, merit Heaven thereby.2

As the plot unfolds, Montezuma comes to resemble a true-­blooded

Englishman who values his liberty above all else, opting for suicide
rather than captivity by the Spanish conquerors:

If either Death or Bondage I must chuse,

I’ll keep my Freedom, though my life I’ll lose.3

There is no way of knowing what impact this performance had on the

lives of its young performers and spectators, but perhaps it did
persuade some of them to reflect on Britain’s international conduct
towards subjugated peoples. Outside the protected confines of this
domestic theatre, different standards ruled. During the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, many thousands of Africans were shipped
across the Atlantic, forced to work as slaves on British plantations.
Like Montezuma, they placed great emphasis on personal honour, but
when they replicated his high moral stance by jumping overboard or
starving themselves to death, they were despised for displaying
cowardly, criminal behaviour.
The young actors may also have contemplated the slave-­ like
­conditions that European gentlemen imposed on their womenfolk.
In  the scene depicted by Hogarth, Cydaria (dressed in white) is
denouncing Cortez as a philanderer, blending imagery of male
­dom­in­ation over women and over empire (no coincidence that, in
English, countries are gendered female in a predominantly neutral
language):

More cruel than the Tyger o’er his spoil;

And falser than the Weeping Crocodile:
Can you add Vanity to Guilt, and take
A Pride to hear the Conquests which you make?
Go, publish your Renown, let it be said,
You have a Woman, and that lov’d, betray’d.4
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Confined by his chains, Cortez protests his fidelity, and—in an

unusually symmetrical mixed-­ ethnicity relationship—both Cortez
and Cydaria declare that they would rather die than live without the
other. These may be the defiant lines that Hogarth captured Cydaria/
Caroline Lennox in the very act of pronouncing:

No, let me dye, and I’le my claim resign;

For while I live, methinks you should be mine.5

Some ten years later, this heartfelt moment was perhaps recalled by
Lennox and her parents when she eloped with the politician Henry
Fox and was cut out of her father’s will.

* * *
‘Freedom is Slavery’ ran Big Brother’s second slogan in George
Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-­Four. Three centuries earlier, post-­
Revolution England was far from being Oceania’s Airstrip One, but
some powerful Britons voiced the same sentiment. Individual lib-
erty, they argued, included the right to behave like the king and
profit from trading in enslaved people. Newton lived through three
major upheavals—the Civil War, the Restoration, and the Glorious
Revolution. In all three, the question of individual rights had been
an underlying theme, but all three failed to achieve the ideals they
aimed at. After 1688, the Whigs succeeded in diminishing the abso-
lute control of the monarchy, but wealth and influence still lay in
the hands of a privileged few. British liberty brought personal free-
dom to pursue property and profit without worrying unduly about
the long-­term consequences.
Orwell’s Oceania was ruled by an elite Inner Party comprising
only 2 per cent of the population, and Newton hovered around the
outer edges of its Georgian equivalent, unctuously ingratiating
himself with members of the next tier up in the hierarchy. Like
many of his wealthy colleagues, Newton gained financially from
international slavery, protectionist taxation policies, and industrial
espionage. The value of his investments relied on privately backed
credit schemes and profits derived from people trafficking; col­lect­
ive­ly, their long-­term effects included disrupting the economic and
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political stability of Western Africa, and squeezing Asian ­competitors

out of the global market.
Totalled over several hundred years, Britain shipped more captive
Africans across the Atlantic than any other nation. Towards the end
of the seventeenth century, this trade in people escalated during the
political shift away from absolute monarchy towards greater state
control and supposed democracy. In order to supervise the
­country’s finances more closely, after the Glorious Revolution
the  government gave the king a budget, refusing to sanction the
crown’s  traditional practice of replenishing its private coffers by
monopolizing markets. In 1694, while Newton was feeling restless
in Cambridge and sounding out other possibilities, new Whig legis-
lation claimed to enhance individual freedom by removing the
royal monopoly on people trafficking.
Private merchants had long campaigned for free trade. While
James II and the Royal African Company openly profited from
importing gold and selling people, their own lucrative activities
were technically illegal. Their mounting frustration erupted in
colourful invective directed against the former regime: ‘Through
the Countenance of the then Duke of York their Governour, and the
strong Influence of the Beams of the then Prerogative, a Brood at
length came forth to engage in a Design so apparently opposite to
the Laws of the Land, so destructive of the Native Liberty and
Freedom of the Subjects of England, and so contrary to the true
Interest of the Nation, with respect to its Commerce.’ But now that
all lay in the past: the new Act would restore their ‘Native Liberty’
by abolishing the royal monopoly. That might sound like a positive
step towards a more democratic society, but it meant that private
companies—not just the monarchy—were entitled to trade in
people as well as in goods. Profiting from slavery had become an
English citizen’s right, and the national economy soared during the
eighteenth century, maintained at the cost of long-­term suffering
throughout Africa and the Americas.6
Confidence in the value and virtue of international trade became
a national declaration of faith in Christian capitalism. Josiah Child,
a key director of the East India Company (EIC), declared that
‘Foreign Trade produceth Riches, Riches Power, Power preserves
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200  Going Global

our Trade and Religion; they mutually work one upon and for the
preservation of each other.’7 During the 1690s, Child and his
colleagues were found guilty of extreme corruption, and after a
series of public protests about high profits and low wages, the
company plunged into financial crisis. When it proposed to rescue
itself by unifying its Indian and Chinese branches, Newton and
many others objected, but the controversial merger went ahead. To
disillusioned supporters of the Glorious Revolution, it seemed
‘strange after all our battles for liberty that this monster, monopoly,
should lift up its horns and shake his chains to the terror of the
honest trading subject’.8 Newton valued the parliamentary regime
that reduced royal power but enhanced state control, and he
strongly opposed this creation of a mainly private mega-­ EIC:
‘Divide them that you may govern them,’ he advised. Apparently
living by his principles, he never invested in the joint EIC, although
he had bought a holding in one of the original companies.9 This
mammoth commercial organization came to dominate world trade,
effectively governing India by the end of the eighteenth century.

Trusting the Facts

Ever craving certainty, Newton sought refuge in the security of

incontestable facts. Reluctant to publish until he had checked and
double-­checked and triple-­checked, he was repeatedly confronted
by the unpalatable reality that evidence can be unreliable. Each
piece of data had to be scrutinized with the same care as a financial
note of credit: could it be trusted? When studying the natural world,
Newton discovered that instruments disagreed, that observers
made careless measurements, that natural phenomena inexplicably
changed from day to day or even hour to hour. Investigating the
past generated still further frustrations: dating systems were vague,
writers favoured metaphorical allusive language, manuscripts flatly
contradicted one another.
Identifying trustworthy facts is not always easy. Imagine yourself
sitting in a hushed reading room at the British Library, two
eighteenth-­century items placed on the wooden desk in front of
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you: a map and an illustration. Meticulously drawn, the map shows

Central and Southern America—the ‘Coast, Countries and Islands
within ye Limits of ye South Sea Company’ (see Figure 5.3). Next to
it lies a black-­and-­white picture: also finely executed, it depicts
Isaac Newton perched on a rock near a young African albino at the
mouth of the River Senegal, eavesdropping on a conversation
between a merman and an oyster (Figure 10.1). Naturally, you place
more faith in the map than in the picture. Yet both of them are
fallible—and both of them are also informative about reality.
The 1711 map (see Figure 5.3) comes with impeccable credentials.
It was drawn by Herman Moll, a distinguished Dutch cartographer
who lived in England and moved in the same circles as some of
Newton’s colleagues—John Locke, Robert Hooke, Jonathan Swift.
Commissioned by the South Sea Company, it advertises the
enormous expanse of land and ocean over which the company
claimed exclusive trading rights. The detailed outlines and precise
nomenclature proclaim its authenticity, although there is no
guarantee that it faithfully replicates actuality. However authoritative
a map’s origins might be, everybody knew that a fair amount of
creative thinking was involved, especially for the interiors of
continents. Even Newton got it wrong, mistakenly moving Baghdad
on his map of the Middle East from the right place to the wrong
one.10 Swift’s scepticism was justified:

So Geographers in Afric-­maps,
With Savage-­Pictures fill their Gaps;
And o’er unhabitable Downs
Place Elephants for want of Towns.11

Geographical knowledge had to be gleaned second-­ hand from

merchants and navigators who rated survival and profit more highly
than accuracy. Since Moll had never ventured to the southern
hemisphere, he had to depend on unverifiable visual evidence—
earlier maps, secret logs stolen from captured enemies—as well as
verbal testimony from people who had at least passed through the
region. Their information was neither complete nor trustworthy.
Travel was expensive, dangerous, and not primarily aimed at
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202  Going Global

Figure 10.1  Newton in Senegal, 1770; from Jean Delisle de Sales,

Philosophie de la nature, 1770
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broadening the mind: there were always ulterior motives, such as

lucrative trading or ferreting out political information or convert-
ing foreigners to Christianity. Diplomatic missions provided cover
for industrial espionage, while research expeditions doubled up as
opportunities to claim land and seize valuable resources, including
human captives as well as samples of minerals or plants.12
Fortunately for Moll, he had an illustrious predecessor in
Newton’s ally Edmond Halley, who had sailed across the Atlantic
some ten years earlier to compile magnetic data. Yet even Halley
could not be depended upon. To cover areas he had not visited
himself, he incorporated the reports of a seventeenth-­century
buccaneer, hardly a reputable source. When his charts were
­criticized, he candidly admitted that he had drawn smooth curves
through only three points. As Halley had done, Moll included Pepys
Island just off the coast of what is now Argentina, helpfully adding
an enlarged inset revealing prominent features such as Mount
Charles (named after the king) and Secretaries Point (Samuel Pepys
was Chief Secretary to the Admiralty). Published when the South
Sea Company was touting for investment, Moll’s map offered valu-
able reassurance that British ships could stop for fresh supplies on
friendly non-­Spanish territory before embarking into the unfamiliar
Pacific. Eventually, Pepys Island proved as illusory as the South Sea
Bubble, although it was only in 1764 that this imagined island was
finally declared to be non-­existent.13
Through cartography, the South Sea Company confirmed its
ownership of inhabited land, although naturally the directors had
not thought to consult the people who lived there. Pepys, one of
Newton’s predecessors as president of the Royal Society, had never
ventured anywhere near the island named after him, but he was
deeply involved in the financial arrangements of London’s trading
companies. The members of the Royal Society and of the Royal
Exchange collaborated to benefit each other, reaping both knowledge
and profits at the expense of England’s imperial possessions.14
In contrast, the apparently bizarre scene of Newton with an
albino, a merman, and an eloquent oyster was patently fictitious,
yet metaphorically revealing. Produced after his death, it reflects
enduring associations of Newtonianism with global concerns of
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204  Going Global

slavery and trade. Just off the coast of Senegal lies the island of
Gorée, now a World Heritage Site but during Newton’s lifetime a
key holding post for enslaved people awaiting shipment across the
Atlantic. Originally Dutch, but repeatedly passed back and forth by
French and English aggressors, the island became symbolically
significant. In London, an Old-­Mr-­Gory was seventeenth-­century
slang for a gold coin, while in the Gold Coast, people had themselves
been converted into a form of currency. Like paper notes or metal
coins or guns, their value depended on what they could be
exchanged for, on what credit they could muster. In well-­established
trading ports, they were worth more than in new ones, where
African traders had not yet realized how much value Europeans
would attribute to them, what price they would pay per head.15
This maritime sketch of Senegal originally illustrated an episode
in a satirical playlet of 1777 composed by a French Enlightenment
radical, Jean Delisle de Sales, and was included in later editions of
his ever-­expanding Philosophy of Nature. A banned text, like many
similar works it was published abroad as a small pocket-­sized book
ideal for clandestine circulation. Ranging over many topics, it
included the scandalous view that living beings are essentially
collections of chemicals. Brandishing his pistol to protect himself,
Newton features as an icon of rationality, identified here as a
vegetarian at the top of an intelligence ladder who is adjudicating
about the moral dilemmas posed by eating a creature that thinks,
loves, and may have a soul. Towards the end of Delisle’s scenario,
Newton draws on his intellectual powers of logical argument to
conclude that although the albino African is inferior to a European,
he is fundamentally different from the oyster and the merman
because he understands the concept of God.16
The question of what it meant to be human was central to debates
about the rights and wrongs of slavery. When Robinson Crusoe is
thrown overboard, he saves himself from being drowned beneath
giant waves—the mindless power of nature—by applying his
intellect to ‘pilot’ his non-­ reasoning body towards the shore.
Similarly, Newton came to be regarded as a disembodied genius
who formulated abstract laws for governing the universe. After
being stranded for a quarter of a century as the solitary monarch of
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a desert island kingdom, Crusoe at last acquires a loyal subject,

Friday. Vaunting himself as a civilized European, Crusoe simply
assumes he has the right to rule over other people just as he had the
power to overcome the challenges of the natural world. Initially,
Crusoe perceives Friday as a slave, but then upgrades his status to
servant after recognizing him as a fellow human being, a creature
endowed with sufficient powers of reason to ‘pilot’ (Defoe’s
repetition of this image) them both off the island.17
Delisle and his readers were aware that, according to eighteenth-­
century evolutionists, marine creatures had not been originally
placed on earth by God as a separate creation, but were an early
ancestor of human beings. In contrast, some slave-­owners justified
themselves by arguing that black Africans were animals and hence
basically different from Europeans, who had the right to own them
and also the duty to protect them. The caption beneath Delisle’s pic-
ture is ‘Quel est le droit du plus fort? . . . c’est . . . ce qui fait que je te
mange’, which translates loosely as ‘Which is the strongest right?
The one that allows me to eat you.’ Victory goes not to the most
morally worthy but to the most powerful, to the European men of
reason like Newton.
Although Newton has the reputation of being a lone worker, he
took advantage of a global correspondence network to obtain
data from informants based along the routes of trading ships
­participating in the international transfer of goods, gold, and
people that underpinned the British economy. In this imaginary
visit to Senegal, he is holding a large open tome, presumably his
book on gravity. Perched on a coastal rock, he seems to be acting
out one of the most famous remarks attributed to him: ‘I know not
what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been
only like a boy playing on the sea-­shore and diverting myself in
now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than
ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before
me.’ John Conduitt was so impressed by this seaside metaphor that
he pasted an early version from a Jacobite magazine into his
­biographical scrapbook.
In real life, there is no evidence that Newton ever ventured out-
side his comfort zone of Lincolnshire, Cambridge, and London, let
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alone abroad: his most adventurous journey by water seems to have

been a voyage up the Thames to Hampton Court. Just as Moll had
relied on informants to carry out his virtual tour of the South Seas,
so Newton vicariously visited ports in West Africa and other coastal
areas by taking advantage of travellers stationed along the trade
routes. For the second and third editions of the Principia, he
­solicited data from East India Company personnel so that he could
revise his gravitational calculations. What is now revered as the
world’s greatest book on physics incorporated information that had
been gleaned from British colonizers who were both exploring and
exploiting the globe.18
William Wordsworth immortalized Newton as a lone genius
­voyaging through strange seas of thought alone, but Newton relied
on a virtual crew of observers who really did sail around the globe.
That had been the case since he was in his twenties: the very first letter
of his that survives, from 1669, discusses how information could be
collected from voyagers overseas. Some thirty years later, when he
was revising the Principia for the second edition that eventually came
out in 1713, Newton recruited a young mathematician at Cambridge,
Roger Cotes, to do much of the arithmetical hard work. For his cal-
culations on the pull of the moon, Newton needed observations of
tides—and the best people to ask about that seemed to be officials
based in foreign ports and employees of the East India Company.
Newton collated information from about thirty locations scat-
tered around the globe along trade routes converging on Britain
from China and India, from West Africa and the West Indies. At a
time when even readings of the local London tides failed to agree,
little confidence could be placed in measurements finding their way
back from the other side of the world. Could he believe what
these distant observers reported? For one thing, perhaps they were
insufficiently gentlemanly to be trusted. Moreover, they were
naturally more concerned to maintain the safety of their ships and
their men than to worry about the niceties of gravitation, and so
might well exaggerate numbers in whichever direction suited their
own interests. This was a general problem, not just Newton’s. His
rival Robert Hooke pointed out that, paradoxically, the more read-
ings you got sent, the worse off you were: ‘the greater the Collections
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Going Global  207

of Observations are, the more trouble and difficulty is created to the

Examiner; they not only confounding one another, but perplexing
those also which are real and perfect.’19
The accuracy of the data was crucial, and in principle Newton
was ruthless about eliminating observations that failed to meet his
high standards. But that is where the circular arguments begin.
How can you tell when a measurement is right? If you trust the
reporter, then you should feel reassured that his number is correct.
But suppose it contradicts the predictions of your theory? Do you
ignore that particular reading, or do you abandon your conclusions
and start again? In other words, do you blame your equations or
your informant? And what if two apparently proficient observers
disagree? Do you average their results—or do you follow Newton’s
example, and sometimes yield to the temptation of picking the one
that suits you? Trying to salve Cotes’s conscience while also getting
his own way, at one stage Newton advised him that ‘your scruple
may be eased (I think) by relying more upon the observations of the
tide’ at one port than another.20
And then there was what Cotes and his friends called ‘the French
dilemma’. Working in different parts of the world, French experi-
menters examined pendulums that swung at exactly one-­ second
intervals. Disconcertingly, although their lengths should theoretically
have been the same, they seemed to vary, which might suggest that
gravity was stronger in some places than others, or that the earth
bulged slightly at the equator. On the other hand, since the meas-
urements were being made to tiny fractions of an inch, it  was
impossible to eliminate simple errors or the effects of temperature.
Perhaps Frenchmen were just generally incompetent? Between
them, Newton and Cotes decided that some observers were more
reliable than others, and that readings from Gorée were particularly
divergent and therefore suspect. In the end, Newton essentially
resorted to inventing reasons for the scatter of observations and
flatly rejecting new readings that he could not accommodate within
his theory. He knew that there is no simple route from data to
­theory: the conversation runs in both directions.
While Newton was revising the Principia to establish that the
laws of gravity are universal, in his position as head of the Mint he
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208  Going Global

was also struggling to establish an international standard for gold.

Similar problems of calibration arose, because samples from
different places produced different measurements. How do you
know which one is true gold? Or even if there is such a thing? And
how much of the apparent variation can you attribute to faulty
instruments or to careless observers? Unsurprisingly, everybody
involved with gold accused everybody else of cheating. English
traders arrived in Africa convinced that all sorts of fraud were being
perpetrated, but were disconcerted to find experienced local
negotiators who spoke several languages, demanded high prices,
and were knowledgeable about European instruments. A French
expert made it clear to Robert Boyle, eminent chemist at the Royal
Society, that there were two basic problems: ‘The gold varies, Sir,
not only inasmuch as it is varyingly adulterated by the natives, but
also because it naturally differs in the form which it leaves the
mines.’ In addition, there was yet another challenge: Europeans as
well as Africans were trying to turn a quick profit.21
Trying to ensure that coins were equivalent in England, Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland, Newton was plagued with the same issues of
reliability as he encountered for the length of a one-­ second
pendulum: who can you trust, how consistent are the instruments,
what is the true value? He was not above bluffing and bludgeoning
his way through inconveniences. Reigning over the Mint, Newton
candidly admitted that no procedure was 100 per cent reliable:
‘I cannot undertake absolutely that . . . there shall be no faulty barrs
which may escape the assays, but I am safest in people that are
afraid of me.’22 This may have been the Age of Reason, but personal
power still mattered.

Newtonian Imperialism

Unlike other global empires, Britain’s was never ruled by an

emperor, but perhaps Sir Isaac Newton comes close to justifying the
title. He is internationally celebrated for founding a new version
of physics, but his ideas also came to underpin a world view charac-
terized by central control, uniformity, and mathematization—
Newtonian imperialism.
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Going Global  209

The simplest and the most common Newtonian parallel was to

describe control from the centre. Britain was visualized as lying
at the midst of a global system that exported the benefits of
­civilization—manufactured goods, Christianity, Newtonian s­ cience—
while importing unprocessed materials such as sugar, cotton, and
gold. Writing to commemorate Newton’s death, the Scottish poet
Allan Ramsay exhorted the Fellows of the Royal Society to bestow
the benefits of British culture on less enlightened peoples:

May from your Learned Band arise,

Newtons to shine thro’ future times,
And bring down knowledge from the skies,
To plant on wild Barbarian climes.
ʼTil nations, few degrees from brutes,
Be brought into each proper road,
Which leads to wisdom’s happiest fruits,
To know their Saviour and their God.23

This was the same centralized imagery that Desaguliers had

outlined in his poem to George and Caroline, which described
courtiers circling around their king as if held captive by his radiating
power. Information flowed into the metropolis from observers
stationed around the country and abroad, while conversely, the
science created by the Fellows was transformed into marketable
commodities—books, lectures, instruments—for global distribution.
Put bluntly, data in, knowledge out. The East India Company regu-
larly sent ‘fishing fleets’ to India, exporting cargoes of young English
women as suitably cultured potential wives for their employees.
Those still single at the end of the season were ‘returned empty’, as if
they had been drained of value and learnt nothing while overseas.
Similarly, children born abroad were shipped back to school in
Britain so that they could be filled up with civilized habits.
According to the self-­flattering myth that is still beloved by
chauvinistic Britons, this small offshore island came to dominate
the world through its innate superiority. This arrogant vision of
Britain as a Newtonian centre, as an exporter of civilization and an
importer of raw products, was consolidated during the eighteenth
century. The Church of England raised huge sums of money to free
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210  Going Global

the relatively small number of enslaved Britons captured in the

Mediterranean, but sent out missionaries to convert Africans
destined to work on colonial plantations. The most famous hymn to
British imperialism appeared in 1740, five years before the first
performance of the National Anthem:

‘Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:

‘Britons never will be slaves.’

So ran the original refrain of Rule, Britannia!, first composed for a

court masque (a one-­off private musical entertainment) celebrating
the third birthday of Princess Augusta, Queen Caroline’s
granddaughter, who was thus taught at a young age that slavery is
fine as long as it happens to other people. The song’s author was a
Scottish poet and loyal Newtonian, James Thomson, who earlier in
his career had taught Newtonian mathematics at a London academy;
his most famous work, The Seasons, is laden with Newtonian imagery.
Patriots celebrated the imperial success of a small Newtonian
island lying at the hub of a two-­way global trade, but this appealing
metaphor of centrality collapses under scrutiny. In principle,
Newtonian equations show symmetry: the attractive force between
two masses is exactly the same for each one. But very often, one
mass is substantially larger than the other—the earth and an apple,
for example—so that the force appears to operate in one direction
only, from the larger to the smaller. As an added complication, all
objects act mutually on everything else, although as Newton
discovered, the mathematics soon becomes horrendously complex.
Even dealing with three bodies—the sun, the moon, and the earth—
presented intractable difficulties.
A more realistic version of international commerce would have
featured mutual gravitational attractions reverberating through the
strands of a giant network wrapped right around the globe. Britain
reacted to world events rather than initiating them, or even being
involved. Rice became a staple crop in the Americas after enslaved
Africans brought across seedlings and agricultural expertise;
Indonesian coffee savoured by metropolitan Enlightenment
­gentlemen originated as cuttings sent from Yemen to Jakarta by a
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Going Global  211

Dutch governor in India; demand for silver in China led to financial

crises in Europe; quinine extracted from South American bark
came to flavour the gin cocktails of Indian settlers; when sugar
merchants in the West Indies increased their prices, the Dutch
undercut them by converting much of Java into a plantation. And
so on.
Another legacy of Newtonian ideology was universality.
According to older conventional models of the cosmos inherited
from Aristotle, there is a fundamental split between the eternally
smooth circulation of the planets in the heavens and the chaotic
environment of the terrestrial sphere. Building on the work of his
predecessors, Newton introduced mathematical laws that dispensed
with that separation and governed the entire cosmos. But theories
were not enough: he needed precise observations to confirm that
his ideas were justified. From his presidential base at the Royal
Society, Newton sent off requests to global travellers for information
about tides, pendulum oscillations, and other natural phenomena.
As he tried to match these measurements with his theories and with
each other, discrepancies kept cropping up. Accepting them at
­face-­value pointed towards a frightening conclusion—that his bid
to unify the universe was invalid. Newton is famous for spurning
hypotheses, yet establishing his version of gravity depends on a
fundamental assumption—that nature is uniform, that the laws
governing the fall of an apple are the same whether the tree is
growing in York or in New York, that a person on earth is subject to
the same equations as a space voyager to Mars. If that were not true,
the entire edifice would collapse.
In his introduction to the second edition of the Principia, Cotes
spelled out this underlying assumption: ‘For if gravity be the cause
of descent of a stone in Europe, who doubts that is also the cause of
the same descent in America? If there is a mutual gravitation
between the stone and the earth in Europe, who will deny the same
to be mutual in America?’24 Under Newton’s guidance, Cotes’s
persuasive rhetoric was placed at the beginning of this second
edition. For the conclusion, Newton composed his General
Scholium, in which he deployed theological rhetoric to justify
Cotes’s pronouncement that stones behave in the same way all over
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212  Going Global

the world. Buttressed by these two book-­ends, the main text of the
Principia could argue that if a pendulum bob seemed to be heavier
at the poles than at the equator, the reason lay not in the variability
of gravity but in the shape of the earth—rather than being perfectly
spherical, it was slightly squashed at the north and south (a shape
known technically as an oblate spheroid).
The ultimate validity of Newton’s gravitational physics is
supported not by observations but by his declaration of faith in an
all-­powerful deity. A crucial but short appendix of under 1500
words, the General Scholium was designed to cement together
religion and natural philosophy and so counter what Newton
perceived with dismay as a growth in disbelief. Much of it is
deliberately opaque, but like Cotes, Newton made his basic message
crystal clear, insisting that the ‘most beautiful System of the Sun,
Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and
dominion of an intelligent and powerful being’.25 There is only one
true God, Newton argued—and that God is in charge of the cosmos,
constantly present and ensuring the uniformity of nature.
Smuggling in that crucial supposition meant that a convenient
circular argument became feasible. (1) Nature is uniform because
God is omnipotent; (2) Natural laws are universal; (3) Therefore, an
omnipotent God must exist.
Above all, Newton’s gravitational model is a mathematical one.
Traditionally, natural philosophy and mathematics had been
distinct from one another. In ancient Greece, philosophers had
searched for causes, for answers to questions about why the cosmos
operates as it does. In contrast, mathematicians were interested in
building models that did not necessarily replicate reality but had
the great advantage of producing the right numerical results. When
Nicolaus Copernicus suggested that the sun rather than the earth
lies in the middle, many astronomers agreed that his version made
the calculations work far better. But in the absence of clinching
physical evidence one way or another, they preferred to continue
believing that we live in a geocentric universe.
Newton’s Principia was an extremely influential book, but it did
not suddenly spring out of an intellectual desert like an apple falling
from a tree. By the time Newton went to Cambridge, most educated
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Going Global  213

people believed that the earth goes around the sun. And natural
philosophers such as Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and René
Descartes had already introduced measurements and equations to
supplant qualitative Aristotelian ideas expressed as tendencies,
humours, and occult forces. Newton’s physics incorporated
mathematics, but that was no single giant step for mankind:
quantification was already becoming important. Using instruments
such as thermometers, barometers, and magnetic compasses,
experimenters were trying to regulate the natural world through
numbers.
During the eighteenth century, the entire nation became increas-
ingly controlled through quantification. In laboratories, experi-
menters relied on measurements rather than descriptions to keep
tabs on how the universe operated, and similarly the government
set up a network of inspectors who monitored percentages of alco-
hol in order to calculate the correct taxes. A brewery may be a very
different place from the Royal Mint, but diluted beer and adulter-
ated gold presented similar challenges of detection and proof. At
the Treasury, as well as in private companies, accountants devel-
oped meticulous and supposedly objective systems to record how
sums of money were being allocated and moved around the globe.
When Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, they were counted
up as units in merchant ledgers and stacked as freight in the ship’s
hold. Their breathing space was carefully measured to maximize
the numbers that could be packed in, with an expected loss calcu-
lated for the natural wastage by deaths during transit.
Newton’s mathematical gravity contributed to this quantifying
process. He originally formulated his inverse-­square law to account
for the movements of comets and planets, but before long it was
being applied to the living world. Mathematical models were
created to describe the transmission of nervous signals through the
body, the action of drugs on fevers, even the loss of belief over time
in the existence of Christ. One Newtonian legacy is today’s
fundamental faith that mathematical laws reign supreme, that
economic activity can be explained by equations, that achievement
and personality can be measured quantitatively, that numbers are
what count.
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214  Going Global

Gold Matters

Soon after Newton’s Principia appeared, his friend John Locke

published An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, his most
important book on philosophy. In a section discussing language,
Locke uses gold to illustrate how words lack any absolute, objective
meaning. Compared with a physical lump of stuff, he explains,
‘gold’ is merely the ‘convenience that made men express several
parcels of yellow matter coming from Guinea and Peru under
the  same name’.26 One problem is that when you hear the
term,  you associate it with a blend of all the gold items you
have  encountered in your life, but there is no guarantee that
your  internal, personal understanding corresponds with the
speaker’s.
Gold was a subject close to Locke’s own pocket: far from being an
arcane example to be pondered by linguistic scholars, it mattered
for the nation’s economy and also his personal benefit. Locke had
already invested £600 in the Royal African Company as a founding
stakeholder, and in 1695 he became Commissioner of Trade. Every
year, the Company generated a fortune in golden guineas, but it
also shipped many thousands of the new African currency—people,
exchanged for manufactured goods to use as slaves. European greed
for gold and silver inspired the plot of Dryden’s Indian Emperour
and fuelled the ever-­ increasing ship-­loads of enslaved peoples
transported across the Atlantic during the eighteenth century. For
armchair theorists in Britain, it seemed a rational truism that more
trade promotes more wealth, but they overlooked the problem of
unequal distribution. Locke and his fellow investors in London did
indeed benefit financially from global commerce, but at the expense
of their African suppliers and their Asian competitors and their
English labourers. To profit from that system seems an odd choice
for a philosopher who wrote so much about individual rights and
liberty.27
When Newton was developing his theory of gravity, he assumed
that the same laws hold all over the world. By comparison, economic
models based on that principle of uniformity may be mathematically
effective, but they take no account of cultural differences. Ensconced
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Going Global  215

in the Tower of London, Newton struggled to stabilize the guinea

and establish international monetary standards. That entailed
imposing rational measurement on attitudes towards Locke’s
‘yellow matter’, a substance that had traditionally acquired various
unquantifiable values—as altarpieces in Portugal, as sculpted
weights in the Gold Coast, as sacred ornaments in China, as
coronation medals in London. African merchants were originally
willing to exchange their native gold for objects imbued with great
economic and religious worth, such as cowrie shells or copper-­lace
shawls. Conversely, Europeans invested great time and effort in
manufacturing goods not to use themselves, but to exchange for
two commodities they desired: a metal that they endowed with
financial value, and human beings for the labour force they required
to keep accumulating capital.28
Thomson’s Rule, Britannia! still arouses strong sentiments, but
few people remember the fifth stanza:

To thee belongs the rural reign;

Thy cities shall with commerce shine:
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine.29

His triumphant lines celebrate the rights of imperial rule by a tiny

trading kingdom, but they represent optimism for the future rather
than actuality. Much of the gold and silver mined with such heavy
human cost in the Americas and in Africa merely passed through
Europe, continuing its journey eastwards to end up in Asia. One
writer visualized Europe bleeding to death: ‘Europe like a body in a
warm bath with its veins opened . . . and her bullion which is the
life-­blood of her trade flows to India to enrich the Great Mogul’s
subjects.’30
It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that China and
India were ousted from their position as leading players in global
commerce. According to one of Francis Bacon’s celebrated maxims,
three inventions had heralded the modern era: printing, gunpowder,
and the magnetic compass. Significantly, all three originated in
China, which during Newton’s lifetime was prosperous, efficiently
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216  Going Global

run, and dominated world trade through its apparently insatiable

demand for precious metals. Whereas wealthy Brits craved luxury
Chinese goods—silk, tea, porcelain—East Asian customers showed
little interest in acquiring Western manufactured products or
scientific knowledge: instead, gold and silver flooded eastward,
affecting national economies all over Europe.
Thomson’s Rule Britannia! and Ramsay’s elegy to Newton voiced
the smug complacency of a nation that admired itself as a world
ruler and glossed over rival claims. While the words of these two
British poets have endured, the distinguished Jesuit missionary
Jean Crasset is scarcely remembered, perhaps because he told some
uncomfortable home truths—that Asian nations were key players
in global trade, renowned not only for the luxury goods they
exported in exchange for gold and silver, but also for the scholarly
books and manuscripts appropriated by British visitors for their
libraries back home. ‘It is very usual for Civiliz’d and Polite Nations
to look upon all others as barbarous,’ Crasset remarked; ‘Europe
now being the Seat of Learning, and Science, wherein learned
Academies are set up for the Discovery of Hidden Secrets in Nature,
we take all the Rest of Mankind for meer Barbarians: But Those
who have Travel’d into China and Japan, must confess those People
far surpass us in the endowments, both of body and mind.’ Similarly,
in Gulliver’s Travels, Swift relied on the high reputation of Japanese
civility and wealth to satirize the crass behaviour of Britain’s
European rivals, the Dutch.31
As its population increased, Britain depended more and more
heavily on buying in goods from overseas territories to keep its
citizens fed and clothed. During the early decades of the eighteenth
century, imports were escalating at a far higher rate than exports, a
deficit that was made more urgent by the perpetual need to finance
expensive wars. To reverse this outward flow of money, the
government stepped up earlier protectionist policies. High taxes or
even complete bans were slapped on luxury goods arriving from
China and India, as well as from European rivals, especially France
and Holland. For example, in response to pressure from the
Ordnance Office, the Royal African Company stopped buying
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Going Global  217

Dutch guns and instead traded English firearms—around 66,000 in

thirty years—for gold, people, and ivory. Home manufacturers
competed by developing less expensive imitations, but they often
relied on the skills of immigrant workers and adopted (aka stole)
techniques developed overseas. By the end of the eighteenth
century, Britain had ruthlessly displaced the previous economic
leaders based in Asia.32
From his powerful position at the Mint, Newton supported the
government’s exclusionist policies, and the inventory of his
possessions at his death suggests that he followed his own
recommendations: his patriotic cellar included cider but no French
brandy, and he chose home-­woven harrateen rather than Chinese
silk for his crimson bed curtains.33 By stemming the eastward flow
of silver, the yawning gap between gold and silver could be
narrowed, a pressing problem that Newton never solved. Steering
Britain along a mercantilist road of adopting prohibitive policies to
boost exports and build up cash reserves, he drew up proposals to
bar individuals from melting down coins, or using gold and silver
decorations for their clothes and coaches. He sought to embargo
exotic luxury imports: ‘The like limitations for China earthen ware
would save ye Nation much money & so would be a prohibition of
importing Cabinets & other lacquered wooden ware from Japan &
other parts of ye Indies.’34
Buying cheaper and buying British were individual decisions, but
collectively they achieved a global impact. Those who were already
comfortably off became still more prosperous, mainly at the expense
of foreign exporters and the ignored victims of the international
slave trade. By the end of the eighteenth century, Britain had
become the world’s leading industrial nation with the largest global
empire, having nudged China, Japan, and the west coast of Africa
towards long periods of decline.
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Epilogue

Dryden gives the final speech to Cortez, who—despite being a

dastardly Spaniard—is determined to retain his honour; in this
­
­distorted version of colonial history, it is the anachronistic Pizarro
who shoulders the burden of responsibility for cruelty, oppression, and
greed. In his last line, Cortez rejoices at being ‘doubly blest, with con-
quest, and with love’: this European victor now possesses Montezuma’s
empire as well as his daughter. For Hogarth’s eighteenth-­century Whig
audience, that must have seemed a satisfactory ending at a time when
Britain was struggling to control its territories in the Americas.
Cortez also gives his blessing to an alternative vision, a utopian
dream of living in peace and poverty rather than in subjugation to
wealth and foreign rule. This honourable route to virtuous happiness
is articulated not by a European, but by Guyomar, Montezuma’s son,
who aspires to establish an independent community living in ­harmony
with nature:

Northward, beyond the Mountains we will go,

Where Rocks lie cover’d with Eternal Snow,
Thin Herbage in the Plains, and Fruitless Fields,
The Sand no Gold, the Mine no Silver yields:
There Love and Freedom we’l in Peace enjoy;
No Spaniards will that Colony destroy.
We to our selves will all our wishes grant;
And nothing coveting, can nothing want.1

Throughout the play, Guyomar has demonstrated that even sup­

posed­ly primitive people can hold high moral standards. With Cortez’s
blessing, he guides his followers towards a very different type of free-
dom from the Whig liberty that enabled wealthy British people to
become still wealthier. If Dryden’s play were to be restaged today, many
spectators might think that Guyomar’s Indians made the better choice.
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Epilogue  219

I recently read a story imagining the emotions of a modern African

family emigrating to America, the same geographical journey as the
one forcibly undertaken by so many thousands of enslaved people
during Newton’s lifetime. When the couple’s 6-­year-­old demands a
story, her father decides to tell her about the magical ‘Door of No
Return’ in Gorée. Tentatively, terrified of destroying her innocence,
he explains that although there were no fresh water supplies on the
island, there was a special market for selling human beings. His
daughter’s reaction is loud and instantaneous: ‘Boahema laughed,
bless her heart. A laughter so shrill and sudden the people in the
row ahead turned back, startled . . . “Papa,” she chortled, “You said
this was a real story.” ’2
Boahema’s exuberant chuckles of disbelief underline that slavery
was, indeed, an extraordinary practice, but it lasted for centuries
and still survives, even if now concealed. Over the last three cen­tur­
ies, Newtonian rationalists have accumulated vast numbers of facts,
but there is little evidence that people have become either more
clever or more virtuous. Older and more jaundiced than Boahema,
I have no doubts that people really did behave in ways that seem
unconscionable to me, but were second nature for them.
I was just finishing a first draft of this book when Cambridge’s
vice-­chancellor unexpectedly announced that he was setting up an
enquiry into the university’s dependence on profits from the slave
trade. Unknowingly, I had anticipated his official initiative by
choosing to explore the imperial affiliations of Cambridge’s most
iconic scientific hero, Isaac Newton. In contrast, I had realized that
I was following in the tracks of an eminent Russian physicist called
Boris Hessen. In 1931, he shocked his international audience at a
large conference held in London by delivering a lecture on ‘The
social and economic roots of Newton’s Principia’. A member of a
delegation advocating Soviet science policies, Hessen argued that
Newton’s work stemmed not from any unique genius, but from
contemporary ideological conflicts and the technical demands of a
rising bourgeoisie.3
Despite his Soviet loyalty, Hessen was executed in 1936, so he
never knew how famous his speech would become. At the time,
many British academics were appalled, decrying it as a Marxist
attack on their national figurehead and the principle of scientific
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220 Epilogue

freedom. Some chose the easy option of retreating into denial and
refusing to engage with Hessen’s arguments. But his paper was wel-
comed by younger left-­inclined scientists, and later exerted an
enormous influence on how successive historians thought about
science’s past. Through them, Hessen’s speech underpins the argu-
ment of this book that Newton participated in a mercantile, i­ m­per­ial
community whose values shaped his scientific ideas; conversely, his
theories affected the subsequent direction taken by a globalizing
society.
Newton is one of Britain’s greatest heroes, and contemplating his
human flaws can be uncomfortable. His major biographer, Richard
Westfall, courageously revealed that he had embarked on psy­cho­
analy­sis to explore his emotional relationship with his subject.
Accusing himself of downplaying Newton’s thirty years of financial
and political negotiations at the Mint, Westfall confessed that he had
sought to preserve unsullied Newton’s reputation as an unworldly
scholar. Digging deep into his own psyche, Westfall exposed his
innermost self-­ identification as a Presbyterian elder, a staunch
Puritan repelled by rampant consumerism and fearful that Newton’s
activities at the Mint might tarnish his reputation.4
Unlike Westfall, I have no qualms about impugning Newton’s
moral stance and no ambition to emulate him, although my rendi-
tion of his last three decades is coloured by my own views and
experiences. There are always new ways of interpreting familiar
facts, and there are always new facts to be unearthed. That is why
being a historian is so fascinating. On the other hand, to embark on
a historical research project is to enter a bewildering Borgesian
laby­rinth. There are dead ends and there are spurious interconnec-
tions, but there is no definite goal or advance destination. Rewriting
the past entails venturing along paths that nobody else has followed,
leaving the security of well-­established analyses. The thread guiding
Theseus away from the Minotaur has broken, and the birds have
eaten the trail of breadcrumbs leading Hansel and Gretel back to
the woodcutter’s cottage.
Newton has become symbolically so important that—as I know
from experience—any attempt to reassess him can arouse bitter
antagonism. By presenting novel arguments about such an iconic
figurehead, I am exposing not just my knowledge but also my
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Epilogue  221

opinions, character, and beliefs to public scrutiny. In case any

doubts linger, although I maintain that science is inextricably inter-
twined with society, I am not a naïve relativist who accepts all truths
as equal. Furthermore, I realize that Newton was just one among
many wealthy Europeans who were complicit in exploiting other
peoples and places for their own financial gain.
During the eighteenth century, when the privileges of freedom
included the right to buy and sell human beings, the British econ-
omy depended on the slave trade. Newton has left no explicit
record of his views, but he presumably shared the majority opinion
that what now seems an abhorrent practice was perfectly acceptable.
Even without falling into the trap of assessing bygone attitudes
with twenty-­first-­century sensibilities, what right do we have to
judge our predecessors when modern behaviour remains so
deplorable? When Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, child abuse
had not yet been defined as a term, let alone a crime—but although
it is now firmly on the statute books, perpetrators still exist. People
have treated the world and its inhabitants extremely badly. They
still do, but the route to improvement lies through exposure and
discussion, not concealment. Protesters claim the moral high
ground by demolishing statues of imperial oppressors or removing
offensive books from reading lists and library shelves. But is deny-
ing our unsavoury past an effective way of dealing with its
implications?
Moral responsibility is shared by all members of a community. In
1790, the wealthy industrialist Samuel Galton was condemned by
his Quaker brethren for transgressing their commitment to paci-
fism: they wanted to expel him because his family fortune came
from manufacturing guns. In his defence, Galton produced several
arguments comparing individual responsibility and collective culp­
abil­ity. ‘It is alledged that the Manufacturer of Arms, contributes to
the carrying on War,’ he wrote (his italics). ‘But do you, not all in
many ways contribute to the War, by supplying Government
directly, or indirectly, with Money, which is so necessary, that it is
called proverbially the Sinews of War? Do not such of you as are
concerned in East India Stock, who subscribe to the Loan, who pur-
chase Stock, Lottery Tickets, Navy Victualling, or Exchequer Bills, as
directly, and as voluntarily furnish the means of War, as myself?’5
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222 Epilogue

Shifting his focus to slavery, Galton blamed anyone who had ever
consumed products such as sugar, indigo, rum, tobacco, or cotton.
The abolitionist poet William Cowper used mockery to make the
same point, laying bare the tensions between compassion and
­conformity, between good intentions and political action:

I pity them greatly, but I must be mum,

For how could we do without sugar and rum? . . .
He blam’d and protested, but join’d in the plan;
He shar’d in the plunder, but pitied the man.6

Such conflicts still arise. Unlike many people in the world, I am suf-
ficiently privileged to be guilty of buying Cowper’s sugar and rum
in their modern manifestations—mass-­produced clothes, ex­ploit­
ative delivery services, aeroplane flights that damage the environ-
ment. And although I rarely realize it is happening, the concealed
technology of consumerism favours someone like me with a pale
skin who can wear toning medical plasters and easily obtain soap
from automatic dispensers. From my British perspective, it seems
that everybody reading this book is enmeshed in a global economic
system that promotes inequality, and whose growth has been linked
with the rise of the state and the rise of science and the rise of
empire since the mid-­seventeenth century.
Exploring the past can reveal how we have reached the present,
but for me the main point of doing that is to improve the future.
Recalling Newton’s divinely run universe, the current state of the
world was not pre-­ordained as if it were a clock wound up in
advance. Instead, multiple individual decisions have shaped the
direction humanity has collectively taken, and millions of others will
affect what lies ahead. Ensuring a better future requires that every-
body—you, me—take personal action. In writing this book, I have
tried to analyse some of the ways in which our predecessors went
wrong, and indicate the mistakes that we must avoid repeating.
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 14/12/20, SPi

Notes

Notes to Prologue

1. Retrieved from entries in the online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,

https://www.oxforddnb.com/ (accessed 17 June 2019).
2. Website of Economic History Resources, http://www.eh.net (accessed 17 June
2019).
3. Blair, pp. 153–79.
4. My main sources for the picture are Uglow, pp. 130–70; Paulson, vol. 1,
pp. 172–87, and vol. 2, pp. 1–4; Asfour.
5. Dr Samuel Clarke to Mrs Clayton, 22 April 1732, quoted in Saumarez Smith,
p. 70. Falk, pp. 260–1: Mrs Clayton, later Lady Sundon, was a friend of
Catherine Barton and influential at court.
6. See https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Portrait-­of-­Newton-­i n-­1689-­by-­
Godfrey-Kneller_fig1_324694115 (accessed 26 June 2019).
7. Pointon, pp. 107–41 (quotation of 1720 at p. 107).
8. Iliffe, Priest of Nature and ‘Making of a Politician’.
9. Winn, p. 101 (letter from Anne to Mary, May 1687).
10. Blanning, p. 21.
11. Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 591 (letter to Peter King, April 1703); Goldie.
12. Challis, ‘Neale’.
13. Murphy.
14. Montagu, quoted in Horwitz, p. 153. My main sources for Montagu are Higgitt,
Handley, and Falk.
15. Quoted in Handley, p. 9.
16. Quoted from Montagu’s letter of 19 March 1696 in Shirras and Craig, p. 220.
17. Quoted in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 586.
18. Westfall, ‘Newton and his Biographer’; Traweek, pp. 74–105.
19. For example, Wennerlind, p. 148.
20. Coppola.
21. Paulson, vol. 1, p. 182; Bulman, pp. 277–90.

Notes to Chapter 1

1. McGuire and Rattansi; Craske.

2. Quoted in Saumurez Smith, p. 57.
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224  Notes to pp. 6–21

3. Carswell, pp. 22–30; Quinn.

4. Quoted (1698) in Wennerlind, p. 154.
5. Mint 19/II, 608–11. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/
MINT00261 (accessed 13 June 2019).
6. Fable of the Bees, quoted in Saumaurez Smith, p. 58.
7. White, Isaac Newton, p. 359 (quotation from letter to Lord Townshend of
1724).
8. Letter to Catherine Barton of August 1700: Mint 19/II, 30. https://www.historyof
parliamentonline.org/volume/1690–1715/member/tily–joseph–1654–1708
(accessed 9 January 2019).
9. Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 581.
10. Werrett, Thrifty Science, pp. 47–8.
11. Conti.
12. Newman, p. 91.
13. Sheppard, ‘Jermyn Street’.
14. Letter from Richard Bentley of 20 October 1709. http://www.newtonproject.
ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/OTHE00082 (accessed 26 June 2018); Westfall,
Never at Rest, pp. 670–1.
15. Dry, pp. 6–9; Villamil, pp. 62–111.
16. Conduitt, p. 97; Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 869–70.
17. Craig, p. 125.
18. Mint 19/II, 409. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/
MINT00263 (accessed 4 July 2018).
19. Conduitt, p. 102.
20. Quoted in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 609.
21. Mayor, pp. 314–15, 322 (in 1702).
22. Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 580–1; Carswell, p. xvii.
23. Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 579–81; Villamil.
24. See https://shrubsole.com/products/an-­exceptionally-­rare-­george-­ii-­antique-­
english-­silver-­chamber-­pot (accessed 19 July 2018).
25. Villamil, pp. 2–3, 49–61; Baker, p. 236: Le Marchand sculpted four ivories of
Newton.
26. Saumarez Smith, pp. 33–58 (quoted in Defoe, p. 52).
27. Robins, p. 58 (1711).
28. I am grateful to Andrew Odlyzko for explaining that Newton had shares in
one of the companies in 1700, but none after 1709 in the two united
companies.
29. Ashworth.
30. Mint 19/II, 131–2. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/
MINT00333 (accessed 31 May 2019).
31. Quoted in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 621 (draft of a proposed act).
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Notes to pp. 24–40  225

Notes to Chapter 2

1. Craig; Kilburn-­Toppin, pp. 197–201.

2. Hahn, pp. 143–63 (Ned Ward quoted at p. 152); Jones and Holmes, p. 263.
3. Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 593.
4. Satia, pp. 27–41, 191–218.
5. Craig, pp. 1, 15, 125–6; Charlton; Challis, Royal Mint, pp. 358–60; Mint 19/III,
390–9. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/MINT00815
and Mint 19/III, 409–10. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/
normalized/MINT00813 (accessed 20 June 2018).
6. Tollet, pp. 25–6 (from ‘To my Brother at St John’s College in Cambridge’).
7. Londry.
8. Nichols, vol. 6, p. 64.
9. Buchwald and Feingold, pp. 239–44.
10. Tollet, pp. 25–6 (from ‘To my Brother at St John’s College in Cambridge’);
Davis.
11. Tollet, p. 96 (from ‘Anne Boleyn’).
12. Tollet, p. 67 (‘Hypatia’).
13. Costa (quotation at p. 52).
14. Tollet, p. 129 (‘On the Death of Sir Isaac Newton’).
15. Tollet, p. 129 (‘On the Death of Sir Isaac Newton’).
16. Winn, p. 355 (quotation at p. 390).
17. Craig, pp. 63, 76.
18. Dennison, pp. 57–60.
19. Akkerman; Dennison, p. 77.
20. Quoted in Winn, p. 600 (anonymous).
21. Winn (p. 401) reports that Newton was the tutor, but I have based my account
on Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 576.
22. Winn (Whitwell Elwin quoted at p. xvii). For political aspects of her reign, see
Holmes.
23. Ben-­Menahem et al., p. 26.
24. This section is closely based on Hone.
25. Newton Mint manuscript quoted in Hone, p. 140 (1704).
26. Mint 19/III, 297. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/
MINT00747 (accessed 27 June 2018).
27. Anonymous poem of 1707, quoted in Hone, p. 135.
28. Winn, p. 300.
29. Colley, pp. 137–67; Winn, pp. 524–6, 547–50 (Thomas Tickell quoted at
p. 606).
30. From The Spectator, quoted in González-­Treviño, p. 115.
31. Quoted in Winn, p. 550.
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226  Notes to pp. 40–54

32. See http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/MINT00125

(accessed 21 June 2018).
33. Winn, p. 599.

Notes to Chapter 3

1. Vickery.
2. Tollet, p. 66 (‘Hypatia’).
3. Higgitt, p. 163.
4. Swift, Journal, vol. 2, pp. 380, 383 (11 and 14 October 1711), and passim.
5. Villamil, pp. 50–1.
6. Inwood, pp. 149–51, 268–71.
7. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avunculate_marriage (accessed 28 June 2018).
8. Goldie, pp. 22–7. See Manuel, pp. 191–212 for a Freudian analysis.
9. Craig, p. 30.
10. Revelation 14:4–5.
11. Iliffe, Priest of Nature, pp. 157–88 (quotations from the Yahuda manuscripts,
pp. 185, 185–6).
12. Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 496–7, 535; I am grateful to Mark Goldie for this
information.
13. Letter of 10 October 1689: Turnbull, vol. 3, p. 45.
14. Iliffe, Early Biographies, p. lv.
15. Higgitt is the most judicial consideration. For Montagu, see Falk, pp. 239–62.
16. Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 502–3.
17. Letter of August 1700, Mint 19/II, 30 (accessed 4 July 2019).
18. Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 503.
19. Harrison; Falk, p. 247.
20. Swift, Journal, vol. 1, p. 230. Stella’s real name was Esther Johnson.
21. Swift, Journal, vol. 2, pp. 415, 417 (17 and 20 November 1711).
22. Quoted in Lynall, p. 94.
23. Lynall, pp. 89–119, quotations at p. 94.
24. Letter of 1733 reproduced in More, pp. 540–1.
25. My main sources are Higgitt, Handley, and Falk.
26. Quoted in Higgitt, p. 163.
27. Montagu, pp. 195–6; will and codicils in appendix.
28. Quoted in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 601.
29. Quoted in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 600.
30. Lynall, pp. 93–4; Higgitt, p. 163; Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 598.
31. Manley, p. 292.
32. Manley, p. 294.
33. Quoted in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 596 (first published 1757).
34. Craig, p. 124. See also http://www.openculture.com/2011/08/voices_from_
the_19th_century.html (accessed 29 August 2019).
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Notes to pp. 54–78  227

35. Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 851–68; Stukeley, pp. 290–1, 303.
36. Thomas Mason, quoted in Conduitt, p. 58.
37. Flamsteed to Abraham Sharp, quoted in Manuel p. 313.
38. From Polite Conversation, quoted in Lynall, p. 102.
39. Winn, pp. 403–4 (quotation at p. 403).
40. Mandelbrote, pp. 8, 11–14.
41. Reproduced in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 43.
42. Poole, pp. 85–101, 108–11 (anonymous draft quoted at p. 90).

Notes to Chapter 4

1. Carter.
2. Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 846–9.
3. Conduitt, p. 93, 101–2 (drafts to Fontenelle).
4. Letter of 21 October 1706, http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/catalogue/
record/THEM00106 (accessed 26 June 2018).
5. Conduitt, p. 169 (notes on canonization).
6. Werrett, ‘Sociomateriality of Waste’.
7. Dry, pp. 5–21 (especially pp. 13–15).
8. Mint 19/III, 44. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/
MINT00291 (accessed 13 June 2019).
9. Conduitt; see also Rob Iliffe’s introduction (pp. xi–lxii) in Early Biographies;
and Baker, pp. 233–49.
10. Conduitt, p. 104 (revised draft to Fontenelle).
11. Conduitt, p. 103 (revised draft to Fontenelle).
12. Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 154–7.
13. Conduitt, pp. 94, 161, 170–1, 198, 202, 212–13.
14. Robins, p. 2.
15. Iliffe, Priest of Nature; Newton’s Observations upon the Prophecies, quoted in
Manuel, p. 349.
16. Buchwald and Feingold, p. 434.
17. Conduitt, p. 81; Stukeley, pp. 256–7; Ben-­Menahem et al., pp. 58–78 (quotation
at p. 77).
18. Quoted in Buchwald and Feingold, p. 221, my main source for this discussion.
19. Quoted in Buchwald and Feingold, p. 129.
20. Ben-­Menahem et al., pp. 45–53.
21. Quoted from Newton’s Observations upon the Prophecies, in Manuel,
pp. 365–6.
22. Revelation 13:18.
23. Lines 1169–72. See https://www.bartleby.com/204/5.html#txt81 (accessed
24 June 2019).
24. Iliffe, Priest of Nature, p. 353 (publications of 1725 and 1726).
25. Quoted in Dennison, p. 195.
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228  Notes to pp. 80–102

Notes to ACT II

1. Marschner, pp. 153–4.

2. White, ‘Scott, Mary’.

Notes to Chapter 5

1. Baker and Baker, p. 152.

2. The most detailed biography is Carpenter. My other major source for
Desaguliers is Stewart, pp. 213–54.
3. Ashworth, pp. 85–92 (quotations at pp. 87, 90).
4. Contrasting accounts of Freemasonry are provided by Jacob, pp. 109–41
(quotation at p. 133), and Carpenter, pp. 81–111.
5. I am grateful to Martin Cherry, the librarian at London’s Museum of
Freemasonry, for detailed information. The 1723 Constitutions is reproduced
in Jacob, pp. 279–85.
6. Uglow, pp. 108–9.
7. Quoted in Morton and Wess, p. 11.
8. Parker; quotation in Wennerlind at p. 205.
9. Uglow, pp. 84–91, ballad quoted at p. 86. My other main sources for the Bubble
are Odlyzko, ‘Newton and Defoe’ and ‘Newton’s Financial Misadventures’;
Carswell; Blanning, pp. 61–3; Markley, pp. 210–23; Wennerlind, pp. 197–234.
10. Defoe, quoted in Odlyzko, ‘Newton and Defoe’, p. 20.
11. Buchan.
12. Quoted in Odlyzko, ‘Newton and Defoe’, p. 20.
13. Satia, p. 26.
14. Thomas, p. 305.
15. Erskine-­Hill, p. 37.
16. Carpenter, pp. 125–9 (quotation at p. 127).
17. Stewart and Weindling.
18. Quoted in Baker and Baker, p. 28; this is the fullest biography.
19. Carpenter, pp. 153–76, Defoe quoted at p. 160.
20. Coppola, pp. 139–44.
21. Carpenter, pp. 142–5 (quotation at p. 142).
22. Quoted in Stewart, p. 242.
23. Richard Bradley, quoted in Carpenter, p. 144.
24. Carpenter, pp. 148–51 (quotation at p. 150).

Notes to Chapter 6

1. Carpenter, p. 227; Handley.

 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 14/12/20, SPi

Notes to pp. 103–125  229

2. Letter of 23 June 1738, quoted at https://andrewbakercomposer.files.wordpress.

com/2018/03/long-­version-­elizabeth-­carter-­and-­thomas-­wright.pdf (accessed
2 August 2019).
3. Desaguliers, A Course, p. vi.
4. Jacob and Stewart, pp. 61–92 (quotation at p. 74).
5. Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 627–97, Zacharias von Uffenbach quoted at
p. 635.
6. Jones and Holmes, pp. 318–19.
7. Letter to Henry Oldenburg of late Jan. 1675, Turnbull, vol. 7, p. 387.
8. Letter to Newton from John Chamberlayne, Mint 19/II, 334–5. http://www.
newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/diplomatic/MINT00893 (accessed 24 July
2019).
9. Quoted in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 679 (letter of 8 December 1713).
10. Stukeley, pp. 299–300.
11. Metzger.
12. Letter to Halley of 20 June 1686, http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/
texts/normalized/NATP00325 (accessed 23 January 2019).
13. For Montagu, see Higgitt; for Newton as president, see Westfall, Never at Rest,
pp. 627–97.
14. Quoted in Manuel, p. 317.
15. Iliffe and Willmoth, pp. 244–57 (quotation at p. 255).
16. Arthur Devis, The John Bacon Family (1742–3), https://artsandculture.google.
com/asset/the-­john-­bacon-­family-­arthur-­devis/lgGFJht9ViDeXg.
17. Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 265.
18. William Whiston, quoted in Manuel, p. 348.
19. See http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00045,
pp. 1, 21–2 (accessed 30 November 2018) (1718 edition).
20. Schaffer, ‘Glass Works’.
21. The final thirty-­one are reproduced at http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/
view/texts/normalized/NATP00051 (accessed 6 December 2018).
22. Quoted in Gascoigne, p. 223 (John Hancock, 1706 Boyle lecture).
23. Cantor and Hodge.
24. Mandelbrote, pp. 123–6; Iliffe, Priest of Nature, pp. 157–88, 350–3. https://
newtonprojectca.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/brief-­guide-­to-­the-­general-
­scholium-­letter-­size.pdf (accessed 7 December 2018).
25. Kuchta, pp. 91–132.
26. Wolf, p. 349 (James Logan, 1727).

Notes to Chapter 7

1. Quoted in Dennison, pp. 41–2.

2. My main sources are Blanning, Dennison, Marschner, and van der Kiste.
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 14/12/20, SPi

230  Notes to pp. 125–149

3. Mint 19/III, 313–17, 330. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/search/results?

keyword=george+coronation+medal&all=1 (accessed 20 June 2019).
4. Winn, pp. 545–51, 609, 616.
5. Quoted in Dennison, p. 54.
6. Winn, p. 635.
7. Blanning, p. 7.
8. Quoted in van der Kiste, p. 103.
9. Lynall, pp. 131–2.
10. Letter of June 1716 quoted in Marschner, p. 150.
11. Manuel, p. 285.
12. Conduitt, pp. 93–4, 102.
13. Manuel, pp. 321–45 (quotation at p. 325).
14. Lynall, pp. 129–30.
15. Balderston, quotation at p. 86 from the London Journal.
16. Quoted in Colton, p. 918 (London Journal).
17. Swift, quoted in Morton and Wess, p. 10.
18. Gascoigne.
19. Conduitt, p. 94.
20. Zedler.
21. Bertoloni Meli.
22. Shapin, ‘Of Gods and Kings’ (Leibniz quoted at p. 193).
23. Werrett, Thrifty Science, pp. 109–28; quotation in Westfall, Never at Rest,
p. 306.
24. Quoted in Balderston, p. 88.
25. Reproduced in Marschner, p. 117.
26. Carpenter, p. 33.
27. Dennison, p. 124. Quoted from the Daily Journal, Carpenter, p. 45.
28. Desaguliers, Newtonian System, pp. 22–4.
29. Quoted in Morton and Wess, p. 17.

Notes to ACT III

1. Kinsley and Kinsley; Loftis.

2. My major sources for discussing this play are Brown; González-­Treviño;
Hutner, pp. 65–88; Kewes; Loftis; and Orr, pp. 135–87.
3. Armintor. I am grateful to James Herriman-­Smith for this information.
4. Dryden, p. 30 (I, i).
5. Dryden, p. 48 (II, i).
6. Thompson, pp. 75–97 (Leigh quoted at p. 75); Loftis.
7. Quoted in Winn, p. 21.
8. Dryden, p. 111 (V, ii).
9. Winn, pp. 609–14, quotation at p. 613 (John Johnson); Davis.
10. Queen Anne quoted in Erskine-­Hill, p. 34. Tickell quoted in Winn, p. 606
(from Poem to His Excellency the Lord Privy-­Seal).
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Notes to pp. 151–169  231

Notes to Chapter 8

1. Dryden, p. 31 (I, i).

2. Dryden, p. 31 (I, i).
3. Dryden, p. 30 (I, i).
4. Quoted in Schaffer, ‘Golden Means’, p. 35 (from The Wealth of Nations).
5. Markley, pp. 210–23 (quotation at p. 221).
6. Waddell (quotations at p. 543).
7. My main sources for this chapter are Bernstein, pp. 175–98; Challis, Royal
Mint, pp. 351–439; Craig; Horwitz, pp. 143–98; Li; Wennerlind, pp. 83–157;
and Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 551–626.
8. Mint 19/II, 608–11. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/
MINT00261 (accessed 13 June 2019).
9. Quoted in Bernstein, p. 193 (1698).
10. Schaffer, ‘Golden Means’, pp. 35–6 (Secretary of the Treasury quoted).
11. Li, pp. 217–23, quotation at p. 217.
12. Levenson, p. 112.
13. Quoted in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 561.
14. Bernstein, pp. 114–98.
15. Quoted in Bernstein, p. 195.
16. Stern (quotations at p. 60).
17. My main sources are Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 567–76; and Levenson,
pp. 147–237.
18. Mint 15/17, 215. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/
MINT01465 (accessed 5 June 2019).
19. Mint 19/I, 475–7. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/
MINT00855 (accessed 5 June 2019).
20. Quoted in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 574.
21. Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 570 (Samuel Bond quoting Francis Ball).
22. Quoted in Lynall, p. 98 (1724).
23. Kilburn-­Toppin, quotations at pp. 223, 207.
24. Quoted in Kilburn-­Toppin, p. 217.
25. Schaffer, ‘Golden Means’; Turner. http://www.royalmintmuseum.org.uk/
history/people/mint-­officials/isaac-­newton/index2.html (accessed 30 May
2019).
26. Newman; Mint 19/I, 293. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/
normalized/MINT00177 (accessed 27 June 2019).
27. Royal Society, MM/5.43. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/
normalized/MINT01251 (accessed 30 May 2019); quoted in Westfall, Never at
Rest, p. 564.
28. Craig, pp. 70–5.
29. Mint 19/III, 524. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/
MINT00732 (accessed 24 June 2019).
30. Mint 19/I, 458–9. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/
MINT00853 (accessed 31 May 2019).
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232  Notes to pp. 169–187

31. Mint 19/III, 456–7. http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/

MINT00489 (accessed 31 May 2019).
32. Lynall, pp. 94–119 (Sir Michael Creagh quoted at p. 96).
33. Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, p. 150.
34. Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, pp. 150, 184–5.
35. Baker, pp. 233–49.

Notes to Chapter 9

1. Asfour; Harris. Almeria and Cortez were played by Sophia and William
Fermor; Kitty Conduitt played Alibech.
2. Dryden, p. 80 (4, ii).
3. See https://www.loc.gov/resource/g8200.ct001445/ (accessed 3 June 2019).
I am very grateful to Stephen Snobelen for this reference.
4. Dryden, p. 112.
5. Engetsu; Cowan.
6. Clare.
7. Quoted in Sprat, p. xiii (editors’ introduction).
8. Moxham.
9. Hunter, pp. 1–58; McCormick, pp. 185–93.
10. Evelyn quoted in Ashworth, p. 28.
11. Sprat, pp. 403–10 (quotation at p. 408).
12. Sprat, pp. 114–15.
13. Sprat, pp. 407–8.
14. Schaffer, ‘Golden Means’, p. 27.
15. Werrett, Thrifty Science, p. 124.
16. Pepys, vol. 1, p. 258 (3 October 1660); Carr, pp. 172–7.
17. My main sources throughout this chapter are Brewer; Davies; Pettigrew; and
Zook.
18. Winterbottom.
19. Govier.
20. Carey, ‘Compiling Nature’s History’, Boyle quoted at pp. 272–3.
21. Govier.
22. Hill; Maddison. He does not seem to be related to Thomas Hill in Hogarth’s
picture.
23. Quoted in Zook, p. 182.
24. Bennett, quotation at p. 83. The clock is at the top left of the frontispiece.
25. Moxham, pp. 254–5.
26. Scott (quotations at pp. 335–6).
27. Ashworth, pp. 15–33.
28. Micklethwait and Wooldridge, pp. 1–36; Robins, pp. 19–40.
29. Pepys, vol. 4, pp. 152–3 (23 May 1663).
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 14/12/20, SPi

Notes to pp. 190–208  233

30. Green, pp. 1–29, 108–48, 262–95.

31. Both quotations from Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, p. 275.
32. Fryer, p. 44.
33. Colley, pp. 23–134.
34. Inikori, pp. 215–64 (especially p. 227).
35. John Aikins, quoted in Green, pp. 140–1.
36. St Clair, pp. 1–81; Reed; Woollacott.
37. Defoe, p. 17 (about 2.5 kg), p. 33.
38. Carey, ‘Reading Contrapuntally’ (quotation at p. 135); Tonks.
39. Carr, p. 180.
40. Royal African Company, p. 1.
41. Thomas, pp. 196–464. For transcripts of correspondence with West African
personnel of the RAC from 1681 to 1699, see Law.

Notes to Chapter 10

1. Dryden, p. 31 (I, i).

2. Dryden, p. 98 (V, ii).
3. Dryden, p. 79 (IV, ii); Green, pp. 265–70.
4. Dryden, pp. 87–8 (IV, iv).
5. Dryden, p. 88 (IV, iv); Woollacott.
6. Inikori, pp. 216–27; Pettigrew (quotation at p. 91).
7. Quoted in Markley, p. 4 (Josiah Child, 1681).
8. Robins, pp. 1–60 (anonymous letter of 1708 quoted at p. 55).
9. Odlyzko, ‘Newton’s Financial Misadventures’.
10. Ben-­Menahem et al., p. 59.
11. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (from On Poetry: A Rhapsody, 1733). https://
www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199668700.001.0001/
acref-­9780199668700.
12. Bulman, pp. 41–70.
13. Parker.
14. Festa and Carey.
15. Green, pp. 262–95.
16. Delisle de Sales, pp. 18–52.
17. Defoe; Carey, ‘Reading Contrapuntally’. I am grateful to Clive Wilmer for this
point.
18. My main sources for this section are Schaffer, ‘Newton on the Beach’ and
Information Order.
19. Quoted in Schaffer, ‘Newton on the Beach’, p. 251.
20. Schaffer, Information Order (quotation at p. 32).
21. Schaffer, ‘Golden Means’ (Jean Barbot quoted at p. 34).
22. Quoted in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 845 (referring to copper coins).
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 14/12/20, SPi

234  Notes to pp. 209–222

23. O’Brien (quotation at p. 291).

24. Quoted in O’Brien, p. 290.
25. Snobelen (quotation at p. 169).
26. Locke, quoted in Schaffer, ‘Golden Means’, p. 22.
27. Uzgalis.
28. Green, pp. 467–76.
29. Colley. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Works_of_James_Thomson/Rule,_
Britannia! (accessed 30 April 2019).
30. Robins, p. 59 (anonymous book of 1720).
31. Bulman, pp. 41–70; Markley, pp. 241–68 (Crasset quoted at p. 241); Festa and
Carey.
32. Ashworth; Parthasarathi; Satia, pp. 28–9.
33. Villamil, pp. 51, 54.
34. Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 621–2.

Notes to Epilogue

1. Dryden, p. 111 (V, ii).

2. Jackson-­Opuku.
3. Bukharin; Schaffer, ‘Newton at the Crossroads’.
4. Westfall, ‘Newton and his Biographer’.
5. Satia, pp. 1–12, 316–44. Quotation from https://www.revolutionaryplayers.
org.uk/letter-­from-­samuel-­galton-­jnr-­to-­the-­friends-­of-­the-­monthly-­meeting-­
in-­birmingham/ (accessed 16 May 2019).
6. Cowper, pp. 375–6 (‘Pity for Poor Africans’, lines 5–6, 43–4).
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 12/12/20, SPi

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Illustration Credits

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0.2 Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo
1.1 Wellcome Collection. CC BY
1.2 ACTIVE MUSEUM/Alamy Stock Photo
2.1 Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
2.2 Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019
3.1 King’s College Cambridge. Keynes MS 112/4 (as shown Mandelbrote, p. 8)
4.1 © The Trustees of the British Museum
5.1 Digital Image Library/Alamy Stock Photo
5.2 INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo
5.3 Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division
6.1 Cambridge University Library. Adv..b.39.2.p. 483 (as shown Mandelbrote, p. 125)
6.2 Cambridge University Library. Adv..b.39.2.p. 483 (as shown Mandelbrote, p. 125)
7.1 Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo
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9.3 Rept0n1x/Wikimedia Commons
9.4 Rob Fenenga/Alamy Stock Photo
10.1 Cambridge University Library
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 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 21/12/20, SPi

Index

Note: Figures are indicated by an italic “f ” following the page number.

Digital users: indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–3) may, on occasion, appear on
only one of those pages.

1984 (Orwell)  198–9 assay plates  166f, 167

Astronomer Royal post  181–2
Act of Union  168–9 astronomy 212
Addison, Joseph  xxxi, 20, 134 Augusta, Princess of Great Britain  210
Africa Ayscough, Hannah (Newton’s mother)  47
curiosity about  184–5
English stereotypes of  188–90, 188f Babson, Grace  12
exploration 191 Babson, Roger  12
map  172–4, 173f Bacon, Francis  31, 115–16, 178–9,
settlements  192–3, 192f 215–16
trade with  189–90 Baker, Edmund  153
see also Company of Royal Adventurers Bank of England
Trading into Africa; Royal African first bank notes  6–7
Company; slave trade foundation  xxvii, 6
alchemy  68, 167 bank notes  6–7
Amelia, Princess of Great Britain (daughter Barbon, Nicholas  5, 152
of George II)  141–2 Barrow, Isaac  xxiii–xxiv
America, statues  39–40 Barton, Catherine (Newton’s half-niece)  4,
Amigoni, Jacopo  129, 130f 41–3, 47–50, 53–4
ancestry  55–7, 56f burial place  69
Anderson, James  87f marriage to Conduitt  61–2
Anglican Church, Newton’s opinion relationship with Charles Montagu  46,
of  xxiii–xxiv, 15 51–3
Anne, Princess Royal (daughter of Barton, Hannah (Newton’s half-sister)  47
George II)  141–2 Beggars’ Opera, The (Gay)  171
Anne, Queen of Great Britain and Bentley, Richard  119
Ireland  xx–xxii, xxiv, 33–40, 129 Bolingbroke, Henry  49
knighting of Newton  55–6 Bombay (Mumbai), trade of  191
love of Handel’s works  126 Book of Daniel  75–6
Treaty of Utrecht  47–8 Boyle, Robert  xvi, 14, 135–6, 176, 184,
Annus Mirabilis; Year of Wonders 207–8
(Dryden)  46, 76 Bradford, Samuel, Bishop of Rochester  78
Arianism xxiii Brouncker, Henry  183
Aristotle  170, 211 Brydges, James see Chandos, James Brydges,
artworks 1st Duke of
conversation pieces  xvii Buck, Samuel and Nathaniel  30f
portraits  xix–xxii, xxif
theatre performances  xviiif , xvii–xix calculus, invention of  112–14
assay masters  164–7 calendar reform  57–8
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Cambridge University  xxiii–xxiv coat of arms  188, 188f
Charles Montagu at  xxvii–xxviii James, Duke of York as governor  195, 199
Members of Parliament  xxv–xxvi purpose 186–90
Newton’s knighthood  55–6 twinned with Royal Society  179–86
religions of professors  xxiv–xxv see also Royal African Company
Cannons mansion  97–8 Conduitt, John  xvi–xix, xviiif, 3–4, 13, 41,
Cape Coast Castle, Ghana  192–3, 192f, 195 136, 205
Carlisle, Bishop of (William Nicolson)  burial place  69
24–5, 106 on Caroline of Ansbach  132
Caroline, Princess of Great Britain (daughter as Fellow of Royal Society  101
of George II)  141–2 images of  60, 61f
Caroline of Ansbach  23, 77–8, 124–32, 130f marriage 61–2
family rifts  141–2 on Newton’s legacy  66–8, 73–4
friendship with Leibniz  136–8, 140–1 Newton’s monument  69–72
friendship with Newton  132–5 on Newton’s personality  8–9, 16
patronage of Desaguliers  142–4 preservation of Newton’s
theology 135–6 manuscripts 63–6
Carter, Elizabeth  102–3 Conduitt, Kitty  68, 171
cartography  172–4, 173f, 200–1 Congreve, William  51
Catholic Church Conti, Antonio  10, 77
calendar reform  57–8 Copernicus, Nicolas  212
Caroline of Ansbach’s opinion of  127–8 Cornwall, trade with  168
under James II  xxiv Cotes, Roger  119–21, 206–7, 211–12
Newton’s opinion of  xxiii Council of Trade  155
celibacy  xv, xxiii–xxiv, 44–5 Coventry, Sir William  183, 185
Chaloner, William  162–3 Cowley, Abraham  175
Chandos, James Brydges, 1st Duke of  83–4, Cowper, William  222
96–9 Crasset, Jean  216
Charles II, King of Great Britain and crime
Ireland  xxiii–xxiv, 33, 84–5, 175–81 coin clippers  155–8, 160–1
appointment of Astronomer Newton’s investigations  161–3
Royal 181–2 responsibility of victims  160
Royal Charters  182–3 Croker, John  37–8
trade of Tangier and Bombay  191 Cromwell, Oliver  24
Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor  127–31 Crowley, Abraham  93
Child, Josiah  199–200 Crown Jewels  24
China 215–16 Cumberland, William Augustus, Duke of
imported goods from  20 (son of George II)  xvi–xvii, xviiif, 23,
trade with  159 86, 124
Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended,
The (Newton)  73–4, 77–8 Darwin, Charles  61
Cibber, Theophilus  xvi–xvii Davenant, Charles  6–7
Clarke, Samuel  135–6, 138 Defoe, Daniel  xvi, 19–20, 92–3, 97–8, 194,
clipped coins  155–8, 160–1 204–5
coffee houses  175–6 Desaguliers, John Theophilus  xvi, 25, 83–5
cohesion theory  116 experiments for the Royal Society  104–5
coins  154–60, 156f as Fellow of Royal Society  101
African gold  190 inventions 98–100
counterfeit 160–3 marriage to Joanna Pudsey  102
standardization  165–7, 207–8 as a Mason  85–90
Company of Royal Adventurers Trading patronage  95–9, 142–4
into Africa  190–5 poetry 143–4
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and steam engines  95 George, Prince of Denmark (husband of

writing and lecturing about Newton  105 Queen Anne)  33–4, 109
De Sales, Jean Delisle  202f, 203–5 George I, King of Great Britain and
Descartes, René  105, 212–13 Ireland  40, 94, 107–8, 124–7, 133–4
Devis, Arthur  112 George II, King of Great Britain and
Downing, George  186, 194–5 Ireland  33–4, 124–7, 129–31, 133–4
Drury Lane Theatre  xvi–xviii family rifts  141–2
Dryden, John George III, King of Great Britain and
Annus Mirabilis; Year of Wonders  46, 76 Ireland 124
Catherine Barton, friendship with  48–9 Germaine, Lady Betty  48–9
coffee-houses  11–12, 175–6 Ghana, Africa  192–3, 192f, 195
The Indian Emperour see Indian Gibbon, Edward  xvi, 71–2
Emperour, The (Dryden) Gibbons, John  162
Glorious Revolution  xxvii, 24, 153,
East India Company  20, 48, 199–200 199–200
connection with the Royal Society  183 Gloucester, William, Duke of  34–5
trading shares  186–7 gold 214–15
economy  xxvi–xxviii, 5–8, 152–60 analogy with language  214
Einstein, Albert  119 international trade  215–16
elephant and castle symbol  187, 190 standardization 207–8
Elizabeth I, Queen of England  34, 129 Gold Coast see Ghana, Africa
Enlightenment science  174–5 Gorée island, Senegal  203–4
espionage 33–4 Gravelot, Hubert-François  61f
Essay concerning Human Understanding gravity  207, 210–13
(Locke)  28–9, 214 Great Fire of London (1666)  76
Euclid 14 Greenwich Observatory  111, 181–2
Europe, difference in calendar dates  57–8 Gregory, David  34–5, 168
Evelyn, John  28, 36–7, 134, 175, 177, 186 Gresham College, London  176
exclusionism 217 guineas
African gold  190
facts, trust in  200–8 value  154–5, 159–60
Fatio de Duillier, Nicolas  45–6, 113, 119 Gulliver’s Travels (Swift)  190–1, 216
Fielding, Henry  42 satire  49–50, 100, 170
Flamsteed, John  xvi, xxix, 26, 38, 107–11 Guy, Sir Thomas  94
Flamsteed, Margaret  110–12
Floyd, Mr  184 Hales, Stephen  116
Folkes, Martin  89 Halifax, Earl of see Montagu, Charles,
Fortnum and Mason’s  10–11 1st Earl of Halifax
Fox, Henry  198 Halley, Edmond  10, 23, 28, 107, 109,
France, Mississippi Scheme  92–3 111–12, 167–8, 183, 203
Francis, Alban  xxiv Hampden, John  60
Frederick, Prince of Wales (son of Handel, George  xvi, 35, 70, 126, 133–4
George II)  86, 124, 141–4 Harley, Robert, 1st Earl of Oxford and
Freemasons  85–90, 87f, 88f Mortimer  28, 36, 40
free trade  199 Harlot’s Progress series (Hogarth) 
Hauksbee, Francis  9–10, 103–4
Galileo Galilei  212–13 Haynes, Hopton  25–6
Galton, Samuel  221–2 Heming, Ann  110–11
Garrick, David  xvi, 70 Hermitage retreat  134–6, 140–1
Gay, John  134, 171 Hessen, Boris  219–20
genealogy  55–7, 56f Highmore, Joseph  18, 19f
General Scholium  119–23, 211–12 Hill, Abraham  184–5
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Hill, Thomas  24–5, 86 Ladies’ Diary journal  95
History of the Royal Society (Sprat)  Lake, Mary  97
177–81, 185 language
Hogarth, William  xvii–xix, xviiif, 3–4, 83–4 ambiguity in  28–9
as a Mason  85–6 calls for improvement of  175
portrait of the royal family  141 example of gold  214
Holland 182 scientific poetry  28–32
Holmes, Sir Robert  43–4, 185, 192–3 Law, John  92–3
homosexuality 44 Leibniz, Gottfried  112–14, 125, 129,
Hooke, Grace  43–4 132–3
Hooke, Robert  43–4, 96, 103–4, 108–9, 176, friendship with Caroline of
206–7 Ansbach  136–8, 140–1
Huguenots  17–18, 21, 84–5, 95–6 theological differences with
Newton 138–41
imperialism  152–3, 174, 185, 190–1 Leigh, Richard  45–6
Newtonian 208–14 Le Marchand, David  18, 19f
imported goods  20 Lennox, Caroline  171, 198
incestuous relationships  43–4 Lennox, Charles, 1st Duke of Richmond  24,
India 215–16 83, 86
imported goods from  20 as Fellow of Royal Society  101
Indian Emperour, The (Dryden)  xvi–xviii, liberty  47, 198
xviiif, 41–7, 151–3, 171–2, 196–8 Line of Kings  24
cut short by the Plague (1666)  76 Locke, John  135–6, 195
ending  175, 218 Essay Concerning Human
inspiration for  214 Understanding  28–9, 214
Mexicans in  39 Kit-Kat club  51
inequality  7, 25 on money  157–8, 214–15
interior design  18–20 Newton’s friendship with  xxvi
international trade  199–200, 215–17 Long, Anne  48–9
see also ivory trade; slave trade lottery (Million Adventure)  xxvi–xxvii
inverse square law  213 Louise, Queen of Denmark and Norway
investments  90–5, 111, 152 (daughter of George II)  24, 141–2
Company of Royal Adventurers Trading Louis XIV ‘The Sun King’, King of
into Africa  186–7 France 181–2
Ireland 169–70 Lowndes, William  157
ivory trade  21–2, 189f Lutheranism 136

James II, King of England and Ireland  Mandeville, Bernard  7–8

xxiv–xxv, 33–4, 183 Manley, Delarivier  52–3
as governor of Royal Adventurers  195, 199 maritime exploration  191
Japan, imported goods from  20 sea clocks  185
Jeffreys, George  xxiv–xxv  Mary, Countess of Deloraine (daughter of
Jenkinson, Mary  24–5 George II)  24, 141–2
Jermyn Street, London  10–11, 42 Mary, Princess of Great Britain  24
Johnson, Samuel  xvi, 51, 70 Mary II, Queen of Great Britain and
Ireland xxiv
Kent, William  70–1, 134–5 Masons  85–90, 87f, 88f
Kepler, Johannes  212–13 Masoretic Bible  58
Keynes, John Maynard  68 mathematical models  212–13
King Solomon’s Temple  72–3 Mathematical Principles of Natural
Kit-Kat club  51–2 Philosophy see Principia (Newton)
Kneller, Godfrey  xxif, xx–xxii, 35, 51, 136 Mathematical Society  95–6
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Mead, Richard  129 enmities  xxix, 43, 49–50, 77, 108–14,

medals 163–4
Conduitt’s images  60, 61f experiments for the Royal Society 
for George I  125–6 103–4
for Queen Anne  35–8, 37f, 40 friendships  xxvi–xxviii, 28, 30, 34–5,
Memoirs of Europe (Manley)  52–3 45–6, 62
Million Adventure  xxvi–xxvii on gold  214–15
Mississippi Scheme  92–3 gravity  207, 210–13
Moll, Hermann  90–2, 91f, 201–3 historical research  58–9, 72–4
Molyneux, William  169 household staff  16–17 see also Barton,
Monmouth, James Scott, 1st Duke of  26 Catherine (Newton’s half-niece)
Montagu, Charles, 1st Earl of invention of calculus  112–14
Halifax  xxviii–xxix, 6–7, 27, 35, 50–3, investments  90, 92–5
106, 158 knighthood 55–6
death 52 legacy  66–8, 73–4, 78
as Fellow of Royal Society  101 Lincolnshire background  54
relationship with Catherine Barton  46, Master of the Mint  xxvi–xxviii, 21, 25–6,
51–3 125–6, 153–4, 163–70, 207–8
Montagu, John, 2nd Duke of Montagu  mathematical models  212–13
24–5, 83, 86, 92 medical knowledge  47–8
as Fellow of Royal Society  101 Member of Parliament for Cambridge
Montagu, Mary Wortley  134 University  xxv–xxvi, 55–6
moral responsibility  221–2 monument 69–72
Mordaunt, Charles, 3rd Earl of move to London  xx, xxii–xxx, 4–5
Peterborough and 1st Earl of opinion of art and poetry  28–9
Monmouth 45–6 paperwork  63–6, 68
Morgan, Robert  153 patronage 132
‘Mr Spectator’  xxxi personality  8–9, 28–9
pictured in Senegal  202f, 203–5
National Anthem of Britain  209–10 portraits  xix–xxii, xxif, 136
navigation at sea  185, 191 possessions  17–18, 20–2
Neale, Thomas  25–6, 163 President of the Royal Society  32–3,
Newton, Isaac  122f 105–9, 174
accent 54 profit from scientific education  103
advice to Royal Mint on coinage  155–60 properties  9–14, 13f, 54
alchemy  68, 167 Queen Anne, in favour with  35–40
ancestry  55–7, 56f religious beliefs  xxvi, 15, 23–4,
astronomy 74 135–6, 212
on bank notes  7 sculptures  18, 19f
bedroom decor  18–19 sexual abstinence  xv, xxiii–xxiv, 44–5
belief in the number of the beast  76 sexual preferences  44–6
birth 67 and the slave trade  198–9, 219–21
book collection  14 see also slave trade
buying British produce  217 socializing and entertaining  9–10, 16
at Cambridge University  xxiii–xxiv standardization of coins  165–7
Caroline of Ansbach, relationship theological differences with
with 132–5 Leibniz 138–41
Catherine Barton, rlationship with theological studies  74–6
(half-niece)  42–3, 47–50, 53–4 travel 205–6
crime solving  161–3 trip to Edinburgh  168
death  15, 32, 42–3, 62–3, 134–5 trust of facts  200–8
diet 15–16 universality 211
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252 Index
Newton, Isaac (cont.) Pope, Alexander  xvi, 93, 129, 134
Warden of the Mint  4, 25–6, 158–9, portraits  xix–xxii, xxif
162–3 Portsmouth, Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess
wealth  xv–xvi, xxii, 7–8, 15–22 of 181–2
Newton, Isaac, works Portugal 191
Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms poverty 7
Amended, The  73–4, 77–8 Principia (Newton)  xx, xxvi, 58, 103–4, 114,
Observations on the Prophecies of 117, 119–23, 120–1f, 122f, 205–7,
Daniel 73–4 211–13
Opticks  10, 114–19 Pudsey, Joanna  102
Principia  xx, xxvi, 58, 103–4, 114, 117, Pyx Chests  166–7
119–23, 120–1f, 122f, 205–7, 211–13
Newton, Sir John, 2nd Baronet of Thorpe  57 Queen’s Gallery, Kensington Palace  136
Newtonian imperialism  208–14
Newtonianism for the Ladies (Carter)  102–3 racial inequality  107–8
Newtonian System of the World, The Ramsay, Allan  209, 216
(Desaguliers) 143–4 recycling 139–40
Newton’s Observatory  12–14 refugees  84–5, 95–6
Nichols, John  28 Republic of Letters  125
Norris, Elizabeth  48 Richmond see Lennox, Charles, 1st Duke of
number of the beast (666)  76 Richmond
Rinaldo (Handel)  126
Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel Robinson Crusoe (Defoe)  194, 204–5
(Newton) 73–4 Royal African Company  187
Ogilby, John  188–90 coat of arms  188, 188f
Oldenburg, Henry  112–13 ivory trade  189f
Opticks (Newton)  10, 114–19 see also Company of Royal Adventurers
Orbell’s Buildings, Kensington, London  14 Trading into Africa
Ordnance Office  26–7, 181–2 Royal Charters  182–3
Orwell, George  198–9 Royal Mint  xxii, 152
assay masters  164–7
Pan 3–4 association with Ordnance Office  26–7
Pemberton, Henry  123 Conduitt as Master  41
Pepys, Samuel  xxvi–xxvii, 28, 175–6, 182–3, location 23–5
186–7 Newton as Master  xxvi–xxviii, 21, 25–6,
Pepys Island  203 125–6, 153–4, 163–70, 207–8
Pettus, John  164–5 Newton as Warden  4, 25–6, 158–9, 162–3
philosophers 212 other branches  167–8
Philosophical Society (Dublin)  169 problem of coinage  155–60
Philosophical Transactions journal  77, standardization of coins  165–7
104–5, 113, 185 Royal Society  xix–xx, xxii, xxvi–xxvii
Philosophie de la Nature (De Sales)  202f, Desaguliers work at  96
203–5 experiments 103–5
Philosophiœ Naturalis Principia Fellows 101
Mathematica see Principia (Newton) foundation 175–8
Pillsbury, Ann  161–2 location 107
Pine, John  88f Newton as President  32–3, 105–9, 174
Plague of London (1666)  76 purpose  178–9, 184
poetry 28–32 recruitment 184
to honour Queen Anne  34 residence on Crane Street, London  11–12
in The Indian Emperour 44–5 ‘twin sister’ company  179–86
Pomfret, Thomas Fermor, 1st Earl of  24–5, 86 royal successions  124–6
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Index  253

Rule, Britannia! (Thomson)  209–10, 215–16 Tangier, trade of  191

Rysbrack, Michael  70–1 Tanner, John Sigismund  61f
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord  54
Schulenburg, Countess Melusina von theatre  xvi–xix, xviiif, 41–7
der  126, 169 Thirty-Nine Articles  xxiii–xxiv
scientific education  103 Thomson, James  209–10, 215–16
scientific method  179 Thornhill, James  92
Scotland, union with England  168 Tickell, Thomas  47–8
sculptures Tily, Joseph  8
of Newton (by David Le Marchand)  Toland, John  125
18, 19f Tollet, Elizabeth  xvi, 27–33, 41–2, 95
of Queen Anne  39 Tollet, George  28, 30
Senex, John  172–4, 173f Tollet, Marcus  63–4
sexual behaviour  43–4 Tories  38, 49, 92–3, 157
Slaughter’s coffee-house  11–12 Tower of London  23–40, 30f
slave trade  xxx–xxxi, 7, 90–2, 174, 189–90, hit by hurricane (1703)  32–3
193–5, 198–9, 203–4, 209–11, 219–21 menagerie 24–5
Sleeping Congregation, The (Hogarth)  83–4 occupants 26–33
Sloane, Hans  xvi, 101, 105–7, 113 Tragedy of Tragedies (Fielding)  42
smallpox 47–9 Treaty of Utrecht  47–8
inoculation 23 Trial of the Pyx  166–7
Smith, Adam  152 Trinity College, Cambridge  xxvii–xxviii
Smith, Benjamin  53–4
Socianism 140–1 universality 211
solar eclipse (1715)  10 Universal Magazine 156f
Sophia Charlotte of Hanover (sister of Urania 71
George I)  129–31, 136–7 Ussher, Archbishop James  78
Sophia Dorothea of Celle (wife of
George I)  126 Vanburgh, John  35, 51
Sophia of Hanover (mother of Vanderbank, John  122f
George I)  125, 136–7 Vertue, George  122f
South Sea Company  42–3, 90–5, 91f, 111 Voltaire 53
map 200–1
Sprat, Thomas  175, 195 Walpole, Sir Robert  90, 94–5, 127
History of the Royal Society  177–81, 185 War of the Spanish Succession
Stanhope, James, 1st Earl of (1701–1714) 38–40
Stanhope 70 Warrington, George Booth, 2nd Earl
steam engines  95–6 of 17–18
St Martin’s Street, London  11–12, 13f, 14, Water Musick (Handel)  133–4
42–3 Watt, James  95
Stukeley, William  72–3, 107–8 Weber, Max  152–3
Swift, Jonathan Westfall, Richard  220
on cartography  201 Westminster Abbey  69–72
Caroline of Ansbach, relationship Whigs  47–8, 90, 94–5
with 134–5 Whiston, William  xvi, xxiii–xxiv,
Catherine Barton, relationship 67–8, 74
with  42–3, 48–50 Wickins, John  45–6
criticism of Newton  55 wigs xxii
description of Channel Row  102 William III (William of Orange) 
Gulliver’s Travels  49–50, 100, 170, xxv–xxvii, 6
190–1, 216 Williams, Francis  107–8
Irish campaign  169–70 Willis, Thomas  176
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254 Index
Will’s coffee house  175 Wood, William  169–70
Wollaston, William  135–6 Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire  54
women Wordsworth, William  206
espionage 33–4 Worshipful Company of
oppression  31, 197–8 Goldsmiths 166–7
role in the family  41–2 Worsley, Lady Frances  48–9
rulers  34, 129 Wren, Christopher  107, 157, 176