Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist

by Thomas Levenson

  [>] "as guineas go now": "Samuel Quested, Mary Quested, J—C—, offences against the king: coining," Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 14 October 1695, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org. At trial, Samuel Quested took all the responsibility on himself, and Mary won an acquittal on his testimony despite claims of witnesses that she was involved in the coining and clipping side of the family business. Samuel had no chance to survive his arrest. His long record as a coiner and the dangerous excellence of his work doomed him. The trial jury convicted him of high treason, and he was hanged.

  [>] Chaloner found his die maker: Isaac Newton, "Chaloner's Case," Mint 19/1. See also "The Information of Katherine Carter the wife of Thomas Carter now prisoner in Newgate 21th. February 1698/9," Mint 17, document 120—one of the sources on which Newton based his account. solar eclipse: The eclipse broadside is extremely rare. The British Museum has one copy in its collection. Taylor's collections of maps are more common, with individual sheets appearing for sale from time to time by antiquarian dealers.

  [>] a thin skim of gold: "The Information of Math[ew] Peck of Pump Court in Black Fryars Turner 25 day of January 1698/9," Mint 17, document 117. See also "The Deposition of Humphrey Hanwell of Lambeth p[ar]ish in Southwark 22d. Feb[ruar]y 1698/9," Mint 17, document 123.

  "boast his workmanship": Isaac Newton, "Chaloner's Case," Mint 19/1, f. 501.

  "daily falling into his lap": Guzman Redivivus, p. 2.

  [>] "she went to bed with her Spark": Ibid., p. 3.

  "Guinea's and Pistoles": Ibid., p. 3.

  he stashed his precious dies: Isaac Newton, "Chaloner's Case," Mint 19/1, f. 501.

  [>] Butler and Newbold: The quotes are from Guzman Redivivus, p. 4, except for the claim that Chaloner used threats and money to sway the printers, which comes from Isaac Newton's account of the same incident in "Chaloner's Case," Mint 19/1, f. 501. It is not clear whether Chaloner's dupes were ever executed. The author of Guzman reported that the two convicted traitors remained in prison at the time of Chaloner's own execution in 1699. This seems unlikely, implying as it does a six-year stint in one of the most harsh and disease-ridden environments in London—but it is possible. Newton did not report on the fate of the printers.

  "He had fun'd": Isaac Newton, "Chaloner's Case," Mint 19/1, f. 501.

  his cash flow ebbed: Paul Hopkins and Stuart Handley, "Chaloner, William," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

  [>] He was pronounced guilty: "Matthew Coppinger, theft : specified place, theft with violence : robbery, miscellaneous : perverting justice," 20 February 1695, Proceedings of the Old Bailey, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org.

  "Relations, nay": Guzman Redivivus, p. 5.

  7. "ALL SPECIES OF METALS ... FROM THIS SINGLE ROOT"

  [>] sickly as a child: Robert Boyle was born on 25 January 1626/7.

  [>] the leader of the nation's intellectual life: The record of Newton's movements and the quote from Samuel Pepys's letter to John Evelyn on 9 January 1692 both come from Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 498.

  "Mr. Boyles red earth": Isaac Newton to John Locke, 16 February 1691/2, Correspondence 3, p. 195.

  [>] the red earth was ultrasensitive: Isaac Newton to John Locke, 7 July 1692, Correspondence 3, p. 215.

  "may lie concealed": John Locke to Isaac Newton, 26 July 1692, Correspondence 3, p. 216.

  [>] "as good Dutch dollars": Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, act 3, scene 2, http://www.gutenberg.org, 10th ed., May 2003.

  [>] "except God": Isaac Newton, Quœstiones quœdam Philosophicœ, Cambridge Add. Ms. 3996, f. 1/88. The quoted material comes from page 338 in the transcription of the Quœstiones in J. E. McGuire and Martin Tamny, Certain Philosophical Questions, pp. 330–489.

  [>] "the serpent that hides": Martin Schoock, Admironda Methodus Novae Philosophiae Renati Descartes (1643), p. 13, quoted in Desmond Clarke, Descartes, p. 235. See also Michael Heyd, "Be Sober and Reasonable," pp. 123–24. "I secretly teach atheism": René Descartes to M. de la Thuillerie, 22 January 1644, quoted in Desmond Clarke, Descartes, p. 240.

  "may the Sun imbibe this Spirit": Isaac Newton to Henry Oldenburg, 7 December 1675, Correspondence 1, document 146, p. 366.

  [>] "the life of all things": Isaac Newton, Principia, translated by I. B. Cohen and Anne Whitman, p. 926. I am grateful to Professor Schaffer for pointing out to me this and the previous reference.

  "useful for that purpose": Isaac Newton to Richard Bentley, 10 December 1692, Correspondence 2, document 398, p. 233.

  "all ear, all brain, all arm": Isaac Newton, Principia, p. 942.

  "Parts of the Universe": Isaac Newton, Opticks, p. 403.

  [>] "her fire, her soule, her life": "The Vegetation of Metals," Burney Ms. 16, f. 5v. I am indebted to Richard Westfall's description of Newton's early alchemical phase for much of my account here. See his Never at Rest, pp. 304–9.

  changes of the living world: I draw this interpretation of Newton's alchemy primarily from the writing of Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs. See especially The Janus Faces of Genius, and in that work, chapter 4, "Modes of Divine Activity in the World: Before the Principia," pp. 89–121.

  [>] "the illumination of matter": Isaac Newton quoted in Jan Golinski, "The Secret Life of an Alchemist," in the invaluable collection Let Newton Be!, edited by John Fauvel et al., p. 160.

  8. "THUS YOU MAY MULTIPLY TO INFINITY"

  [>] his alchemical laboratory: The image is one of those made by David Loggan and published in his Cantabridgia illustrata in 1690. It can be seen at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Trinity_College_Cambridge_1690.jpg/800px-Trinity_College_Cambridge_1690.jpg.

  breach of security: "Of the Incanlescense of Quicksilver with Gold, generously imparted by B. R. [Robert Boyle], Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 10 (1676), 515–33.

  Act Against Multipliers: The law was enacted in 1404, during the reign of King Henry IV, and it stated "that none from henceforth should use to multiply gold or silver, or use the craft of multiplication; and if any the same do, they incur the pain of felony." Newton refers to Boyle's role in the repeal of the act in a letter to John Locke, 2 August 1691, Correspondence 2, p. 217

  [>] "will sway him to high silence": Isaac Newton to Henry Oldenburg, 26 April 1676, Correspondence 2, p. 2.

  alchemical reactions: For an example of his involvement in the making of his apparatus, see the drawing in Newton's hand of several furnaces, reproduced in Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 283; the catalogue of his books and its implications are discussed in John Harrison's The Library of Isaac Newton; Newton's alchemical notes total a formidable record. Most of the major texts are housed in the Keynes Collection at King's College, Cambridge, but the traditional starting place to gain an acquaintance with Newton's alchemical procedure is the Cambridge University Library's Add. Ms. 3975, which has been transcribed with reproductions of Newton's diagrams and is available at http://webappi.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/mss/norm/ALCH00110. The site contains, among much else, both the records of experiments and examples of his reading notes from other alchemical authorities. Add. Ms. 3973 also records a long series of alchemical experiments. Humphrey Newton reported on Newton's involvement in experimental practice, and Newton's notes in Add. Ms. 3975 and elsewhere copiously document that commitment.

  to the limit of his instruments: Here again, Cambridge Add. Ms. 3975 provides the easiest route to an appreciation for Newton's astonishing capacity for pure, hard labor and his commitment to rigor in his alchemical research as in all his other investigations.

  "not able to penetrate": Humphrey Newton to John Conduitt, 17 January 1727/8, Keynes Ms. 135, pp. 2–3.

  the true course of his work: Richard Westfall points out this basic fact in Never at Rest, pp. 359–61. As Westfall documents, if you look at the time spent on alchemy versus time spent on physics during the early and middle eighties, alchemy wins. Results were a different matter, and Newton was certainly aware that the Principia represented a different order of outcomes than anything he had ac
hieved in the laboratory to date.

  [>] experimental notes: Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius, p. 171.

  Index Chemicus: Index Chemicus, Keynes Ms. 30a, can be found at http:// webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/mss/dipl/ALCH00200/. The document is discussed briefly in Richard Westfall's Never at Rest, pp. 525–26, and is analyzed in much greater depth in Westfall's "Isaac Newton's Index Chemicus," Ambix 22 (1975), pp. 174–85. The reference to Boyle comes on f. 16r of the document and concerns the specific interaction of gold and "living water" (aqua animam).

  [>] "it amagalms very easily": Isaac Newton, "Experiments and Observations Dec. 1692–Jan. 1692/3," Portsmouth Collection, Cambridge Add. Ms. 3973.8, transcribed in Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius, pp. 290–91.

  "infernal secret fire": Isaac Newton, Praxis, Babson Ms. 420, Sir Isaac Newton Collection, Babson College Archives, transcribed and translated by Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius, pp. 293–305. The passages quoted occur on pp. 299–300.

  wingless dragons: The history of Newton's papers is summarized neatly at the Newton Project website, http://www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk. As discussed there, the rehabilitation of Newton's alchemy began when the economist John Maynard Keynes bought most of the available alchemical papers in the famous (in Newton circles) Sotheby's sale of 1936. Keynes wrote the first important essay on Newton's alchemy, thus breaking the taboo that guarded the image of the foundational scientific genius for two centuries. Keynes did not get the Praxis manuscript, however. Charles Babson, an American Wall Street magnate with a Newton fascination, outbid him—which is why the manuscript is in the library of Babson College in Massachusetts.

  [>] "Thus you may multiply to infinity": Isaac Newton, Praxis, transcribed and translated by Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius, pp. 301–2, 304. The earlier draft cited is quoted in Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 530. In the final version, as Dobbs translates it, Newton backs away from his claim of infinite multiplication, writing only that "you may increase it much more" (p. 304).

  "quintessential matter": Isaac Newton, Praxis, transcribed and translated by Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius, p. 305.

  9. "SLEEPING TOO OFTEN BY MY FIRE"

  [>] and then simply stopped: Isaac Newton, Praxis, transcribed and translated by Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius, pp. 304–5.

  The draft ends in midsentence: Isaac Newton to Otto Mencke (draft), 30 May 1693, Correspondence 3, pp. 270–71. Newton did complete and send a letter to Mencke on 22 November 1693, Correspondence 3, pp. 291–93.

  "distemper": Isaac Newton to John Locke, 15 October 1693, Correspondence 3, p. 284, quoted in greater detail below.

  [>] "my former consistency of mind": Isaac Newton to Samuel Pepys, 13 September 1693, Correspondence 3, p. 279.

  "better if you were dead": Isaac Newton to John Locke, 16 September 1693, Correspondence 3, p. 280.

  [>] "I remember not": Isaac Newton to John Locke, 15 October 1693, Correspondence 3, p. 284. Newton says that he does not remember what he said of Locke's book in the previous letter; he had written that he begged Locke's pardon "for representing that you struck at ye root of morality in a principle you laid down in your book of ideas ... and that I took you for a Hobbist." It is a pleasing detail that Newton, and presumably Locke, saw the charge of Hobbism as at least as serious as that of pandering.

  Huygens told Leibniz: See Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 535. Westfall draws his account of this gossip-mongering from a letter Huygens wrote to his brother and from an entry in his journal.

  "very ill circumstances": John Wallis to Richard Waller, 31 May 1695, Correspondence 4, p. 131.

  [>] "no mortal may approach": Edmond Halley, "Ode to Newton," published as a dedicatory preface to the first edition of the Principia. The Latin original of the line reads, "Nec fas est propius mortali attingere divos."

  "I was frozen stiff": The error Fatio caught—a mistake in Book Two of the Principia on the behavior of water flowing out of a hole in the bottom of a tank—is discussed in the notes to a letter from Fatio to Huygens, Correspondence 3, pp. 168–69. Fatio wrote of his plans for a second edition of the Principia in a letter to Huygens dated 18 December 1691; the letter and the quote from Fatio's confession of Newton's mathematical superiority are both cited in Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 495.

  [>] "with all my heart" : Nicholas Fatio de Duillier to Isaac Newton, 24 February 1689/90, Correspondence 3, pp. 390–91.

  Newton's secretary: Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 496.

  Fatio had remained silent: Isaac Newton to John Locke, 28 October 1690, Correspondence 3, p. 79.

  [>] "a heap of trees": Nicholas Fatio de Duillier to Isaac Newton, 10 April 1693, Correspondence 3, pp. 265–66.

  "the Roman Empire": Nicholas Fatio de Duillier to Isaac Newton, 30 January 1692/3, Correspondence 3, pp. 242–43.

  [>] "what may befall me": Nicholas Fatio de Duillier to Isaac Newton, 17 September 1692, Correspondence 3, pp. 229–30.

  "with my prayers for your recovery": Isaac Newton to Nicholas Fatio de Duillier, 21 September 1692, Correspondence 3, p. 231.

  "most humble, most obedient": Nicholas Fatio de Duillier to Isaac Newton, 30 January 1692/3, Correspondence 3, pp. 231–33.

  [>] "you should return hither": Isaac Newton to Nicholas Fatio de Duillier, 24 January 1692/3, Correspondence 3, p. 241.

  "I am ready to do so": Nicholas Fatio de Duillier to Isaac Newton, 30 January 1692/3, Correspondence 3, pp. 242–43.

  "wth all fidelity": Isaac Newton to Nicholas Fatio de Duillier, 14 February 1692/3, Correspondence 3, p. 244.

  "to be free of an excrescence": Nicholas Fatio de Duillier to Isaac Newton, 9 March 1692/3, Correspondence 3, pp. 262–63.

  "I have not now any need": Nicholas Fatio de Duillier to Isaac Newton, 4 May 1693, Correspondence 3, pp. 266–67.

  [>] "all manner of respect": Nicholas Fatio de Duillier to Isaac Newton, 18 May 1693, Correspondence 3, pp. 267–70.

  "to bring us out of distresses": Isaac Newton, Fitzwilliam Notebook, pp. 3–r, the Newton Project, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk.

  [>] thirty pounds in 1710: Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 539.

  "I know not what to doe": Latin Exercise Book of Isaac Newton, private collection, quoted in Frank Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton, pp. 57–58.

  [>] Pepys did not respond: Pepys did write to John Millington, to ask if he knew what was wrong with Newton, as he feared "a discomposure in head, or mind, or both." (Pepys to Millington, 26 September 1693, Correspondence 3, p. 281.) Millington wrote back that he had visited Newton, who told him that he had written the letter during "a distemper that much seized his head and that kept him awake for five nights together." Millington added that Newton wanted to beg Pepys's pardon for the rudeness—a reply that satisfied Pepys. (Millington to Pepys, 30 September 1693, Correspondence 3, pp. 281–82.)

  "the same good will": John Locke to Isaac Newton, 5 October 1693, Correspondence 3, p. 283.

  how Pepys should place his bets: Pepys posed the question in one letter, Samuel Pepys to Isaac Newton, 22 November 1693, Correspondence 3, pp. 293–94. Newton replied almost immediately, Isaac Newton to Samuel Pepys, 26 November 1693, Correspondence 3, pp. 294–96.

  [>] problems in calculus: Isaac Newton to Nathaniel Hawes, 25 May 1694, and Newton to Hawes, 26 May 1694, Correspondence 3, pp. 357–68; Isaac Newton to E. Buswell, June 1694, Correspondence 3, p. 374; and a manuscript from July 1694, Correspondence 3, pp. 375–80.

  "as the lion is recognized by his print": Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 582–83. Newton's niece, Catherine Barton, reported that it took him just twelve hours to solve the two problems.

  10. "THE UNDOING OF THE WHOLE NATION"

  [>] 55,000 pounds sterling: The goldsmiths' figures are reported in Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, p. 53, and the Mint coinage statistic comes from the same source, p. 48. Li draws the latter f
rom Hopton Haynes's records of the annual figures for Mint production in Haynes, Brief Memoires Relating to the Silver and Gold Coins of England. The conversion of weight to number is based on the statutory requirement that the Mint coin three pounds two shillings out of each pound of silver alloy that was about seventy-two-percent-pure silver. The goldsmiths' petition does not specify the fineness or purity of the bullion being exported. It is thus conceivable that the bullion leaving the country contained a higher proportion of silver than minted money did, increasing the loss to England's money supply.

  [>] "who do any thing for their profit": Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, p. 55.

  [>] "Great masses were melted down": Lord Macaulay, The History of England, vol. 5, p. 2564.

  A laborer's daily wage: The price and wage numbers come from the data series collected by Gregory Clark as part of the research underpinning several publications. See especially "The Long March of History: Farm Wages, Population and Economic Growth, England, 1209–1869," Economic History Review, February 2007, pp. 97–135; Gregory Clark, "The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1209–2004," Journal of Political Economy 113, no. 6 (December 2005), pp. 1307–1340. Clark's database, updated most recently on April 10, 2006, can be found at the International Institute of Social History's website, http://iisg.nl/hpw/data.php#united.

  The Mint had produced: Hopton Haynes, Brief Memoires Relating to the Silver and Gold Coins of England, quoted in Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, p. 48.

  [>] "Inconveniences to the Kingdom": Journal of the House of Commons, May 7, 1690, quoted in Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, pp. 55–56.

  "the coins went on dwindling": Lord Macaulay, The History of England, vol. 5, p. 2570.

  William faced the prospect of being defeated: The conflict has sometimes been called the second Hundred Years' War, and it included campaigns on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. It began in 1688, with what has been called the Nine Years' War, or the War of the Grand Alliance, and continued, with interruptions, through what Europeans call the Seven Years' War and North Americans call the French and Indian War (more properly the fourth French and Indian War, waged from 1749–1756). It went on from there to the American Revolution, in which French intervention was crucial to the defeat of the British, and then the Napoleonic Wars, ending in the British and allied victory at Waterloo in 1815, and which finally settled the question of French territorial ambitions on the European continent.