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

by Thomas Levenson

  [>] about 100,000 by the mid-1690s: John Childs, The Nine Years' War and the British Army, 1688–1697, p. 1.

  a professional civil service: For discussions of the politics and implications of the decisions of the Convention Parliament, see as starting points Tony Claydon, William III, pp. 60–82, and J. R. Jones, The Revolution of 1688 in England, pp. 311–51. For a good account of the artful confusion at the heart of Parliament's grant of the throne to William as well as to his wife, see Howard Nenner's essay "Pretense and Pragmatism: The Response to Uncertainty in the Succession Crisis of 1689," in Lois G. Schwoerer, ed., The Revolution of 1688–1689.

  appointed tax commissioners: "An Act for Granting an Aid to Their Majesties of the Sum[m]e of Sixteene hundred fiftyone thousand seven-hundred and two pounds eighteen shillings towards the Carrying on a Vigorous Warre against France," Statutes of the Realm, vol. 6, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=46359. Curiously, there is a William Chaloner listed as a commissioner, but as he was supposed to serve "For the North Rideing of the County of Yorke," it seems unlikely that even so ingenious a scammer of the government as the coining William Chaloner could have wangled an appointment that far from his home haunts in London.

  1.2 million pounds: Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, p. 34.

  [>] exceeded government tax income: D. W. Jones, War and Economy, p. 11. In fact, the cost of the Nine Years' War (also known as the War of the Grand Alliance) demonstrated that the military mobilizations both William and Louis had attempted exceeded the capacity of their states to sustain. For France and Great Britain (as the state was called after the Acts of Union between England and Scotland in 1706 and 1707) the armies of the Nine Years' War were the largest either nation fielded until the Napoleonic Wars. It was just too damn expensive.

  English silver currency in Amsterdam: Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, p. 58.

  English government finances: Richard Hill to Trumbull, 21 August 1695, quoted in John Childs, The Nine Years' War and the British Army, 1688–1697, p. 297.

  [>] "a matter of so general concern": King William to the House of Commons, 26 November 1695, in the Journal for the House of Commons vol. 11, p. 339.

  11. "OUR BELOVED ISAAC NEWTON"

  [>] "to prevent the Melting or Exporting": Isaac Newton, Goldsmiths' Library Ms. 62, quoted in Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of1696 to 1699, p. 217.

  [>] "the Party offending": Ibid.

  "Change of Denomination": John Locke's response to Lowndes, Goldsmiths' Library Ms. 62, quoted in Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, p. 227.

  [>] "the measure of the bargain": John Locke quoted in Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, p. 102.

  "to defraud the King": Ibid., p. 104.

  Newton simply stayed put: In all those years at Cambridge—in all his life, in fact—Newton, the man who solved the motion of the tides (and lived on an island) never once saw the sea. This was pointed out to me by Simon Schaffer, who also included it in the text of a lecture titled "Newton on the Beach," delivered at Harvard University on April 4, 2006.

  [>] March 21: Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 556.

  "more attendance than you may spare": Correspondence 4, document 545, p. 195.

  "the office of Warden of the Mint": Correspondence 4, document 547, p. 200. Not a single letter: Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 550.

  12. "STIFLING THE EVIDENCE AGAINST HIM"

  [>] "Double Deception": Guzman Redivivus, p. 7.

  failing money supply: John Locke's public writings on the currency (as distinct from the argument produced in response to Lowndes's request of 1695) include Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money (1691), Short Observations on a Printed Paper entitled 'For Encouraging the Coining Silver Money in England and after keeping it here' (1695), and Further Considerations Concerning Raising the Value of Money (1695). Charles Davenant produced An Essay on the Ways and Means of supplying the War (1694).

  [>] set their thoughts in type: Sir Robert Cotton, Touching the Alteration of Coin (London: Thomas Horne, 1690); John Briscoe, Proposals for Supplying the government with Money on easie Terms ... (London, 1694); and J. C. Merchant, Proposals for regulating the silver coyne, bearing the charge of it, producing a circulation, and securing it to the Kingdom (1695) can be found in the Goldsmiths' Library, London, now housed at the Senate House Library and reproduced in an online resource: The Making of the Modern World: The Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature, 1450–1850. Joyce Oldham Appleby, in her essay "Locke, Liberalism and the Natural Law of Money," Past and Present, no. 71 (May 1976), p. 46, gives another brief survey of tracts on money, including The Groans of the Poor and A letter from an English Merchant at Amsterdam to his Friend at London.

  paper as a tool of thought: I am indebted to James Gleick's observation on the scarcity of paper in Newton's childhood for leading me to this line of thought. See Gleick's Isaac Newton, p. 14.

  coarse brown paper: D. C. Coleman, The British Paper Industry, pp. 41–43.

  eighty thousand reams: See the table compiled by D. C. Coleman, The British Paper Industry, p. 13. The figures there are incomplete for the early years of the series, sometimes showing the amount imported by English merchants (e.g., 1621 and 1626) and sometimes the total by foreign traders (e.g., 1622 and 1624). I have combined the separate totals in those years to arrive at my estimate of about eighty thousand reams.

  the cost of the printing: Ibid., pp. 11–12.

  [>] a hundred English mills: Ibid., pp. 49, 56.

  deficiencies in the coinage: Paul Hopkins and Stuart Handley, "Chaloner, William," in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

  [>] almost certainly no coincidence: Proposals for a Fund of A Hundred and Fifty Thousand Pounds per Annum, pp. 6–7; The True Way of Taxing shewing What is the Legal Rack-Rent for Taxing first of Laymen, secondly of Churchmens Real Estates Equally, p. 1. In Proposals for a Fund... the author also suggests increasing government revenue by a new system of fines for criminals—which would surely have offended Chaloner's sense of self-interest, had he known of the tract and/or the idea.

  [>] four in Birmingham and Sheffield: William Chaloner, Proposals Humbly Offered, for Passing, an Act to Prevent Clipping and Counterfeiting of Money, pp. 4–5.

  [>] "spight of the Law": Guzman Redivivus, p. 3.

  13. "HIS OLD TRICK"

  [>] William Paterson: Sir John Clapham, The Bank of England, vol. i, p. 13, and Reginald Saw, The Bank of England, 1694–1944, p. 14.

  under half the total needed: Reginald Saw, The Bank of England, 1694–1944 p. 14.

  [>] only forty-two members: For a good capsule account of the founding of the Bank, see Sir John Clapham, The Bank of England, vol. I, pp. 13–20.

  Though his is something of an official history, Clapham's summary of the state of banking and credit in England immediately before the Bank's founding is also a useful overview. See also John Giuseppi's The Bank of England. As a long-standing Bank archivist, Giuseppi is very close to the surviving documents.

  [>] "marbled paper Indented": Bank of England directors' meeting minutes for August II, 1694.

  Bank of England notes: There was one earlier attempt to create bank notes, in 1661, when the Bank of Sweden issued printed notes. The Swedish experiment with paper was an immediate success, with notes trading at a premium to metal money. The Swedes—or at least their spines—had good reason to welcome the invention. Their coinage was based on copper, with the result that material wealth was truly a burden. The ten-dollar coin was the heaviest piece of currency ever struck, weighing in at 19.7 kilos, or more than 43 pounds. As A. D. Mackenzie put it, "the payment of anything greater than the smallest of sums necessitated the use of heavy transport" (The Bank of England Note, p. 2). For all the ease that paper money brought the average Swede, though, the premium earned by paper over copper made it profitable to export Swedish coins to other
markets, so that by 1664, the Bank of Sweden could not make good on its promise to exchange metal for paper on demand. With that, the notes were withdrawn, and Sweden returned to its traditional coinage as the basis for its monetary system.

  August 14, 1695: Paul Hopkins and Stuart Handley, "Chaloner, William," in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

  [>] brush with the turnkeys: Ibid.

  14. "A THING IMPOSSIBLE"

  [>] Neale was thoroughly overmatched: C. E. Challis, A New History of the Royal Mint, pp. 392–93.

  [>] Neale was suddenly in charge: For Neale's background, see C. E. Challis, A New History of the Royal Mint, pp. 392–93. For the total mint production of silver from 1660 to 1695, see Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, p. 48; figures are drawn from Hopton Haynes's records. Newton's accounting for the total amount of money struck in the Great Recoinage comes from his reckoning in Mint 19.2, f. 264. The total came to £6,859,144 8s. 4d.—remarkable exactitude, but completely in keeping with Newton's passion for calculation to the limit of precision.

  Official revenues disappeared: Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, pp. 135–36.

  [>] "The people are discontented": Edmund Bohun to Hohn Cary, 31 July 1696, quoted in C. E. Challis, A New History of the Royal Mint, p. 387. Bohun lost his lucrative post as licensor (censor) of books when he approved the publication of a tract claiming that William and Mary held their thrones by right of their conquest of James II's forces. Fearful of even the faintest of challenges to the legitimacy of a monarchy that had in fact been seized by force of arms, Parliament ordered Bohun's arrest, questioned him at the bar of the House of Commons, burned the offending pamphlet, and stripped him of his job. There is no reason to doubt this part of his letter to Cary, but Bohun was a former supporter of James's who submitted to William's conquest a little too swiftly for both his former allies and his new masters, and it may be wise to take the extreme of his rage at the recoinage expressed elsewhere in the letter with some caution. Bohun's fate as licensor is discussed, in the larger context of the debate over the legitimacy of William and Mary's claim to the monarchy, in Mark Goldie's "Edmund Bohun and Ius Gentium in the Revolution Debate, 1689–1693," Historical Journal 20, no. 3 (1977), pp. 569, 586.

  the treasure of the nation was exhausted: Malcolm Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England, p. 195.

  "nobody paying or receiving": John Evelyn, diary entry for II June 1696, quoted in Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, p. 135, and D. W. Jones, War and Economy, p. 137.

  twenty people were arrested: Malcolm Gaskill, Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England, p. 195.

  "Our Coine alas it Will not Pass": The broadside most likely dates from 1697 and is quoted in full in ibid., p. 193.

  [>] "the new Invention of Rounding": Oath taken by Newton, 2 May 1696, Correspondence 4, document 548, p. 201.

  No Warden had done much real work: Sir John Craig, "Isaac Newton—Crime Investigator," Nature 182 (1958), pp. 136, 149. For Newton's account of the organization of the Mint and the problems its antique arrangements created, see his memorandum of June 1696, Correspondence 4, document 552, pp. 207–9.

  the post would not be too demanding: Correspondence 4, document 545, p. 195.

  "of a prodigal temper": Mint records, cited in Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 564.

  a raise in his basic pay: Isaac Newton to the Treasury, June 1696, Correspondence 4, document 551, pp. 205–6.

  the quality of the work of carpenters: Isaac Newton, Thomas Neale, and Thomas Hall to "the Right Honble the Lords Commissrs of his Majties Treasury," 6 May 1696, Correspondence 4, document 549, p. 202. (Hall was Neale's assistant.) It is reassuring to recognize that some human experiences are truly universal. Doubting one's contractor has to be one of them.

  [>] several needed employees: Isaac Newton and Thomas Hall to "the Right Honble the Lords Commrs. Of his Majties Treasury," 8 June 1696, Correspondence 4, document 550, pp. 204–5.

  the grand sum of two pence: Isaac Newton to the Treasury, 1696, Correspondence 4, document 559, p. 218. While two pennies counted for a lot more then than now, it still amounts to more or less the cost of a large cappuccino on the streets of London today. Not much, in other words. mastering the details of every operation: Richard Westfall describes Newton's campaign to master all the available material about the Mint in Never at Rest, pp. 564–66, from which this account is drawn.

  "nor any other eyes than your own": Isaac Newton to All Country Mints, 16 April 1698, Correspondence 4, document 586, p. 271.

  His holograph Mint papers: Newton's Mint papers fill Mint 19/1–5 and are held at the U.K.'s Public Record Office (Mint 19.6 is a calendar of the other five volumes). Most of his papers as Warden are in Mint 19/1, which has multiple drafts of a variety of documents associated with the recoinage, the organization of the Mint, and William Chaloner. See, for example, the nearly identical summaries of Chaloner's crimes in 19/1, f. 496, and 19/1, ff. 497–98 (the latter reproduced in Correspondence 4, document 581, pp. 261–62). Richard Westfall lists several other examples of Newton's need to rewrite in Never at Rest, p. 566, n. 47.

  [>] "a thing impossible": Hopton Haynes quoted in C. E. Challis, A New History of the Royal Mint, p. 394.

  fee of twelve and three-eighths pence: Isaac Newton and Thomas Hall to the Treasury, on or after 22 February 1696/7, Correspondence 4, p. 236.

  ten thousand pounds of refined liquid silver: C. E. Challis, A New History of the Royal Mint, p. 394.

  [>] "will hold but 700 or 650 lb wt": Isaac Newton, "Observations concerning the Mint," 1697, Correspondence4, document 579, p. 256.

  five hundred men and fifty horses: C. E. Challis, A New History of the Royal Mint, p. 394. The figure of five hundred men working at the Mint comes from Sir John Craig, Newton at the Mint, p. 14.

  the striking chamber: Isaac Newton, "Observations concerning the Mint," 1697, Correspondence 4, document 579, p. 258.

  "judge of the workmen's diligence": Hopton Haynes, Brief Memoires Relating to the Silver and Gold Coins of England, cited in Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 561.

  fifty to fifty-five times a minute: C. E. Challis, A New History of the Royal Mint, p. 394. He cites Haynes for Newton's calculations. The figure of fourteen men working each press comes from Isaac Newton, "Observations concerning the Mint," 1697, Correspondence 4, document 579, p. 258.

  [>] Only one man died: Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 561.

  a record output: C. E. Challis, A New History of the Royal Mint, p. 394.

  about 2,700,000 pounds: Mint 9/60, cited in C. E. Challis, A New History of the Royal Mint, pp. 394, 397. See also, Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, pp. 138–40. Richard Westfall dates the achievement of the 100,000-pounds-per-week output to the summer of 1696 in his Never at Rest, p. 561.

  a peace with Louis XIV: In response to the King's complaint about a lack of cash for war and trade, in October 1696, the directors of the Bank of England were asked what could be done. Among their suggestions: "increase the species of money and expedite ye coyning thereof." See Ming-hsun Li, The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699, p. 138.

  [>] the enterprise would have failed: John Conduitt, notes for his biography of Newton, Keynes Ms. 130.7, 3r.

  15. "THE WARDEN OF THE MINT IS A ROGUE"

  [>] forty pounds for each conviction: John Craig, "Isaac Newton and the Counterfeiters," Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 18, no. 2 (December 1963), p. 136.

  "prosecuting and swearing for money": Isaac Newton to the Treasury, July/ August 1696, Correspondence 4, document 553, pp. 209–10.

  "Office of the Warden of his Majts. Mint": Ibid. The sentence in which Newton asked to be relieved of the duty was crossed out and rewritten in slightly different form beneath his signature: "And therefore I humbly pray that it may not be imposed upon me any longer."

  [>] the coining pseudonym: Paul Hopkins and Stuart Handley, "Chaloner, William," in
the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

  [>] beyond the reach of English writs: Cooke also implicated Chaloner, without mentioning Hunter. See John Craig, "Isaac Newton—Crime Investigator," Nature 182, no. 4629 ( July 19, 1958), p. 150.

  [>] Christopher Wren: As Peter Whitfield notes in his London: A Life in Maps, both Newgate and Bethlehem Hospital—better known as Bedlam—were rebuilt to new standards of external elegance after the Great Fire. Neither building remains; Newgate was rebuilt twice more at the same location before being demolished to provide a site for the Old Bailey law courts. Bedlam's site, in an almost too obvious irony, now boasts the Imperial War Museum.

  "a kind of entrance to it": Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, p. 215.

  "this abode of misery and despair": Giacomo Casanova, The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, chapter 13, http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/casanova/c33m/chapterIII.html (unabridged London edition of 1894).

  [>] Typhus was so widespread: The description of Newgate is drawn from Stephen Halliday's marvelous history Newgate: London's Prototype of Hell, pp. 30–35. I can't recommend this book too highly; it offers delightfully gruesome anecdotes in the framework of a significant case study in the evolution of prisons.

  [>] the Fever Islands: John Craig told the story of Newton's involvement with White and Cooke in "Isaac Newton and the Counterfeiters," Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 18, no. 2 (December 1963), pp. 137—(8. After his release from Newgate: Guzman Redivivus, p. 8.

  [>] Chaloner's old coining partner: Isaac Newton, "Chaloner's Case," Mint 19/1, sheet 501.