Newton and the Counterfeiter (35 page)

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 "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.

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 "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.

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 "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.

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 "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.

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 "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
.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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. "T
HE
U
NDOING OF THE
W
HOLE
N
ATION
"

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 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 from 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.

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

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 "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.

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 "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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 "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. "O
UR
B
ELOVED
I
SAAC
N
EWTON
"

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 "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.

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 "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.

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 "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.

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 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. "S
TIFLING THE
E
VIDENCE
A
GAINST
H
IM"

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 "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).

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.