SIR ISAAC NEWTON: WARDEN AND MASTER OF THE MINT
by Michael E. Marotta (ANA 162953)
(This article originally appeared in The Numismatist of the American Numismatic Association, November 2001. The ANA granted the work the Heath Literary Award (2nd) for 2002.)
Sir Issac Newton (1643-1727) was more than the most brilliant man of his time. He invented the physics and the mathematics that made possible the industrial age and the electronic age. He was an accomplished lawyer, a prosecutor for the state, and later an effective political administrator. His work in theology is unappreciated today as is his skillful and artistic craftsmanship. He served in Parliament. He was president of the Royal Society. For 30 years, he was Warden and Master of the Royal Mint.
NEWTON'S PERSONALITY
Near the end of his life, Newton described himself to his nephew and biographer, John Conduitt, in these words: "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but 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."
Two hundred years later, biographer Milo Keynes wrote: "This life of apparent serenity was, however, far from the truth, for Newton is known to have had a most complex and difficult personality." His colleagues called him fearful, cautious, suspicious, insidious, ambitious, excessively covetous of praise, and impatient of contradiction. Even his relatives and his true friends were modest in their praise of Newton.
Physically sound in his life, he died at 84. He had lost only one tooth, still had much of his hair, and read without glasses. Yet, he was a hypochondriac, suffering from illnesses and diseases that he treated with medicines he made for himself.
In 1693, Newton may have suffered a nervous breakdown. The evidence comes from letters Newton wrote to John Locke and Samuel Pepys, accusing them of betrayed him. Rumors of Newton's deteriorated mental state reached Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, Newton's rival, though hardly his enemy. Most historians lay the blame on mercury poisoning. A modern forensic analysis of some of his hair showed residue of mercury, lead, and other metals. This is in line with his 25 years of alchemical experiments. However, Newton showed no other physical symptoms of heavy metal poisoning. His hair, skin, nails, teeth, and tissues were always healthy.
THE GREAT RECOINAGE
In the 1690s, much of the silver coinage had been in circulation for a hundred years or more. Most of this medieval money was clipped. Having no machined or milled edge, it was easy for people to trim a little silver off of a penny or shilling and still spend it for a penny or shilling. Silver coins were legal tender by "tale" or count. A worn and clipped silver shilling was legally the same as a new coin. (Gold legally passed by weight, not by count, and there was no incentive to clip gold coins.) Counterfeiting was easy because so many silver coins were worn beyond recognition and were trimmed small.
In 1695, Isaac Newton served on a Regency Council with John Locke and Sir Christopher Wren, among others, to consider the problem. Newton and William Lowndes, Secretary of the Treasury, both favored issuing new coins that were devalued by 20%. Reducing the size or purity of the new coins would bring them in line with the statistical norm of the circulating coinage. The Bank of England and John Locke objected and their arguments held sway.
The solution was to create a new currency of "milled" (machine-struck) silver coins. They would have machined edges with milled patterns and mottoes to defeat clippers. The quality of the striking thwarted counterfeiters. England's machine struck coins actually went back to Charles II, who issued the first ones in 1662. The portraits were excellent by modern standards.
They carried the motto DECUS ET TUTAMEN ("a decoration and a defense") on their edges. This was the result of a machine invented and operated by John (or Jan) Rottier. However, the milled coins of Charles II went directly into savings or else were melted down into bullion and exported. In accordance with Gresham's Law, people continued to spend the old "hammered" coins of the late Middle Ages.
In order to make the new currency work, all of the old silver would have to be called in and replaced. On December 19, 1695, King William III proclaimed that in 1696, the old coinage could not be lawful money at face value. From January 1, 1696, forward, no clipped crowns or half crowns were allowed in commercial transactions, except for the paying of taxes and loans to the King. After February 13, clipped shillings followed suit. Sixpences remained lawful money only until March 2. Any other clipped coins were unlawful after April 2.
New coins went to people who sold things to the government. Old coins came in as payment for taxes and as loans to the crown. The wealthiest people turned in old coins at face and received new coins. The middle class and poor were involved only second hand.
The recoinage floundered. Parliament pushed back the dates past which old coins could be accepted. Being illiterate, most people did not understand the letter of the law and some money changers bought coins at a discount and then turned them in to the Mint for full value. The recoinage also caused a flurry of clipping. In the Spring and Summer of 1696, simple bartering reappeared at a level not seen since the Middle Ages. In the first four months, January to April 1696, a mere ₤300,000 of new coins left the Mint. Then, Newton arrived.
WARDEN OF THE MINT
Following the elections of 1694, Charles Montague (later to be Lord Halifax), became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Montague was a friend of Newton's and in November 1695, the academic circles buzzed with the rumor that Newton would become Master of the Mint. As late as March 14, 1696, Newton denied this in a letter to the astronomer Edmund Halley. Then, on March 19, 1696, Newton got word from Montague: "the King has promised me to make Mr Newton Master of the Mint, the office is most proper for you it is the chief officer of the Mint, it is worth five or six hundred pounds per annum, and has not too much business to require more attendance than you can spare." In fact, the King made Newton the Warden, a higher authority (at a lesser salary), and the king's personal agent. Newton arrived on the job, May 2, 1696.
Every historian agrees that Newton's unfailingly honesty was the key to his success at the Mint.
The Master, Thomas Neale, was lazy and rarely bothered to visit the Mint. Netwon showed up for work at 4:00 am and also made the night shift. He actually occupied the lodgings for the Warden, which no Warden had done in anyone's memory. Watching the coiners, he began time-and-motion studies. Analyzing the data, he found ways to improve efficiency. By June, the output of new coins increased ten times over to ₤4.7 million. Total output in all denominations weighed 3000 pounds per day.
Meanwhile, the five branch Mints (Norwich, Chester, Bristol, York, and Exeter) maintained their incompetence and dishonesty. The Bristol Mint, the best of the lot, produced ₤77,000 in June 1697, at the peak of the recoinage, barely making its quota. The other branch mints struck ₤15,000 to ₤25,000 per month. The worst was the Chester Mint run by Newton's friend, Edmund Halley. When the branch closed in 1698, Halley was glad to get out of public administration and back to astronomy.
Newton, however, reveled in his time. He worked 16 hours a day and investigated every detail of production. He also researched the historical documents that enabled and empowered the officers of the Mint. He wrote long legal arguments, establishing and expanding his powers as Warden. He studied all of the economics books he could find. In 1696, he issued a "State of the Mint" report, denouncing the officers and ministers who lined their pockets at the expense of the King and the people. Newton applied his own expertise in metallurgy to confront the suppliers to the Mint, renegotiating their contracts to the king's favor. As the king's Warden, Newton also pursued counterfeiters.
NEWTON VERSUS THE COUNTERFEITERS
Newton estimated that 20% of the coins taken in were counterfeit. Counterfeiting was treason, punishable by death by drawing and quartering. As gruesome as the penalties were, the courts were not arbitrary or capricious. The rights of free men had a long tradition in England and the crown had to prove its case to a jury. The law also allowed for plea bargaining. Convictions of the most flagrant criminals could be maddeningly impossible to achieve. Newton was equal to the task.
He assembled facts and proved his theories with the same brilliance in law that he had shown in science. He gathered much of that evidence himself. Disguised, he hung out at bars and taverns. For all the barriers placed to prosecution, and separating the branches of government, English law still had strong, old customs of authority. Newton got himself made a justice of the peace. Between June 1698 and Christmas 1699, he conducted some 200 cross-examinations of witnesses, informers and suspects. He obtained the confessions he needed. While he could not resort to open torture, whatever means he did use must have been fearsome because Newton himself later ordered all records of these interrogations to be destroyed. However he did it, Newton won his convictions. In February 1699, he had ten prisoners waiting to be executed.
Newton's greatest triumph as the king's attorney was against William Chaloner. Chaloner was a rogue with a devious intelligence. He set up phony conspiracies of Catholics and then turned in the hapless conspirators whom he entrapped. Chaloner made himself rich enough to posture as a gentleman. Petitioning parliament, Chaloner accused the Mint of providing tools to counterfeiters. (This charge was made also by others.) He proposed that he be allowed to inspect the Mint's processes in order to improve them. He petitioned Parliament to adopt his plans for a coinage that could not be counterfeited. All the time, he struck false coins, or so Newton eventually proved to a court of competent jurisdiction. On March 23, 1699, Chaloner was hanged, drawn, and quartered.
MASTER OF THE MINT
The Master of the Mint, Thomas Neale, died on December 23, 1699. In February 1700, Newton received the post. Technically, the Master was less senior than the Warden. However, the Master's "indenture" (or "contract") paid him for each coin struck. Out of that payment, he paid other contractors. Newton made a profit of 3 1/2 pence per troy pound weight of silver coin struck. His profit of gold coin was 22d per pound weight. He gained another ₤500 from the striking of copper coins. He earned additional profits from the tin trade. His average income was about ₤2150 to a maximum of about ₤3500. It is difficult to translate this into modern terms -- Newton could never own a computer or drive a car -- but his income was over a million modern American dollars per year in terms of his standard of living.
The Act of Union required Newton's attention. Making Scotland part of England included bringing the Edinburgh Mint in line with the standards of the London Tower. Newton managed this from London with his old friend David Gregory (direct ancestor of Barbara Gregory) working in Edinburgh. It was a familiar story: supplies did not arrive on time; bookkeeping was insufficient; the metallurgy was not standardized.
The Edinburgh Mint heated its caldrons with pit coal which burned hotter than the coal used in London; copper was lost in the alloying. The Scots simply added a dash more copper to make the mix come out .925 fine. This unquantified artistry was unacceptable to Newton. However, in the end, he relented. Nonetheless, Newton required two incremental additions of copper rather than one, and more intermediate assays to establish control.
The Edinburgh Mint struck a total of 103,346 pounds weight of silver. The Scottish coinage became identical with the English with the exception that theirs had a mintmark E for larger silver coins -- the sixpence, shilling, half crown, and crown. Some of these have a star after the E. One theory is that those coins were struck outside the Mint by contractors.
In England, the Trial of the Pyx is the official testing of the coins struck under the authority of the Master of the Mint. The tradition began in the 1200s. The name "pyx" refers to the box in which the coins were kept. The samples are a random selection of one gold coin for every 27 pounds weight of coins. The silver samples are two coins for every 30 pounds weight. Today, the Royal Mint still has one such silver ingot from 1278 or 1279 and starting with the trial plates of 1477, there is a complete series. Among them is the gold plate of 1707 that caused a bitter dispute between the goldsmiths of London and Sir Isaac Newton.
Rather than test the gold coins against pure gold, the actual test was to compare the coins against a known standard plate, alloyed to the correct proportions. Newton maintained that the trial plate was not to specifications.
The Royal Mint today agrees that trial plate of 1707 was too fine. Therefore, when the jury reported Newton's coins to be below standard, they were wrong. In fact, by applying his alchemical knowledge Newton performed his own assays and submitted his own evidence. Newton claimed that the 1688 plate was .9184 fine and the 1707 plate that bedeviled him was .9210 fine. (In 1974 using modern methods, the plates were found to be .9145 and .9169 fine respectively.) The trial plate of 1707 was withdrawn and the standard reverted to the trial plate of 1688.
The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) pitted the Hapsburgs of Austria against the Bourbons of France. Each wanted an heir from their houses to be the next king of Spain. Holland and England joined Austria against France and her Spanish allies. In the summer of 1702, a French escort sailed with a Spanish treasure fleet from Cuba. Normally, they would have unloaded at Cadiz, but that town was under siege. They put in at Vigo on Spain's northwest coast on September 23, 1702, and began unloading. On October 11, a combined English-Dutch fleet of 50 ships arrived. Only 25 of them could actually make the shallow harbor. It was enough.
Admiral Chateau-Renaud scuttled as many ships as he could, sending much of the treasure to the bottom. Reports vary widely on how much gold and silver the victors seized. Some histories claim that all of the metal was lost and others say that all of it was captured. Other estimates range from one million pounds weight of silver to a mere 4504 pounds.
Newton was present when the treasure from Vigo Bay was unloaded. The Mint actually got only the excess gold and silver that could not be wholesaled immediately. The Mint coined only ₤13,342 in silver and a mere 34 pounds weight in gold. Even so, the prize of war was important enough that coins struck from the gold and silver carried the provenance mark "Vigo."
Among the gold coins struck was the massive five guinea of 1703, a hefty 41.75 grams of 22 carat gold. Although three dies were used to strike these coins, fewer than 20 pieces survive. Other gold coins with bearing the mark Vigo were the guinea, and half guinea of 1703. Silver coins with the Vigo privy mark are the crown, half crown, shilling and sixpence. The shilling is interesting because it bears the Vigo mark for 1702, the year of the battle, as well as 1703.
Also for this war, Newton oversaw the production of Spanish two-reales pieces to be used by English armies operating in Spain. They bought 800,000 Mexican silver dollars which they coined into 4,200,000 Spanish two reales pieces.
Once the Mint was under control, Newton widened his activities. He was elected to Parliament in 1701. (He ran twice more, but was not elected.) He became president of the Royal Society on November 30, 1703. Queen Anne knighted him on April 16, 1705.
Queen Anne issued no copper coins. However, in 1714, the Mint prepared patterns in gold, silver, copper, and tin for copper farthing coins. The numismatic census includes over 37 varieties of these patterns. While they are objectively rare, they are not worth the king's ransom that the public once thought. Today, a Queen Anne Farthing retails for about in $400 in Fine and about $2000 in Extemely Fine.
In 1720, Newton commended one Mr. Orlebar for the creation of a bimetallic token for the Royal Navy, intended to replace the paper chits that were widely forged. In 1722, King George I granted a patent to William Wood to produce copper coins. We know them as the Rosa Americana and Hibernia issues. Newton defined some of the terms of the contract, assuring safeguards to the crown. He also served as comptroller of Wood's mint in Bristol though he appointed a deputy to carry out the work for him. Newton also filed several reports on the wide values of silver coinage in the American colonies.
SUMMARY
Newton's famous "three laws of motion" were only introductory propositions to his Principia Mathematica. The purpose of the Principia was to demonstrate that the force which at once moves the planets and holds them in their orbits is the same force that pulls apples from their trees and holds the Earth together. He achieved this proof by creating a new kind of mathematics, called the calculus. Newton also invented the reflector telescope as a consequence of his study of optics, which he published in 1704. Had he done any one of these, his place in history would have been assured. He did all of them -- and more.
Newton was psychologically integrated. What he did in one sphere carried over to another. As a child, working on a problem, he would forget to eat. As Warden of the Mint, on January 27, 1697, he came home to discover a letter challenging him to a mathematical puzzle. He solved it in twelve straight hours, from four in the afternoon until four the next morning without a break. He worked problems at the Mint the way he worked problems in physics. He assembled data, balanced authorities, acquired new information, and kept it all in an appropriate notebook, divided into major headings. From those notebooks came his publications in science and memoranda in law. All his life, Newton made several drafts of any letter and then made multiple true copies of the final version. He did this as a student, as a professor, and as Warden and Master of the Mint.
Most men were elevated by accepting an appointment to the Royal Mint. Newton raised the status of the institution he joined because his was the greater reputation.
SOURCES
Berlinski, David. Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World. New York: Free Press, Simon and Schuster, 2000.
Calligas, Elini (editor), Coincraft's 1998 Standard Catalogue of English and UK Coins 1066 to Date. London: Coincraft, 1998.
Craig, Sir John. "Isaac Newton and the Counterfeiters." Notes and Records of the Royal Society (18), London: 1963.
Craig, Sir John. Newton at the Mint. Cambridge: University Press, 1946.
Keynes, Milo. "The Personality of Isaac Newton," Notes and Records of the Royal Society (49), London: The Royal Society, 1995.
Newman, E. G. V. "The Gold Metallurgy of Isaac Newton." The Gold Bulletin Vol 8. No. 3, London: The World Gold Council, 1975.
Trowbridge, Richard J. Queen Anne, 1702-1714 Mystery Farthings. Long Beach: Coins of the British World, 1970.
Westfall, Richard S. Never at Rest: a Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
White, Michael. Isaac Newton: The Last Sorceror. Reading, Mass.: Helix Books, Perseus Books, 1997.
www.royalmint.com/museum/newton Web site pages of the British Royal Mint.