SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1643-1727), ENGLISH PHYSICIST, MATHEMATICI...

Hammer

£6,500

SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1643-1727), ENGLISH PHYSICIST, MATHEMATICIAN AND INVENTOR - A DOCUMENT SIGNED ISAAC NEWTON, AS MASTER OF THE ROYAL MINT
Dated May 1718, recording a payment of two-hundred pounds by Sir Isaac Newton Knt., Hopton Haynes Esq. and others in trust, to Francis Hall of St. James' Parish, Westminster, signed in full by both Newton and Haynes, with handwritten addenda over both sides, and further signatures of John Aislabie, George Baillie and William Clayton, having widespread losses to margins but with text largely unaffected.

Hopton Haynes (1672?-1749), theological writer and employee of the Royal Mint. Haynes entered the service of the Mint in 1696 as a teller and weigher, the same year as Newton’s appointment as warden. The two remained on intimate terms for the remainder of Newton’s life, during which time Haynes produced a Latin translation of Newton’s Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture and acted as a conduit for his dialogue with William Whiston on the subject of baptism (as recorded in the Dictionary of National Biography).

John Aislabie (1670-1742), politician. In 1718, the year this document was produced, Aislabie, was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, having served as Treasurer of the Navy for the previous four years. For his involvement in the disastrous collapse of the South Sea Company two years later, Aislabie was ignominiously removed from office and briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London. Newton personally suffered considerable losses as a consequence of the crash, later commenting that “[he could] calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people”.

George Baillie of Jerviswood (1664-1738), Scottish landed proprietor and politician, a member of the Parliament of Scotland between 1691 and 1707, and the British House of Commons between 1708 and 1734. At the time this document was produced, Baillie was serving as Lord of the Treasury, having been appointed the preceding year.

William Clayton, 1st Baron Sundon (1671-1752), politician and Treasury official. Clayton was appointed Lord of the Treasury in 1718 and removed from office two years later, to make room for allies of Robert Walpole following the reconciliation of the Whigs. In the aftermath, he sat on the House of Commons’ South Sea Committee, established to investigate the issue of bubble companies, and positioned himself in opposition to Walpole.

Francis Hall was the son of Thomas Hall, himself an employee of the Royal Mint. Both generations appear multiple times in Newton’s financial transactions around this period.

Provenance: Charles Campbell (d. 1853), of Croftness, Perthshire, latterly merchant in Brazil, where married to Flora Macgregor.
Robert MacGregor Campbell of Silver Howe, Grasmere, Westmorland and Almeria Caroline Campbell, née Surtees (1852-1936)
Thence by family descent to the present owner, Charles Campbell’s great-great-grandchild.

Featured by Clive Farahar on the Antiques Roadshow in 2002 (series 25, episode 12 – Oban). See also the following lot.

Note: there appear to have been multiple copies of this document produced, with others closely resembling this example having sold at Christie’s on three occasions within the past decade (see On the Shoulders of Giants: Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Hawking, London, 31st October – 8th November 2018, lot 2; Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts Including Americana, New York, 12th June 2019, lot 102; and Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts Including Americana, New York, 4th December 2018, lot 15). A key distinction between these three copies is the number heading the first page: respectively 588, 603 and 576. The example here offered falls within this established range, numbered 600.

More Information

The page has been folded in four, width-wise, and the creases are deeply set. The significant losses to the margins appear to have occurred when the document was folded in this state, as they are mirrored over each half. The central crease is torn almost entirely through, with losses, the two halves conjoined at three points. Marks, stains and discolouration to the page generally. Remnant of a wax seal to the upper right corner. One small hole to bottom lefthand corner, approx. 5mm at widest point.