Introducing Newton's Mint-Related Papers
In 1696, at the age of 53, Newton was appointed Warden (i.e. chief officer) of the Royal Mint, which was at this date housed in the Tower of London. Some biographers have seen this as a tragic waste of an extraordinary intellect on a mundane bureaucratic job. However, it is clear that Newton - who could perfectly well have continued to earn a decent living as professor of mathematics at Cambridge had he so wished - had been actively seeking such an appointment for several years. Once he had secured it, he fulfilled his duties with extraordinary vigour and enthusiasm. Indeed, after three years as Warden, Newton was transferred at his own request to the post of Master, which was nominally less prestigious but in fact accorded him more responsibility and power.
Senior offices in State-run establishments such as the Mint were generally seen as sinecures. They were a way for influential figures such as Newton's own patron Charles Montague, later Earl of Halifax, to advance or reward their friends and protégés by placing them in undemanding but lucrative posts, with the actual work of such institutions being carried out by lower-paid subordinates.
Newton, much to everyone's surprise (and the consternation of his fellow Mint officers), was having none of this. He took a close personal interest in the running of the Mint and brought the full weight of his intellectual and moral authority to bear on it. He devised a new method of testing the quality of copper coin which was not improved on for over a century. He oversaw the complex and controversial business of silver recoinage in both England (1696-8) and Scotland (1707). (Newton did not himself go to Scotland, but the Master of the Edinburgh Mint depended almost entirely on Newton's written instructions and advice for the conduct of the operation.) He engaged in several acrimonious disputes, both with the other Mint officers and with the military officers also stationed in the Tower, concerning the duties, rights and privileges of the Mint and its personnel. He conducted a ferocious campaign against coinage offenders, sending many to the scaffold, and he wrote two substantial (and as yet unpublished) essays on economic theory.
The personal collection of papers he amassed during his three decades of service at the Mint is, therefore, far more than an assemblage of routine administrative documents. Some of it, of course, is mundane, but much is of considerable interest in terms both of the biographical light it sheds on Newton and of the history of economics more generally.
We hope in time to provide transcriptions and facsimiles of all Newton's Mint papers. Meanwhile, a detailed summary of all the documents in the collection is available in the Mint Papers section of our online catalogue.
