Isaac Newton. 24 December 1718

Isaac Newton (1643-1727).

Document signed (‘Isaac Newton’), n.p., 24 December 1718, countersigned by Hopton Haynes and others.

One page, 122 x 198mm, written on the reverse of a printed document, laid onto a card mount (295 x 212mm) with a lithographic portrait of Newton.

The personal financial dealings of Newton as Master of the Royal Mint. ‘Wee whose names are underwritten do assign & transferr the princip[le …] Sum of two hundred pounds mentiond in the Order on the other […] hereof with the Tally of the Same Sum and date belonging there[to …] all Interest now due thereupon, Unto Francis Hall Esq[ui]r[e] of St […] parish Westminster, & to his Assigns’.

Isaac Newton spent the last three decades in his life in London, serving as Master of the Royal Mint from 1700 to 1727, a role to which he applied himself with characteristic intensity. It was also a period of his life in which he is known to have become involved in complex personal financial dealings, including in the notorious South Sea Bubble. The Francis Hall to whom he is repaying a loan in the present document was the son of another employee at the Mint, Thomas Hall: the two men appear in a number of Newton's financial transactions at this period. The other signatory, Hopton Haynes, was a protégé of Newton’s from the Mint.

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