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Like a lot of people, the only thing I know Isaac Newton for is his contributions to science. Apples falling from trees, the movements of the planets, that sort of stuff. What I didn’t know was that later in life he became Warden of the Mint of England. He wanted to move on from teaching at Cambridge and get a well paid government job, and given his reputation, this is the post that he landed. Newton and the Counterfeiter tells the tale of this chapter in his life.
The Warden of the Mint had two major responsibilities in Newton’s time. One was to make sure that all of the equipment in the mint was in good working order as well acquiring new devices as needed. The second was to act as a form of law enforcement hunting down coin clippers and counterfeiters. The latter is straightforward enough, while the former were people who literally clipped small pieces off of the edge of coins. This was because in that time coins were made of precious metals (usually silver), so the clippers would melt down their clips into silver ingots, then ship them to the continent where they had a more favorable exchange rate on silver, and use that to buy gold. During Newton’s time this became a major problem as England was running out of silver because so many were playing a game of arbitrage with the currency.
Newton came to his position at quite a busy time for the mint as it was about to begin a massive re-coining of England’s currency in an attempt to stop the clipping and counterfeiting that was happening. Over the course of several years, it had to replace millions of pounds worth of coins. This wasn’t specifically part of Newton’s responsibilities, but rather the Master of the Mint. However, because the man holding this position was a good for nothing wastrel, Newton was eventually able to convince him to just stay home and collect his cheques while Newton took over the re-coining (for his efforts, Newton would eventually hold both the position of Warden and Master).
He did a very good job of efficiently re-coining the currency, but his greatest challenge was hunting down counterfeiters. Newton wasn’t actually keen on this and there are letters that survive where he’s writing his higher ups trying to get out of that, but they told him he had to do it, so finally he got down to the task of basically becoming a detective searching for these people and bringing them to justice. There was one man in particular that was an exceptionally talented counterfeiter that Newton would spend years building a case for: William Chaloner. The book largely focuses on the battle between these two as Newton tries to find witnesses and evidence while Chaloner boldly counterfeits to his heart’s content.
The book goes into quite a lot of detail regarding Chaloner’s history of scams, stretching far beyond counterfeiting. He even spent time making sex toys. Apparently late 17th century London was a mecca for all manner of carnal pleasures on offer from the city’s sex industry. In any case, Chaloner had his finger in all manner of scams, but counterfeiting was by far his most profitable. This also filled him with quite a lot of hubris, eventually raising the ire of Newton who then made it his singular mission to ensure that Chaloner was hung for his crimes. (Counterfeiting was considered just shy of high treason at the time, and carried a gruesome fate for those convicted.)
It was very interesting to read about both of these people. Chaloner was quite the character and comes across as every bit the scoundrel. Meanwhile, it was something to see how Newton brought his scientific observational skills to bare while investigating England’s counterfeiting crisis. Given how arrogant the man he was trying to bring to justice happened to be, Newton poured quite a lot of effort into gathering information to bring down Chaloner.
While Chaloner was swelling with self-confidence, he wasn’t stupid, and was a very capable counterfeiter. In a lot of ways, the match up between himself and Newton was like the King of Street Smarts and the King of Book Smarts facing off in 17th century England. As much as Newton’s contributions to science are what people remember today, his time at the Mint was both interesting and even crucial to saving the UK’s economy from a dire predicament. This book does a great job of shining a light on this.
Pennywhether
pennywhether@posteo.net
February 15, 2022