Irregular Webcomic! #5273

Isaac Newton was appointed Warden of the Mint in 1696 and promoted to Master of the Mint in 1699, where he served until 1727.

In 1696 Newton was 52 years old and had already achieved his most significant scientific works and attained fame because of them. The appointment to the Mint was intended to be a sinecure—a post with very little responsibility, but a generous yearly stipend—to reward Newton for his important work. His friends John Locke and Charles Montagu worked for some years to obtain such a position for Newton, to support him in his old age as thanks for his services to the nation. Newton could have relaxed and enjoyed the last 30 years of his life in comfortable wealth with the money that this position granted him.

But this was Isaac Friggin' Newton we were dealing with.

In 1696 there were serious problems with people clipping small amounts of the precious metal from coins and producing counterfeit coins. Newton decided to solve this by replacing the entire silver coinage of England. This process that took two years to achieve, a remarkably short time which was assisted by Newton's applied knowledge of mathematics and chemistry. He was particular about the accuracy of the metal purity and weight in new coins, resulting in the production of coinage of much greater regularity than any before.

Newton also vigorously prosecuted accused counterfeiters, performing cross-examinations of witnesses and gathering evidence strong enough to convict 28 offenders. He oversaw the unification of currencies of England and Scotland following the political union of 1707.

He also performed assays of foreign currencies to establish accurate exchange rates, and recommended that England move to a bimetallic standard by fixing the exchange rate of gold and silver, which the English Parliament adopted on his recommendation in 1717. This was not necessarily a good thing, as fluctuating relative values in European markets meant that people preferred to pay for imports with silver and receive payment for exports in gold, resulting in a net outflow of silver from England and a silver shortage. Newton may have been a mathematical genius, but the vagaries of economics eluded even him.

In short, Newton did some good solid work as Master of the Mint, but also made some mistakes, which might be excusable in that nobody from the 18th century would have had a better developed sense of the economic impacts anyway.