Highways and Byways in LincolnshireRawnsley, W. F. (Willingham Franklin)
History
Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire
Rawnsley, W. F. (Willingham Franklin)
Lincolnshire (England) -- Description and travel
From _Colsterworth_ a road runs east past Twyford Forest, twelve
miles to Bourne. In the church, which is both Norman, Decorated, and
Perpendicular, there is the Newton chapel, with tombs of Sir Isaac’s
parents and grandparents. This is modern, but is on the site of the old
Woolsthorpe Manor chapel. It contains a sundial with an inscription,
which says that it was cut by Newton when a boy of nine. His baptism
appears in the Register thus:—“Isaac son of Isaac and Hanna Newton Janʳʸ
1, 1643.” She was an Ayscough, and married for her second husband the
Rev. Barnabas Smith of North Wytham. On the left bank of the Witham, at
a distance of half a mile, is the hamlet of _Woolsthorpe_, which must
not be confused with the Woolsthorpe near Belvoir. The name was probably
Wolph’s or Ulfsthorpe, and nothing to do with Wool. In Domesday Book it
is Ulstanthorp. In Woolsthorpe Manor House Newton was born on Christmas
Day, 1641. The window is shown from which he saw the apple fall and the
Newton Arms—two cross-bones—are sculptured over the door. In the days of
the Commonwealth he was at Bishop Fox’s school at Grantham, 1651-1656.
His mother thought to make a farmer of him, but kindly fate took him to
Cambridge when he was eighteen, and he spent more than four years there,
taking his degree in 1665. The incident of the apple dates from 1666,
the year of the great Plague and the Fire of London. Starting from this
he deduced the reasons for the movement of the planets which Galileo in
1610 and Copernicus in 1540 had noted. He had by this time accumulated
much of the material for his great work the “Principia,” and for the next
thirty years he worked and wrote unceasingly. He was appointed Master of
the Mint in 1695, and President of the Royal Society in 1703, and was
knighted in 1705. He died in March, 1727. His own view of his life’s
work may be given in his own words: “I do not know what I may appear to
the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on
the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother or
prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all
undiscovered before me.” After lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber
he was buried in Westminster Abbey, the Lord Chancellor, two dukes, and
three earls being pall-bearers; his monument, near the entrance to the
choir on the north side, shows a recumbent figure with the right arm on
four folios named Divinity, Chronology, Optics, and Phil. Prin. Math.
Above is a large globe showing the planets, etc., projecting from a
pyramid, and on the globe the figure of Astronomy with a closed book, in
a very pensive mood. Below is a bas-relief representing Newton’s various
labours and discoveries.
The inscription, written by Pope, is as follows:—
“Isaacus Newtonius
Quem Immortalem
Testantur Tempus, Natura, Coelum:
Mortalem
Hoc Marmor fatetur.
Nature, and Nature’s laws lay hid in night;
God said let Newton be! and all was light.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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