Mrs. White thus lost her husband and her mother in the course of the same
year. Her brother sold the Cranbury property to Jonathan Conduitt,
Esquire, who was a noted person in his day. He married Catherine Barton,
the favourite niece and adopted daughter of Sir Isaac Newton. It may be
remembered that this great man was a posthumous child, and was bred up by
his mother’s second husband, Barnabas Smith, Rector of North Witham,
Lincolnshire, so as to regard her children as brothers and sisters.
Hannah Smith married one Thomas Barton of Brigstock, and her daughter
Catherine (whose name mysteriously is found as suing for the price of
property sold to Charles II. for the site of the King’s house at
Winchester), lived with Sir Isaac Newton, was very beautiful, and much
admired by Lord Halifax for her wit and gaiety. It was even reported
that she was privately married to him, but this of course was mere
scandal, and she became the wife of Jonathan Conduitt, educated at
Trinity College, a friend and pupil of Newton, who had for many years
assisted in the harder work of Master of the Mint, and wrote an essay on
the gold and silver coinage of the realm. He was member of Parliament
for Southampton. Sir Isaac made his home with his niece and her husband
till his death in 1727, when Mr. Conduitt succeeded to his office as
Master of the Mint, and intended to write his life, but was prevented by
death in 1737. Among the materials which Mr. Conduitt had preserved is
the record of Newton’s saying, “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
sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble
or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all
undiscovered before me.”
A very curious relic of Sir Isaac survives in the garden at Cranbury
Park, viz. a sun-dial, said to have been calculated by Newton. It is in
bronze, in excellent preservation, and the gnomon so perforated as to
form the cypher I. C. seen either way. The dial is divided into nine
circles, the outermost divided into minutes, next, the hours, then a
circle marked “Watch slow, Watch fast,” another with the names of places
shown when the hour coincides with our noonday, such as Samarcand and
Aleppo, etc., all round the world. Nearer the centre are degrees, then
the months divided into days. There is a circle marked with the points
and divisions of the compass, and within, a diagram of the compass, the
points alternately plain and embossed.
There is no date, but the maker’s name, John Rowley, and the arms of Mr.
Conduitt, as granted in 1717. Quarterly 1st and 4th Gules, on a fesse
wavy argent, between three pitchers double eared or, as many bees volant
proper.
2nd and 3rd Gules, a lion rampant argent between six acorns or. Impaling
argent 3 boars’ heads sable for Barton.
Crest—Two Caducean rods with wings, lying fesse ways or. Thereon a
peacock’s head, erased proper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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