Newton and the Counterfeiter (27 page)

At the same time, Chaloner developed a second line of defense. If he could not bribe his way out of Newgate, perhaps he could buy his escape with the one possession of real value he had left: the still missing Malt ticket plate. Secretary Vernon had already told him that "if he did not deliver up the plate ... it should be worse for him." Accordingly, Chaloner was beginning to weigh the costs and benefits of so open an admission of guilt. He told Lawson that his treasure was in the custody of the daughter-in-law of the wife of an accomplice and indicated that he was wavering: "If he thought it would do him any Service he hath it ready to produce."

Weeks passed. Chaloner remained in Newgate, scheming. Law-son kept watch. Newton had already allowed two sessions of the criminal courts to pass since Chaloner's arrest. The next would begin on March 1, 1699.

Chaloner sensed that he was almost out of time. He could not be sure that his corrupted jurors would stay bought. He knew that he could not prevent at least some damaging witnesses from testifying in open court. He could think of only one last gambit to try, one unimaginable just weeks before: he decided to write to Isaac Newton and tell him why he should spare his life. It was the first time in the three years through which the men had fought that one of them had addressed the other directly.

Chaloner would tell all, he promised. "In obediance to your wor[shi]pp I will give you the best acc
^t
I cann remember." He would provide names, accomplices, men whose crimes he reckoned Newton knew, and "a great many more but I have not time to give you a whole acco
^t
of"—not with the days hastening toward the start of the next court session. But given space, hours, liberty, then "I should be glad to any Service to the Governm
^t
y
^t
is in my power."

I
SAAC NEWTON WAS PREPARED
to listen—or rather, to take note of whatever Chaloner wished to tell him. Four letters survive in his records, three addressed to the Warden, one to a judge in the criminal courts which Newton copied into the file. One by one they register Chaloner's growing panic. Taken together, they form his last throw, an attempt through sheer weight of words to force Newton to accept what Chaloner wished to be true.

Chaloner began calmly. Not yet acknowledging his imminent peril, he sent Newton a two-paragraph note that, more in sorrow than in anger, claimed, "I am not guilty of any Crime." Oh, no: he was merely a bystander, caught up in others' wrongs. "Sr I presume you are satisfied what ill men Peers and ye Holloway are who wrongfuly brought me into a great deal of trouble to excuse their villainy."

Five years earlier, Chaloner had escaped punishment by sticking to his story that his former partner, Blackford, had betrayed him to save his own skin. Then as now, Chaloner's claim had the virtue of being mostly true. There was, of course, the problem that he had lately accused the Warden of incompetence and malice. Surely the Warden would not take a man's life over that regrettable incident. "You are greatly displeased with me ab
^t
the late bussines in Parliamt," Chaloner acknowledged. But the whole affair was, as usual, someone else's fault, as Chaloner had been compelled to appear by "Some p[e]rsons ag
^t
my desire."

Newton read this, and wrote ... nothing.

Chaloner, unnerved, tried again, this time with more care to match his story to the evidence arrayed against him. So the Warden thought he knew the truth about Chaloner's early career? Not so. He had been no mastermind, just a go-between. His usefully dead brother-in-law Joseph Gravener had been the man in charge of a "great Trade in Clipping and Coyning." It was Gravener who rented a "Great Jewe's house in Mark Lane," fortifying it with "Iron barrs and very strong door on the staires strenghtend with iron" so that "20 men could not get in under an hour." There "they made ye Pistols some hundreds of them." Chaloner's role in this? "I knew all of these things his being my brother but I did not act." All he got was a stipend of forty shillings a week—walking-around money, a keep-quiet bribe.

Chaloner knew he needed to do more than put the blame for ancient criminal history on a dead man. There was Carter to account for, and behind him, the two-faced Davis. The Malt ticket plate itself, Chaloner said, was merely a bit of fun—a demonstration of his engraving skills, perhaps—"and if I intended to have anything to do in counterfeiting of Malt Tickets than I desire God Allmighty may never receive my soul." As for the people involved, wasn't it obvious that Davis had connived at the entire affair? "I understand by Carter," Chaloner wrote, "that Davis gave Carter a Ticket to do it by"—another strategically useful true statement. Then, when Davis "goes to the Governm
^t
and discovers that such a thing was going and got money to make further discovery," Carter took fright, and Chaloner destroyed the plate to ease his friend's terror. Thus, he concluded, "it may plane appear to an y Impartiall man that Davis made this Plott to get money out of the Governm
^t
."

And what of Carter's claim that Chaloner had orchestrated the plan and engraved the plate? It was all lies, false testimony, bought and paid for: "Davis comes to Newgate to Carter very often and bids him stand to w
^h
he has said, and said if we can hang Chaloner I shall get 500£ ...then I will get you out." Could not Newton see the obvious, Chaloner asked. The wrong man was in jeopardy: "I can planely make that these Tickets bussines is a piece of roguery and forgery of Davis himself to get money out of the Governmt."

At the last, this tone of injured innocence fractured. Panic creeping in, Chaloner wrote, "I have been guilty of no Crime these 6 years." He had been confounded by conspirators and villainy; to prosecute him would be a sin: "if I die," he wrote, "I am murthered."

Again, Isaac Newton did not choose to reply.

The silence harrowed Chaloner. If he could not get the Warden to respond, if he could not involve his accuser in his version of the story, his last weapon—his gift for persuasion—was worthless.

He tried again. This time he wrote first to a magistrate in his case, Mr. Justice Railton. In a long letter, he reminded the judge of all the criminal deeds he had exposed over the past several years. He had reported the Bank of England forgeries that had prompted the Bank's board to take his advice (and to seek, though not receive, a pardon for past crimes on Chaloner's behalf). There was his evidence about coiners operating inside the Mint. And no one should forget the Jacobite printers brought to the gallows on his testimony.

Now, he told Railton, he was paying the price for his services to the Crown. "I was the cause of Carter's being put in the pillory before I discovered where Carter and his wife were coyning"—and now "their malice is so great that they endeav[ou]r clandestinly to insinuate to the Governm
^t
y
^t
I would be concerned about Malt Tickets." He begged the judge to remember his services to the government. If he did, then neither "y
^r
wor[shi]pp nor the Court will believe the suggestions of such evill persons ag
^t
me."

No reply from Railton survives, probably because none was made: Chaloner's fate turned on the pleasure of the Warden of the Mint. And so the prisoner fell back on his final gambit. By the end of February, with his peril undeniable, Chaloner wrote to Newton twice more. The testimony against him was not merely false, he argued, but nonsense. He could not possibly have done the crimes of which he was accused. Why not? Because, he now said, he was incompetent, unable to perform the essential tasks of the coining trade. "I remember I have said to you that I understand graving," he wrote. "But whatsoer I have said no man in the world can say I can or could grave a flat stitch." (Flat stitch engraving involves the use of a flat tool with fine grooves cut in its head; it is used to inscribe parallel lines, hatching that adds depth to letters or crests. It demands considerable skill, and its use would have been essential to produce plausible copies of the Malt Lottery tickets.) "I can chase a little," he conceded, "but I never graved a letter of flatt stitch nor otherwise but to play the fool with a Graver as any man may do." Chaloner knew that there was a bit of a problem here. "I remember I said to you once y
^t
allthough I can grave and coyn," he acknowledged, but he had not intended that Newton take him literally. "I do not but it was but in generall speaking because I know the ways of graving Stamps from Taylor but pray examin Taylor if I can do any thing in flatt stitch."

This from the man who had just weeks before boasted to Lawson that there was nothing "to be p[er]formed in Coyn or paper but that he can effect with ease." Chaloner had always brandished his skills as a weapon. His mastery of the theory and practice of coining was the foundation of published claims that he could better the Warden. He had used his superior knowledge to force confederate after confederate to take the lion's share of the risk in every scheme. Even in Newgate, he had used his reputation as bait, trying to bend witnesses to his version of the story with both threats and the promise of riches to come—once the ever-elusive William Chaloner had again beaten the rap.

Now he disavowed it all, writing in his last letter before the trial that "I never could work at the Goldsmith's Trade in my life." He could not forge coins, his meager capacity sufficient only to run errands for men who could: "those pistolls was made by Coffee and Gravener and all that I ev[er] was guilty of was getting them the stamps." There was no cleverness in him, no nimbleness in his fingers. Again: "I never graved in flatt stitch graving in all my life and if now it would save my life I could not do it I have no Dye as God Allmighty shall judge me." And if once he had been tempted to sin, that impulse was no more: "The Tool I had before the parliam
^t
was wasted and spoiled long ago."

We know that Newton received this message, as he had the previous ones, for they survive in his Mint files. We can be virtually certain that he did not so much as contemplate a reply. When he did choose to answer a letter, he left traces, drafts and reworkings, four or more for sensitive documents in which he refined to perfection what was in his mind. Nothing of the sort exists in response to any of Chaloner's messages.

Chaloner understood the unbroken stillness of his enemy. Over his criminal career, Chaloner had spent a fair amount of time in jail—perhaps more than a year—but he had never actually come to trial. Now it was obvious that he must, and for a crime that could lead him to the hanging tree at Tyburn. At the very end, he broke. Lawson reported to Newton that Chaloner had gone mad, "pulling his shirt to pieces and running stark naked at midnight abot. the Ward for ½ an hour together."

The fits came and went, interspersed with periods of lucidity and milder delusions. In his first frenzy, Lawson wrote, "the men bound him hand and foot in his bed, but now he seems more rationall." In the restored quiet of the cell, Chaloner confided to Lawson the reason for his calm: "he hears very good newes yt they cannot bring andy Indictmt agt. Him and he questions not but [that he] slip out ... as he hath done 5 times before."

Lawson seems to have believed that there was some truth in Chaloner's ravings. At least one other observer agreed. His biographer wrote that "the apprehension of what he might come to, struck him into a Fit of Sickness, and wrought so strong upon his Brain, that he was sometimes Delerious." When the madness came upon him "he was continually raving that the Devil was come for him and such frightful Whimseys."

At the same time, no one doubted that Chaloner recognized a good trick when he saw it—and he soon sought to put his madness to use. Lawson reported that he twice heard Chaloner say "that when the Sessions came and if he found himself in danger he would pretend himself sick otherwise he would be well and take his tryall." His biographer agreed. "These intervals of Lunacy," he wrote, "he endeavor'd to improve to a height sufficient to put off his approaching the Tryal, counterfeiting the Madman as well as he could."

T
HE RUSE
did not work. William Chaloner could not stop Newton's progress. The next court sessions opened at the beginning of March 1699 in the Guildhall, whose medieval Great Hall had served as the center of London's government since 1411. There, grand juries for London and the county of Middlesex convened. These panels were not mere rubber stamps, issuing indictments at the command of any ambitious prosecutor. Rather, they were designed to ensure that no one stood trial at the caprice of the sovereign or some powerful rival. Before he could proceed, each plaintiff was compelled to present enough of the evidence he planned to bring to the trial court to a jury of Englishmen who had the unchallengeable right to dismiss what they saw as frivolous or unfounded charges.

This was the hurdle Newton had failed to leap in his previous attempt to bring Chaloner to trial—and now, at last, he unwound the long game he had played to avoid a repetition. On March 2, as the Crown opened its presentation to the jury hearing cases that fell into the Middlesex jurisdiction, no mention was made of the Malt Lottery plot—unquestionably to Chaloner's surprise, given that he was still trying to disavow his engraving skill. Instead, Newton had prepared three completely different indictments.

To save some of his ammunition for the case he would present to the criminal jury, Newton used just two of the six witnesses he would call later, supporting their testimony with additional evidence developed over the course of his interrogations.
Those two witnesses—Thomas Taylor and Katherine Coffee—offered the jury what they claimed was direct knowledge of Chaloner's role in the matter of the forged French pistoles. Next, thanks to the information received from Elizabeth Holloway, Newton could provide sworn depositions to back up the story behind the next charge, that Chaloner had induced Thomas Holloway to escape to Scotland to undermine the earlier prosecution. And for the third indictment, again supported by his trove of depositions, Newton offered a story of Chaloner's forging a wide variety of English coins, from sixpences to guineas, in what amounted to a coining orgy. On a single day in August 1698, he charged, Chaloner had struck gold pistoles and guineas, along with almost one hundred silver pieces: twenty crowns, forty half-crowns, twenty shillings, and ten sixpences.