Inside the Tower

A ground plan of the Tower of London, commissioned by Newton from William Allingham in February 1701, and shows the Mint occupying the tight space between the interior and exterior walls.[1] On each side of the narrow, paved ‘Mint Street’ there were workshops, stores, stables, coach-houses and residences. These were an assortment of ancient wooden buildings of one or two stories, some held up by timber shores and pinned together with clamps of iron. The Warden’s house, which came as part of the job, was so gloomy and dilapidated that Newton chose instead to live in Jermyn Street, a half-hour walk from the Tower.

The Tower of London was shared by many different working communities and families, and there were different entrances and spaces for different visitors, whether they were merchants, goldsmiths, tourists (such as Samuel Pepys or the Tsar of Russia who came to visit the Mint), or contracted workers.[2] Mint Street was cramped, dark and dangerous, lit by only four oil lamps at night, and patrolled by single sentries who varied in their trustworthiness.

There had long been fights between Officers of the Mint and other Tower inhabitants over space, resources and power. One particularly bothersome neighbour was the military Board of Ordinance. Under Charles II, the army had seized the Elizabethan ‘Irish Mint’ building, the Porter’s house, the Smith’s house and some clerks’ dwellings, and had built a barracks on a vacant site. As well as resenting this encroachment, Newton complained of the noise, smoke of the forges, and neighbourhood of soldiers.[3] At one point he had to submit an official request: ‘That the Gunner of the Tower do order the Guns in such a manner that upon firing they may do least harm to the glass windows of the Mint.’[4]

Newton had several run-ins with Robert Lucas, the Lord-Lieutenant of the Tower, in charge of maintaining order amongst its inhabitants. In late June 1697, a drunk officer of the garrison tried to break into a Mint residence and threatened the householders. When Lord Lucas ordered that his sentries should fire on the drunk and disorderly, Newton complained ‘why should the people who live in the Mint be so terrified as to leave their habitations in it?’ Retaliations escalated until, in July, a fight that began between a Tower Warden and a Gate Porter ‘whence arose such a tumultuous concourse of people as rendered unsafe the money which was then coming down the street of the Mint in trays.’

Maintaining the security of the coinage was always difficult in this space, and Newton was forced to appeal repeatedly to the Treasury against other inhabitants of the Tower. Throughout his employment, Newton battled to retain the Mint’s historic privileges at the Tower and beyond, amassing archives of evidence back to 1553 to make his case.[5]