Edmond Halley and Newton's 'Principia

Edmond Halley and Newton's 'Principia'Author(s): Alan CookSource: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Jul., 1991), pp. 129-138Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/531693 .

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Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 45(2), 129-138 (1991)

EDMOND HAT FY AND NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA

by

SIR ALAN COOK, F.R.S.

Selwyn College, Cambridge CB3 9DQ

1. INTRODUCTION

Halley's part in the conception, development, printing and publication of the Principia, as seen from Newton's side, is well known and well documented,1 and to that I have nothing to add. Without Halley, the stimulus, the critic, the supporter, editor and publisher, there would have been no Principia, or at least no published Principia as we now have it. Newton would probably have remained in relative obscurity in Cambridge and be known to us for his mathematics and optics but perhaps not as an outstanding figure in the history of science. Without Halley we should not have had Newton's grand conception of how physical science should be pursued, the conception that still guides us.

Although well established, the public history of Principia still raises questions. It runs as follows. In the evening of 24 January 1684, at the Royal Society, Wren, Hooke and Halley discussed Halley's demonstration that Kepler's third law implied that the attraction of the Sun upon the planets was as the inverse of the square of the distance from them, and Wren offered to give books to the value of 40 shillings to whomever of Hooke and Halley could first show (before the end of March) that the inverse square law led to an elliptical orbit. March came and went. Wren's books were not claimed, but not until August did Halley call on Newton in Cambridge. Why so long a delay? All three seem to have appreciated that the question was very important, but more than four months passed from the end of March before Halley went to Cambridge. Hooke would hardly have admitted his failure by asking Newton, and Wren was no doubt much occupied with building St Paul's and otherwise, but Halley might surely have gone at his first opportunity. In fact it seems that he did.

As the result of Halley's visit, Newton wrote De motu and announced it to the Royal Society in December. There followed the correspondence between Newton as author and Halley as editor and critic until, on 24 April 1686, Principia was presented to the Society by Dr Vincent, and Halley was asked to report on it. That he did at the meeting of 2 June, whereupon the Society

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resolved that it should undertake the publication. When the Council next met, they agreed that the Society should publish Principia, but at Halley's charge, which he accepted. Now Halley had, in January of that year, been appointed the subordinate clerk of the Society with a salary of £50 per annum (paid by copies of the History of fishes, if indeed it ever was paid). The question has therefore been asked, 'how could Halley afford to print Principia?', especially as it is supposed, on the authority of statements in the Biographia Britannica, that Halley, only recently married, was more or less destitute through his father's improvidence.2

I now present new material which provides answers to the questions about Halley's delay in going to see Newton and about his resources for printing Principia. It is contained in the allegations and answers of an action in Chancery of 1686 concerning the administration of the father's personal estate.3 That Halley was involved in Chancery actions some eight years later was already known,4 but so far as I am aware no one has previously noticed the action of 1686.

Some background in the form of a little family history is first necessary. Halley's mother, Ann (nee Robinson) died in 16725 when Halley was about 15 and still at school at St Paul's. Some time before 1684, the father (who was also called Edmond) remarried with a lady whose Christian name was Joane, and in 1683 they were living in London in Winchester Street, which is just opposite the church of All Hallows on the Wall, close to the Bethlem Hospital and Gresham College, and not far from the present Liverpool Street Station. Halley himself was much abroad, first at St Helena (1676-78), then visiting Hevelius at Danzig (May-July 1679), and lastly in France and Italy with Robert Nelson (December 1680-February 1682). Not long after his return from France, on 20 April 1682, he married Mary Tooke at St James's, Duke Place.6 They were almost certainly living at Islington from October 1682 to February 16847 but later seem to have moved to Golden Lion Court in the parish of St Giles's, Cripplegate.

Mary's father, Christopher, who had died in 1666, was of a legal family connected with the Inner Temple, and was said to have been an Auditor of the Court of Wards, as his grandfather had been. Mary's mother was the daughter of Gilbert Kinder, a well-to-do mercer of the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, not far from Winchester Street and the site of Gresham College.

Halley had a younger brother, Humfrey (III), and an uncle, also Humfrey (II), his father's brother. Both Humfreys had died before March 1684 and Halley had legacies of £100 from each of them; he was also the administrator of his brother's estate,8 and the father was the executor of the uncle's will. Mary and her three sisters had also received legacies, of £200 each, from a brother of their father's who had died in 1682, but there had been delay in the payment

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and in 1683 Mary and two of her sisters, together with their respective husbands, had commenced an action in Chancery against the executors of the uncle's will.9

On 5 March 1683 (old style) the father left his house, to all appearance in good health and with no known enemies, and was not thereafter seen alive. His body was found in the parish of Stroud near Rochester on 12 April 1684 (old style), that is about five weeks later. A local jury brought in a verdict of murder but the murderer, if such there was, remains unknown, and some have thought the father might have committed suicide. He was buried at Barking, Essex, where his parents had been married and were buried and where Halley's mother was also buried.10

2. THE DIVISION OF THE FATHER'S ESTATE

Halley's father had not made a will by the time he died. The stepmother, Joane, immediately applied to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury for letters of administration of the personal estate, but Halley opposed the application. A compromise was arrived at by which at the end of June 1684 the Court sanctioned the establishment of a trust to divide the personal estate between Halley and Joane, for it seems that at this time Halley was the only surviving child of his father and Ann. The trustees were Sir John Buckworth nominated by Halley, and Richard Young nominated by Joane.1l Of Young I have no information, but Sir John was a prominent citizen and Turkey merchant, and the ground landlord of the father's properties in Winchester Street. He was of the parish of St Peter-le-Poer in which part of Winchester Street lay. The trustees took steps to administer the personal estate, which consisted mainly of investments in house property and lotteries, as well as money lent to various people and household goods and plate. It seems likely that besides the personal estate, the father owned real estate and there would also have been the assets of his business as salter and soap boiler.12 The trustees agreed upon a division of the personal estate between Halley and his stepmother and gave Halley power to collect rents and interest and to discharge debts, and generally to manage the estate on their behalf, all with the agreement of Joane.

The Chancery action which is the source for many of those statements, came about after the stepmother remarried on 2 June 1685, her new husband being Robert Cleeter (or perhaps Cleator);13 he is described as a gentleman but was not it would seem a citizen or freeman of London. (Halley himself is also described as a gentleman and likewise was not a citizen or freeman, so that he did not follow his father into any livery company.) Disputes arose about the actions of the trustees and Halley, and in April 1686 Robert and Joane Cleeter commenced a suit before Lord Jeffreys in the Court of Chancery against



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Buckworth, Young and Halley.14 The issues seem to have been rather subsi- diary to the main division between Halley and his stepmother, on which they had agreed. The later course of the litigation, with actions still being started in 1694, is not clear, and important as it may be in Halley's life as a whole, is subsequent to the publication of the first edition of Principia.

The present significance of the 1686 action is that it lets us see what Halley was doing in the early part of 1684 when the idea of Principia was first put into Newton's mind; it gives some idea of Halley's resources when he undertook to print and publish Principia, and it reveals some of his other preoccupations right up to the publication of Principia.

3. HALLEY'S VISIT TO CAMBRIDGE

The seed of Principia was sown in the discussion between Wren, Hooke and Halley on 25 January 1683 (old style). Wren's offer of books worth 40 shillings to Hooke or Halley had not expired when Halley's father disappeared, and it must be supposed that thereafter Halley was much occupied with family matters, at least until the end of June 1684 when the trust was established to divide the personal estate. He was also no doubt still involved with Mary's Chancery action. Then in August of the same year, he called on Newton in Cambridge.

We do not know why Halley visited Newton, whom he had met only once before, in 1682, but the fact that he waited for seven months after the January conversation has not gone unremarked. Two months are accounted for by the term set by Wren and four more by the family crisis. Only after the trustees had been appointed to administer the father's will in June 1684 might Halley have felt able to be away from London. I do not know why he was in Cambridge in August, but the following is at least plausible. A Chancery action and various wills15 show that Halley's grandfather, Humfrey (I) (d.1672) and his uncles Humfrey (II) (d.1676) and William (d.1675) held property near Huntingdon at Alconbury and Sawtry (close to Pepys family property), and that his father Edmond had inherited property from both Humfreys (I) and (II) and was the executor and residuary legatee of the will of Humfrey (II). Halley was his father's only surviving son, so it is probable that the property that the father inherited from the Humfreys (I) and (II) passed to Halley. It does not enter the Chancery actions referred to here. The Chancery action of 1693 shows that the father had made loans to people in the Sawtry district, including the Rector of Sawtry.16 Halley and his own brother Humfrey (III) (d.1684) both had legacies of £100 from uncle Humfrey (II). Furthermore Halley's father as executor of the will of uncle Humfrey (II), took responsibility for an annuity of £3 payable to a widow Susanna Sandwich of Alconbury, formerly of London,

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who had been involved in a Chancery suit by grandfather Humfrey (II) in 1670 and may have had other property dealings with one or more of the Halleys. For all those reasons, it seems likely that Halley would have had to have visited the neighbourhood after the death of his father to settle various matters related to family property, and in particular to collect interest on loans and rents on properties. Possibly he took the opportunity to go to Cambridge and call on Newton. That is speculation: we do not know if there was any other reason for Halley to be in Cambridge in August if it was not simply to call on Newton.

Call Halley did, and Principia was under way. The catalogue of Halley's family misfortunes seems to account quite adequately for the long delay between the conversation in January and the visit to Cambridge in August. Rather than be surprised that Halley took so long to call on Newton, we might be impressed by his having kept that purpose in mind throughout his troubles of the spring and summer.

4. HALLEY'S FINANCIAL STATE

Statements have been made, often in connection with Halley's becoming the salaried clerk of the Society, that he was not well off, indeed almost destitute, and needed the £50 a year salary. That seems inconsistent with his undertaking, as a speculation, the cost of printing Principia, which probably cost more than the salary. No accounts for the printing of the first edition are known, but 300-400 copies were printed,17 of which almost 100 may have been distributed as gifts, although the price to booksellers for those sold in sheets was five shillings. Copies on more expensive paper and others in leather binding were available as alternatives to unbound sheets. The second edition of 700 copies, printed at the University Press in Cambridge, cost £117,18 a large part of which was for paper. The cost of the first edition pro rata may not have been very different, namely about £60, which is consistent with a price in sheets of 5 shillings. Halley's initial outlay can hardly have been less than £60 but might have been £100, for he writes to Newton:19

I am satisfied there is no dealing in books without interesting the Booksellers, and I am content to let them go halves with me, rather than have your excellent work smothered by their combination.

He would eventually have recouped something from sales20 but money does not seem to have been Halley's reason for seeking the post of Clerk.

A good idea of Halley's share of the father's personal estate is provided by the schedules of accounts attached to the bills of complaint and answer in the action of Cleeter and Cleeter against Buckworth, Young and Halley, and also by other schedules to a later action of 1693.21 The personal estate comprised



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13 houses in Winchester Street, other houses in Canning Street, the Dog Tavern in Billingsgate, money invested in the Coal Office of the City and in the General Lottery, and sundry other debts such as that owed by the Rector of Sawtry. The interests from some debts had charges on them, in particular, Halley's mother-in-law had apparently lent money to Halley's father. Roughly speaking, Halley received the Winchester Street houses and his stepmother the rest.

The income from the estate is shown as an annual sum in the 1686 papers and as a cumulative total over nine years in the 1693 accounts. There are some inconsistencies that arise from the incidence of payments involved in settling the estate and because Halley paid a considerable sum to be rid of the Dog Tavern which was evidently a liability rather than an asset. The discrepancies are not great and the annual income from the rents and investments of the father's personal estate was of the order of £400. Certain of the father's debts and funeral expenses had to be paid from the personal estate, but when those had been settled, the annual income would have been that stated, of which slightly over half was assigned to Halley, with the remainder going to his stepmother. The schedules to the Chancery documents show that Halley was receiving rents in 1686, so that he must then have had an income of between £150 and £200 from the estate. Up to the time of the father's death, he had an allowance of £60 a year from him: he was also entitled to two legacies of £100 each as mentioned above, which had not been paid to him by then. The house at Islington where he lived after his marriage was probably his father's but it may have been conveyed to Halley, for family property was often made over to children in the lifetime of the father and the house does not figure in the Chancery action. The house at Golden Lion Court may also have been family property.

The Halley family at one time or another, owned or had interests in property in several parishes in the City of London, in addition to the 13 houses in Winchester Street, the two others in Cannon Street, and the Dog Tavern. In 1666 the father had paid hearth tax on a substantial house in the parish of St Giles's, Cripplegate, and there is evidence of other Halleys owning property in that parish as well as the astronomer himself. Furthermore, his mother's death was registered in St Giles's22 although she was buried at Barking. There were also family connections, as evinced by records of births, marriages or deaths, with the parish of St Benet's, Paul's Wharf.23

Although there is much that is unclear about the family properties and investments, it none the less seems that Halley was comfortably provided for by his investment income after his father's death. The clerkship at the Royal Society, with a salary paid in arrears with copies of the History offishes, cannot have made the difference between penury and survival. Multiplication of an

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income by a single factor to obtain a notional income in today's money necessarily gives a wrong impression because people spent their money in different ways, but it may be recalled that when Pepys had a salary of £50 at the beginning of his career as Clerk of the Acts he was able to keep two servants and a coach. Halley most likely did not pay rent on his own house, and allowing for the fact that there was no income tax, his income as disclosed by the Chancery actions might have been the equivalent of some £60 000 today: he may in addition have had income from real property in London or Hunting- donshire that was not involved in the Chancery actions.

An assessment of Halley's income relative to the cost of printing Principia is not so simple. Evidently he could have paid for it from his share in the father's estate in the year and a half it took to print, but that would seem hardly prudent if the income from the estate was all he had. Halley could have paid for Principia from the sale of one or two of the Winchester Street houses, two of which he did sell, but more likely to pay for getting rid of the Dog Tavern. (Might the Dog Tavern have been the source of the story that the father had ruined himself by injudicious speculation? It was certainly a drain on his estate at the time of his death.)

5. CLERK TO THE SOCIETY

Halley was not the only candidate at the election of the Clerk on 27 January 1685 (old style), Sloane being another, and it is notable that in choosing Halley the Society abandoned the conditions that it had set down only shortly before, that the Clerk should be a single man without children and that he should live on the Society's premises.

Simultaneously Halley was corresponding with Newton about the progress of Principia.24 He was also active in the Society in the middle of April following, for on 14 April he and Hooke presented the results of their separate determi- nations of the specific gravity of mercury and on 21 April Halley spoke on gravity. That was just about at the time that his stepmother and her new husband presented their bill of complaint against Buckworth, Young and Halley. The next recorded event is the presentation of the manuscript of Principia to the Society by Dr Vincent on 28 April 1686. Then sometime in May, Buckworth, Young and Halley made their answer to the complaint of the Cleeters and on 19 May 1686 the Society, but not the Council, who did not find it possible to convene, ordered that Principia should be printed at their own charge and that Halley was to take care of the printing. When the Council was at last able to meet on 2 June they confirmed that the Society should print Principia but asked Halley to bear the charges, which he undertook to do. The six weeks from mid-April were indeed eventful in the history of natural

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philosophy and they were also in Halley's own personal history, for he took on an undetermined liability just when he was becoming involved in a second Chancery action (that of his wife and her sisters being the first).

The ensuing year was also a full one, and Halley seems to have had no time for systematic lunar observations such as he had made before his father's death.25 He was, of course, busily occupied in corresponding with Newton, visiting him, and choosing and overseeing the printers. But there were ongoing difficulties with his clerkship. On 16 June 1686 the Council asked the Society to confirm Halley despite his marriage, his children and his residence outwith the Society; yet on 29 November it was agreed that there should be a new election and a ballot was held for Halley's continuation. A committee was set up on 5 January to inspect the books of the Society and on 9 February it reported that they were in a very good condition. The end of that story was that on 6 July 1687 - the day after Halley wrote to Newton to say that Principia was being distributed - the Council decided that Halley's salary for the past year should be £50 together with a gratuity of £20, all to be paid in copies of the History of fishes.

It is commonly supposed that the long delay in confirming Halley's position and his salary is to be laid at Hooke's door, on account of his claim that Newton had stolen the idea of universal gravitation from him. It is unfortunate that the part of Hooke's diary that covers these eventful years is missing, for it probably contained fascinating entries.

6. CONCLUSION

My purpose in this article has been to present evidence that shows Halley to have been occupied with important and difficult family matters just at the time when he was making possibly his greatest contribution to natural knowledge. Halley was certainly a man of many parts, and one's admiration for his versatility only grows as one learns more about him: my earlier studies of his surveys on the Adriatic in 1703 revealed an unsuspected capability as a military engineer.26 The new evidence does not alter our knowledge of the evolution of the Principia but it does show Halley in a new light. We see him as involved in substantial property and legal matters, yet at the same time steadfastly continuing to support Principia in so many ways. With that in mind, we may perhaps read rather more than a passing comment into Newton's words in his letter of 20 June 1686:27

Philosophy is such an impertinently litigious Lady that a man had as good be engaged in Law suits as to have to do with her.

Would Halley have understood that Newton thought his disputes with Hooke

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were as vexatious as Halley's Chancery suits? My investigations are part of a wider study in which I am trying to uncover

Halley's family and other connections in the City of London, for I have the impression that it was through his City acquaintances that he was able to obtain patronage at the highest level when he wished to pursue some scientific project. It is also notable that, save for his brief time at the Chester Mint, he had no position with a definite income until he became Sadleirian professor in 1704.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Among the many who have set me on the right tracks for these studies, I particularly thank Dr Valerie Pearl, Professor David Williams, Mr David Yale, and Mr Harrison, Archivist of the Tower of London. A grant from the Royal Society has contributed to my expenses.

NOTES

1 I.B. Cohen, Introduction to Newton's Principia (Cambridge University Press, 1971). R.S. Westfall, Never at Rest (Cambridge University Press, 1980).

2 R.S. Westfall, Never at Rest, p.445. 3 Public Record Office: Whittington, bundle 222, no. 27: Robert Cleeter and Joane his

wife vs Sir John Buckworth, Richard Young and Edmond Halley, April 1686. 4 The references to the later actions are:

Reynardson, bundle 142, no. 57: Richard Young vs Robert and Joane Cleeter, Edmond Halley, 28 Dec. 1693.

Hamilton, bundle 181, no. 90: Edmond Halley and Richard Young vs Robert Cleeter and Joane his wife (answer only), 1694.

Hamilton, bundle 60, no. 53: Robert Cleeter and Joane his wife vs Edmond Halley and Richard Young, 1694. Those and many other biographical references, are to be found, sometimes in incom-

plete form, in E.F. MacPike, Correspondence and papers of Edmond Halley (Oxford University Press, 1939) and in many contributions of MacPike to Notes and Queries up to 1945.

5 Register of St Giles, Cripplegate. 6 Register of St James, Duke Place. 7 From 23 October 1682 to 21 February 1684, Halley made numerous observations of

the position of the Moon and other celestial phenomena from his house at Islington. Subsequently he seems to have made very few observations. Before his marriage he recorded observations from 1663 onwards but some at least cannot have been made

by him, and others cannot have been made at Islington. (R.G.O., 2/9, ff 12, 25, 26, 164-89, in the University Library Cambridge.)

8 Public Record Office: P.C.C., Admon. Book, 1684 (April), Humfridius Halley died

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abroad or on the high seas. Administration to brother Edmond. 9 Public Record Office: Bridges, bundle 367, no. 19: Edmond and Mary Halley, Anthony

and Dorothy English, Robert and Elizabeth Pearson vs Charles Tooke and Francis Bostock Fuller, 27 June 1683.

Reynardson, bundle 94, no. 124: Charles Tooke and George Tooke vs Francis Fuller

(answer), 26 Nov. 1684. 10 The circumstances are set out in Robert Cleeter and Joane his wife vs Sir John

Buckworth, Richard Young and Edmond Halley (see note 3). For the burials see the

registers of St Margaret's, Barking (Essex Record Office). 11 See note 3. Also P.C.C. Admon. Book, 1684 (June). Estate of Edmund Halley,

administration by Sir John Buckworth and Richard Young. After the father's disap- pearance Halley ceased regular observations at Islington (note 3).

12 The father was a yeoman warder of the Tower, as shown by the fact that one of the assets of his estate (see note 3) was two quarters' salary from the Tower. According to the Warder's Dividend Book the father enlisted on 14 September 1664. It seems that some of the warders' posts were sinecures. It was evidently the father who presented a petition pleading that Yeoman Warders should not be called on to serve in City Train Bands (Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1682 April 5).

13 Register of St George, Southwark. 14 This is the action of note 3. 15 Wills of: Humfrey I (grandfather), 1672. P.C.C. Reg. Eure 122: William (uncle), P.C.C.

Reg Dycer 146: Humfrey II (uncle): Chancery action Hamilton, bundle 171, no. 95, Humfrey Halley the Elder vs Susanna Sandwith, widdow, 1670.

16 See note 4. 17 A.N.L. Munby, 'Distribution of the first edition of Newton's Principia' Notes Rec. R.

Soc. Lond. 10, 28-39 (1952). 18 M.H. Black, The Cambridge University Press (Cambridge University Press, 1984). 19 Newton, Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 481. (Cambridge University Press, 1959). 20 See D.T. Whiteside, 'The prehistory of the Principia ' Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 45, 11-61

(1991). 21 See note 4. 22 See note 5. 23 Parish register of St Benet, Paul's Wharf. 24 See details in Cohen, Introduction to Newton's Principia (note 1). 25 See note 7. 26 A.H. Cook, 'Halley in Istria, 1703: navigator and military engineer', J. Nav. 37, 1-23

(1984). A.H. Cook, 'An English astronomer on the Adriatic. Edmond Halley's surveys of 1703 and the Imperial administration', Mitt. 6st. Staatsarch. 38, 123-162 (1985).

27 Newton, Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 437 (Cambridge University Press, 1959).

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Edmond Halley and Newton's 'Principia