The Trial of the Pyx

NO TWO TRIALS of the Pyx are the same. Details vary depending on whose ox is being gored at the time, and who’s goring it. Anciently the Mayor and Citizens of London would stand by and witness the whole rite, which was the most reasonable thing in the world given that the City men had a greater stake in the soundness of the coinage than anyone else. It made for some crowded and riotous Trials, and so at some point a jury of twelve respected City men came to stand in for the whole Citizenry. They would take a hand in those parts of the Trial that did not require any special Guild expertise, and observe the Jury of Goldsmiths carrying out those that did, and when the assayers had rendered their verdict, they would go out into London and relate the good or bad news to their fellow-Citizens.

In recent centuries the presence of the City men has slowly dwindled, to the point where Sir Isaac Newton has felt moved to complain that Trials of the Pyx have become a shadowy rite conducted by a cabal or conspiracy of Goldsmiths, unobserved and unaccountable. It is safe to say the Goldsmiths are no more pleased by these remarks than by anything else Isaac has done during his tenure at the Mint. Still and all, the entire point of the exercise is to prove Isaac a traitorous fraud, and, if at all possible, to see his hand chopped off in New Palace Yard. All of which is less likely to come to pass if Isaac can make a credible case that the Trial is rigged by a shadowy Guild. So for today’s Trial the pendulum has swung back as far as it can without inviting the whole City. It is a full-dress, dual-Jury affair. The City’s represented not only by the Lord Mayor but also by a full jury of twelve Citizens, separate from and independent of the jury of Goldsmiths. And they’ll not just watch but-mostly through their chosen delegate, Mr. Threader-participate. Only after these dozen Citizens have been recognized and sworn and shunted off to their own corner is it time for the Principals to be brought in and the Trial to begin in earnest.

The King’s Remembrancer asks for the Pyx. Out goes the Serjeant at Arms. A minute later he’s back with the Earl of Lostwithiel in tow, and behind Lostwithiel are four more King’s Messengers carrying a palanquin on which rests the Pyx. This is set down before the table, and Lostwithiel avers that it really is the Pyx and that he fetched it in good order straight from the Tower, and no monkey business along the way.

The King’s Remembrancer then asks the Serjeant to summon the second Jury: that of the Goldsmiths. A minute later, the Twelve troop in, all a-gleam, and line up before him. They cannot take their eyes off the Pyx, at least not until the King’s Remembrancer speaks, as follows: “Do you swear that you shall well and truly, after your knowledge and discretion, make the assays of the monies of gold and silver that have been reposited in the Pyx, and truly report if the said monies be in weight and fineness according to the King’s standards of his Treasury, and also if the same monies be sufficient in allay, et cetera, according to the Covenant comprised in the Indenture thereof made between the King’s grace and the Master of his Mint, so help you God?”

“We do,” say the Jury of Goldsmiths.

Satisfied of that, the King’s Remembrancer asks for the Master of the Mint: the man, and the moment, everyone has been waiting for. All bodies and heads and eyes turn to follow the Serjeant out of the room, then remain motionless as his boot-steps recede through Star Chamber and the gallery beyond.

They wait, and wait, and wait, until every man jack in the room is quite certain that it really is taking longer than it ought to-much longer-something must be out of joint. A member of the City jury can be heard mumbling some kind of witticism. One of the goldsmiths says clearly, “Perhaps he’s at the hanging!” and another responds, “Perhaps he’s run off to France!” whereupon he is furiously shushed by no less than the Duke of Marlborough.

When all of that noise and bother die down, it is finally possible to hear people approaching Star Chamber-rather more people than the King’s Remembrancer asked for. The entourage, if that’s what it is, bates outside. The Serjeant comes in. On his arm is a young woman. They cross the floor of Star Chamber; her head turns to gaze curiously at the assayer’s furnace, whose red light shines on her, so that Daniel recognizes her as Catherine Barton.

She comes in to the chamber and is heralded by the Serjeant. Great is her fame, of course, and so the amount of ogling that now takes place is beyond all boundaries of dignity. It almost would have been better if she had showed up stark naked. “My lords,” she says, for with so many dignitaries in the room she daren’t speculate as to who is in charge, “Sir Isaac Newton is ill. I have sat by his bed this last week and I beseeched him not to answer your summons. He would not heed me, but gave orders that he was to be brought here this morning no matter what. He is very weak, and so, if it please my lords, I have arranged to bring him here in his sedan chair. With your permission, I’ll have him brought in thusly.”

“As his nurse, Miss Barton, is it your opinion that he is fit to understand what is going on around him, and to be tried?” asks the King’s Remembrancer.

“Oh, yes. He knows,” Miss Barton insists, “however, because he is so very weak, he requests that Dr. Daniel Waterhouse act as his spokesman.” And, having now fixed on the King’s Remembrancer as the boss, she steps forward and hands him a letter, presumably written in Isaac’s hand, saying as much.

Generally not one to seize the moment, Daniel acts all out of character now by striding in to the middle of the room while most eyes are still trying to pick him out in the crowd. “If Sir Isaac’s proposal is acceptable to my lords, then I shall be honoured to serve as his hand and voice.”

There is a certain amount of looking back and forth now, but this does not alter what is inside the Pyx, or what is written on the indenture, and so in the end it does not really matter. Suddenly, important heads are nodding all around the room. “It is so ordered,” says the King’s Remembrancer, not before reading the letter through twice. “You have the gratitude of the Council, Dr. Waterhouse. Er, shall we have Sir Isaac’s chair brought in, then?”

“There is no precedent for this, and so pray allow me to suggest one,” Daniel says. “We are soon to move in to the Star Chamber for the Assay, are we not? Then rather than move Sir Isaac twice, I suggest we make him comfortable straightaway in Star Chamber. He can hear the indenture being read from there.”

“So ordered!”

Miss Barton curtseys her way out and flits across Star Chamber, calling to Daniel with her eyes. Daniel excuses himself and backs out. Heads lean in and faces turn to line the doorway. Daniel is confronted by the black obelisk of Isaac’s sedan chair, suspended between two astonished-looking porters. Miss Barton is hissing directions: “In the corner! The corner! No, that one!” There is some almost comical turning about, but finally they understand what she wants: for the sedan’s door to face toward a corner of Star Chamber so that when the door is open Isaac, in his pitiful state, won’t be visible to the entire Chamber. Finally they get it set down the way she wants it. Daniel side-steps through a narrow gap between pole and wall, and backs in to the corner. He glances up one time to see all of those faces in the next room peering through the doorway at him. Then he undoes the latch on the sedan chair’s door and opens it. The first thing he sees is a hand, pale and still, gripping an ornate key. He opens the door farther, letting light shine in so that he can see Isaac sprawled against the wall of his black box, eyes open and mouth a-gape, perfectly still. Daniel need not check his pulse to be certain that what he is looking at, here, is the recently deceased corpse of Sir Isaac Newton, dead at age seventy-one of Newgate gaol-fever.


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