Newton's Death

Newton had now resided around 2 years at Kensington.

On Tuesday, February 28, 1727, he went to London to preside at a meeting of the Royal Society.

His attending the meeting, and in paying and receiving visits worsened his bladder disease.

He returned to Kensington on Saturday, March 4, Dr. Mead and Dr. Cheselden attended him and pronounced his disease to be the stone with no hopes of recovery.

On Wednesday March 15, he seemed a little better.

On Saturday morning, 18th, he read the newspapers and carried on a long conversation with Dr. Mead.

His senses and faculties were then strong and vigorous.

But at 6pm, he became insensible throughout the whole of Sunday until Monday, the 20th, when he died between 1-2am at 85 years old.

His body was placed in Westminster Abbey, with the state and ceremonial that usually attended the interment of the most distinguished.

In 1731, his relatives, the inheritors of his personal estate, erected a monument to his memory in the most conspicuous part of the Abbey, which had often been refused by the dean and chapter to the greatest of England’s nobility. During the same year a medal was struck at the Tower in his honour.

In 1755, a full-length statue of him, in white marble, admirably executed, by Roubiliac, at the expense of Dr. Robert Smith, was erected in the ante-chamber of Trinity College, Cambridge.

There is a painting executed in the glass of one of the windows of the same college, made pursuant to the will of Dr. Smith, who left five hundred pounds for that purpose,

Newton left a personal estate of about 32,000 pounds.

It was divided among his 4 nephews and 4 nieces of the half blood, the grand-children of his mother, by the Reverend Mr. Smith.

The family estates of Woolsthorpe and Sustern fell to John Newton, the heir-at-law, whose great grand-father was Sir Isaac’s uncle. Before his death he made an equitable distribution of his two other estates: the one in Berkshire to the sons and daughter of a brother of Mrs. Conduit; and the other, at Kensington, to Catharine, the only daughter of Mr. Conduit, and who afterward became Viscountess Lymington.

Mr. Conduit succeeded to the offices of the Mint, the duties of which he had discharged during the last two years of Sir Isaac’s life.

His works are found in the collection of Castilion, Berlin, 1744, 4to. 8 tom.; in Bishop Horsley’s Edition, London, 1779, 4to. 5 vol.; in the Biographia Brittannica, &c. Newton also published Bern. Varenii Geographia, &c., 1681, 8vo. There are, however, numerous manuscripts, letters, and other papers, which have never been given to the world: these are preserved, in various collections, namely, in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge; in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; in the library of Lord Macclesfield: and, lastly and chiefly, in the possession of the family of the Earl of Portsmouth, through the Viscountess Lymington.