J^d S. NO 35., Aug. 30. '56.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



163 



thing ? The letter is a plain proof that she had 

 left his house, her usual home, for country air 

 after the small-pox ; and I take it that she lived 

 with him from the time of her leaving school. 

 Now Conduitt informs us that his wife lived with 

 her uncle nearly twenty years, before and after 

 her marriage ; and, when * in town, the Conduitts 

 lived with Newton up to his death. Now twenty 

 from thirty leaves ten : there are, roughly, ten f 

 years of Catherine Barton's life to be accounted 

 for. From 1706 to 1715 we have about ten years. 

 In 1706, as Sir David Brewster found from the 

 Newton papers, the annuity trust was created by 

 which Halifax held 200/. a-year in trust for Miss 

 Barton : in 1706 also he made his first codicil in 

 her favour. He died in 1715. The rough period, 

 then, of which we must demand explanation, is of 

 that length which intervenes between an annuity 

 settled (by Halifax, I believe) and a bequest first 

 made, at the one end, and the death of Halifax at 

 the other. For Sir D. Brewster's very curious 

 reason to show that the annuity was bought by 

 Newton, a reason which puts little Kate, at six 

 years old, in possession of the key of Newton's 

 cupboard at Trinity College, — where we can only 

 hope she did not eat too much sugar, — see the 

 article in the North British Review, cited above. 



Add to this explanation of the ten years the 

 facts that Halifax's first codicil spoke of love 

 and affection, but that the codicil of 1712 spoke 

 of the sincere love he had long had for her person, 

 and the Measure and happiness he had had in her 

 conversation. Remember also the statement pub- 

 licly made in the Life of Halifax, written by a 

 strong partisan, that Catherine Barton had been 

 to Halifax the " superintendent of his domestic 

 affairs," for which, though a " woman of strict 

 honour and virtue," she had had passed upon her 

 a "judgment which she no ways merited : " a 

 statement never contradicted, though made public 

 at the time when the death of Halifax must have 

 turned all men's eyes upon the facts of his life. 



* Conduitt was, from and after his marriage, an officer 

 of the Mint, as well as a member of Parliament. His 

 usual residence must have been in London. That he had 

 a country house, and sometimes occupied it, serves Sir D. 

 Brewster (ii. 279.) with a pretext for cutting off some of 

 the twenty years from the end of Newton's life. He pre- 

 sumes that Mrs. Conduitt lived six years of her uncle's 

 life with her husband, her uncle not living with them. 

 It is not likely that she and her husband left their uncle 

 in his extreme old age, and there is no evidence of it. 



t In my former paper I supposed it possible the con - 

 nexion might have begun in 1700. With Conduitt's 

 twenty years before me, 1 ought not to have done this. 

 I was also not aware that Halifax's first wife, the Coun- 

 tess Dowager of Manchester, only died in 1698. This 

 lady was the daughter of Sir Christopher Telverton, Bart. 

 Her first husband, to whom she bore nine children, died 

 in 1682 : she was married to Charles Montague (who was 

 probably ten years younger than herself) a short time 

 before the Kevolutioa. 



Read these circumstances, and the others brought 

 forward in my former paper, by the light of New- 

 ton's statement that circumstances relating him to 

 Halifax's family were, over and above his per- 

 sonal concern, reasons for keeping the house till 

 the funeral — and more than the strong suspicion 

 of an unacknowledged marriage must, I think, 

 result. I say unacknowledged, as distinct from 

 private : known to the circle in which the parties 

 lived, but not proclaimed to the world. 



One thing however is clear. If Catherine Bar- 

 ton did live with Lord Halifax, it must be to her 

 that Newton's allusion is made. And if to her, 

 then to her as a wife, not as a mistress. It is 

 utterly incredible, even on the supposition of a 

 connivance at her dishonour, that Newton should 

 have gravely propounded his relationship to his 

 friend's mistress as a reason for secluding himself 

 till after the funeral. It might in such a case have 

 been one of the reasons for his course of conduct, 

 but it never would have been an assigned second 

 reason, while he had so good and so sufficient a 

 first reason to allege. The alternative, then, to 

 which other circumstances reduced the question, 

 is destroyed. If Newton's niece lived with Lord 

 Halifax, it was as his wife. 



Sir D. Brewster's work is one which merits the 

 gratitude of all who take interest in Newton. 

 And sincere thanks are due to Lord Portsmouth 

 for having intrusted the papers to the biographer. 

 But I, for one, cannot help hoping that yet further 

 examination of them will be permitted. 



A. De Morgan. 



August 15, 1856. 



Remark on Junius. — The following remai'k on 

 Junius is cited by a correspondent in " N. & Q." 

 (2°'' S. I. 288.), and is attributed apparently to 

 Archbishop Whately : 



" There are many leading articles in the newspapers 

 and other periodicals of this day, as spirited and as viru- 

 lent as Junius, and the authorship of which few know or 

 care to inquire about. And if tlie authorship of Junius 

 had been known at the time, or shortly after, the whole 

 matter would probably have been totally lost sight of for 

 more than half a century past. But men love guessing at 

 a riddle. It is not the value of a fox, but the difliculty of 

 the chase, that makes men eager fox-hunters." 



This explanation of the curiosity about the 

 author of the Letters of Junius seems to me far 

 from satisfactory. It is indeed certain that if the 

 authorship of these letters had been known at or 

 near the time of "their publication, no efforts for 

 its discovery would have been requisite.^ But can 

 it be said that the curiosity existed simply be- 

 cause the authorship was unknown ? AVhere are 

 we to find the leading articles in newspapers and 

 other periodicals of the day " as spirited and as 



