THE System OF THE WORLD.
by Neal Stephenson
But first whom shall we sendIn search of this new world, whom shall we findSufficient? Who shall tempt with wandring feetThe dark unbottom"d infinite AbyssAnd through the palpable obscure find outHis uncouth way, or spread his aerie flightUpborn with indefatigable wingsOver the vast abrupt, ere he arriveThe happy Ile...MILTON, Paradise Lost Paradise Lost
The story thus far...
In Boston in October 1713, Daniel Waterhouse, sixty-seven years of age, the Founder and sole Fellow of a failing college, the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony of Technologickal Arts, has received a startling visit from the Alchemist Enoch Root, who has appeared on his doorstep brandishing a summons addressed to Daniel from Princess Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, thirty.
Two decades earlier, Daniel, along with his friend and colleague Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, knew Princess Caroline when she was a dest.i.tute orphan. Since then she has grown up as a ward of the King and Queen of Prussia in the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin, surrounded by books, artists, and Natural Philosophers, including Leibniz. She has married the Electoral Prince of Hanover, George Augustus, known popularly as "Young Hanover Brave" for his exploits in the recently concluded War of the Spanish Succession. He is reputed to be as handsome and dashing as Caroline is beautiful and brilliant.
The grandmother of George Augustus is Sophie of Hanover, still shrewd and vigorous at eighty-three. According to the Whigs-one of the two great factions in English politics-Sophie should be next in line to the English throne after the death of Queen Anne, who is forty-eight and in poor health. This would place Princess Caroline in direct line to become Princess of Wales and later Queen of England. The Whigs" bitter rivals, the Tories, while paying lip service to the Hanoverian succession, harbor many powerful dissidents, called Jacobites, who are determined that the next monarch should instead be James Stuart: a Catholic who has lived most of his life in France as a guest and puppet of the immensely powerful Sun King, Louis XIV.
England and an alliance of mostly Protestant countries have just finished fighting a quarter-century-long world war against France. The second half of it, known as the War of the Spanish Succession, has seen many battlefield victories for the Allies under the generalship of two brothers in arms: the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy. Nevertheless France has won the war, in large part by outmaneuvering her opponents politically. Consequently, a grandson of Louis XIV now sits on the throne of the Spanish Empire, which among other things is the source of most of the world"s gold and silver. If the English Jacobites succeed in placing James Stuart on the English throne, France"s victory will be total.
In antic.i.p.ation of the death of Queen Anne, Whiggish courtiers and politicians have been establishing contacts and forging alliances between London and Hanover. This has had the side-effect of throwing into high relief a long-simmering dispute between Sir Isaac Newton-the preeminent English scientist, the President of the Royal Society, and Master of the Royal Mint at the Tower of London-and Leibniz, a privy councilor and old friend of Sophie, and tutor to Princess Caroline. Ostensibly this conflict is about which of the two men first invented the calculus, but in truth it has deeper roots. Newton and Leibniz are both Christians, troubled that many of their fellow Natural Philosophers perceive a conflict between the mechanistic world-view of science and the tenets of their faith. Both men have developed theories to harmonize science and religion. Newton"s is based on the ancient proto-science of Alchemy and Leibniz"s is based on a theory of time, s.p.a.ce, and matter called Monadology. They are radically different and probably irreconcilable.
Princess Caroline wishes to head off any possible conflict between the world"s two greatest savants, and the political and religious complications that would ensue from it. She has asked Daniel, who is an old friend of both Newton and Leibniz, to journey back to England, leaving his young wife and their little boy in Boston, and mediate the dispute. Daniel, knowing Newton"s vindictiveness, sees this as foreordained to fail, but agrees to give it a try, largely because he is impoverished and the Princess has held out the incentive of a large life insurance policy.
Daniel departs from Boston on Minerva, Minerva, a Dutch East Indiaman (a heavily armed merchant ship). Detained along the New England coast by contrary winds, she falls under attack in Cape Cod Bay from the formidable pirate-fleet of Captain Edward Teach, a.k.a. Blackbeard, who somehow knows that Dr. Waterhouse is on board a Dutch East Indiaman (a heavily armed merchant ship). Detained along the New England coast by contrary winds, she falls under attack in Cape Cod Bay from the formidable pirate-fleet of Captain Edward Teach, a.k.a. Blackbeard, who somehow knows that Dr. Waterhouse is on board Minerva, Minerva, and demands that her Captain, Otto Van Hoek, hand him over. Captain Van Hoek, who loathes pirates even more than the typical merchant-captain, elects to fight it out, and bests Teach"s pirate fleet in a day-long engagement. and demands that her Captain, Otto Van Hoek, hand him over. Captain Van Hoek, who loathes pirates even more than the typical merchant-captain, elects to fight it out, and bests Teach"s pirate fleet in a day-long engagement.
Minerva crosses the Atlantic safely but is caught in a storm off the southwest corner of England and nearly cast away on the Isles of Scilly. Late in December she puts in at Plymouth for repairs. Dr. Waterhouse goes ash.o.r.e intending to travel to London by land. In Plymouth he encounters a family friend named Will Comstock. crosses the Atlantic safely but is caught in a storm off the southwest corner of England and nearly cast away on the Isles of Scilly. Late in December she puts in at Plymouth for repairs. Dr. Waterhouse goes ash.o.r.e intending to travel to London by land. In Plymouth he encounters a family friend named Will Comstock.
Will is the grandson of John Comstock, a Tory n.o.bleman who fought against Cromwell in the middle of the previous century and, after the Restoration, came back to England and helped found the Royal Society. Subsequently, John was disgraced and forced to retire from public life, partly through the machinations of his (much younger) distant cousin and bitter rival, Roger Comstock. Daniel served as a tutor in Natural Philosophy to one of the sons of John. This son later moved to Connecticut and established an estate there. Will was born and grew up on that estate but has lately moved back to England, where he has found a home in the West Country. He is a moderate Tory who has recently been created Earl of Lostwithiel. Queen Anne has recently been forced to create a large number of such t.i.tles in order to pack the House of Lords with Tories, the party that she currently favors.
Daniel has spent the twelve days of Christmas with Will"s family at his seat near Lostwithiel, and Will has talked him into making a small detour en route to London.
Book 6
Solomon"s Gold
Dartmoor.
15 JANUARY 1714.
In life there is nothing more foolish than inventing.-JAMES WATT "MEN HALF YOUR AGE and double your weight have been slain on these wastes by Extremity of Cold," said the Earl of Lostwithiel, Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and Rider of the Forest and Chase of Dartmoor, to one of his two fellow-travelers. and double your weight have been slain on these wastes by Extremity of Cold," said the Earl of Lostwithiel, Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and Rider of the Forest and Chase of Dartmoor, to one of his two fellow-travelers.
The wind had paused, as though Boreas had exhausted his lungs and was drawing in a new breath of air from somewhere above Iceland. So the young Earl was able to say this in matter-of-fact tones. "Mr. Newcomen and I are very glad of your company, but-"
The wind struck them all deaf, as though the three men were candle-flames to be blown out. They staggered, planted their downwind feet against the black, stony ground, and leaned into it. Lostwithiel shouted: "We"ll not think you discourteous if you return to my coach!" He nodded to a black carriage stopped along the track a short distance away, rocking on its French suspension. It had been artfully made to appear lighter than it was, and looked as if the only thing preventing it from tumbling end-over-end across the moor was the motley team of draught-horses harnessed to it, s.h.a.ggy manes standing out horizontally in the gale.
"I am astonished that you should call this an extremity of cold," answered the old man. "In Boston, as you know, this would pa.s.s without remark. I am garbed for Boston." He was shrouded in a rustic leather cape, which he parted in the front to reveal a lining pieced together from the pelts of many racc.o.o.ns. "After that pa.s.sage through the intestinal windings of the Gorge of Lyd, we are all in want of fresh air-especially, if I read the signs rightly, Mr. Newcomen."
That was all the leave Thomas Newcomen wanted. His face, which was as pale as the moon, bobbed once, which was as close as this Dartmouth blacksmith would ever come to a formal bow. Having thus taken his leave, he turned his broad back upon them and trudged quickly downwind. Soon he became hard to distinguish from the numerous upright boulders-which might be read as a comment on his physique, or on the gloominess of the day, or on the badness of Daniel"s eyesight.
"The Druids loved to set great stones on end," commented the Earl. "For what purpose, I cannot imagine."
"You have answered the question by asking it."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Dwelling as they did in this G.o.d-forsaken place, they did it so that men would come upon these standing stones two thousand years after they were dead, and know they had been here. The Duke of Marlborough, throwing up that famous Pile of Blenheim Palace, is no different."
The Earl of Lostwithiel felt it wise to let this pa.s.s without comment. He turned and kicked a path through some stiff withered gra.s.s to a strange up-cropping of lichen-covered stone. Following him, Daniel understood it as one corner of a ruined building. The ground yielded under their feet. It was spread thin over a shambles of tumbledown rafters and disintegrating peat-turves. Anyway the angle gave them shelter from the wind.
"Speaking now in my capacity as Lord Warden of the Stannaries, I welcome you to Dartmoor, Daniel Waterhouse, on behalf of the Lord of the Manor."
Daniel sighed. "If I"d been in London the last twenty years, keeping up with my Heraldic Arcana, and going to tea with the Bluemantle Pursuivant, I would know who the h.e.l.l that was. But as matters stand-"
"Dartmoor was created part of the Duchy of Cornwall in 1338, and as such became part of the possessions of the Prince of Wales-a t.i.tle created by King Edward I in-"
"So in a roundabout way, you are welcoming me on behalf of the Prince of Wales," Daniel said abruptly, in a bid to yank the Earl back before he rambled any deeper into the labyrinth of feudal hierarchy.
"And the Princess. Who, if the Hanovers come, shall be-"
"Princess Caroline of Ansbach. Yes. Her name keeps coming up. Did she send you to track me down in the streets of Plymouth?"
The Earl looked a little wounded. "I am the son of your old friend. I encountered you by luck. My surprise was genuine. The welcome given you by my wife and children was unaffected. If you doubt it, come to our house next next Christmas." Christmas."
"Then why do you go out of your way to bring up the Princess?"
"Only because I wish to be plain-spoken. Where you are going next it is all intrigue. There is a sickness of the mind that comes over those who bide too long in London, which causes otherwise rational men to put forced and absurd meanings on events that are accidental."
"I have observed that sickness in full flower," Daniel allowed, thinking of one man in particular.
"I do not wish you to think, six months from now, when you become aware of all this, "Aha, the Earl of Lostwithiel was nothing more than a cat"s paw for Caroline-who knows what other lies he may have told me!" "
"Very well. For you to disclose it now exhibits wisdom beyond your years."
"Some would call it timidity timidity originating in the disasters that befell my father, and his father." originating in the disasters that befell my father, and his father."
"I do not take that view of it," Daniel said curtly.
He was startled by bulk and motion to one side, and feared it was a standing-stone toppled by the wind; but it was only Thomas Newcomen, looking a good deal pinker. "G.o.d willing, that carriage-ride is the closest I shall ever come to a sea-voyage!" he declared.
"May the Lord so bless you," Daniel returned. "In the storms of the month past, we were pitched and tossed about so much that all hands were too sick to eat for days. I went from praying we would not not run aground, to praying that we run aground, to praying that we would would." Daniel paused to draw breath as the other two laughed. Newcomen had brought out a clay-pipe and tobacco-pouch, and Lostwithiel now did the same. The Earl clapped his hands to draw his coachman"s eye, and signalled that fire should be brought out.
Daniel declined the tobacco with a wave of his hand. "One day that Indian weed will kill more white men, than white men have killed Indians."
"But not today," Newcomen said.
If this fifty-year-old blacksmith seemed strangely blunt and direct in the presence of an Earl, it was because he and that Earl had been working together for a year, building something. "The balance of the voyage was easier, I trust, Dr. Waterhouse?"
"When the weather lifted, those horrid rocks were in sight. As we sailed past them, we said a prayer for Sir Cloudesley Shovell and the two thousand soldiers who died there coming home from the Spanish front. And seeing men at work on the sh.o.r.e, we took turns peering through a perspective-gla.s.s, and saw them combing the strand with rakes rakes."
The Earl nodded knowingly at this and so Daniel turned towards Newcomen, who looked curious-though, come to think of it, he always always looked curious when he was not in the middle of throwing up. "You see," Daniel continued, "many a ship has gone down near the Isles of Scilly laden with Pieces of Eight, and sometimes a great tempest will cause the sea to vomit up silver onto dry land." looked curious when he was not in the middle of throwing up. "You see," Daniel continued, "many a ship has gone down near the Isles of Scilly laden with Pieces of Eight, and sometimes a great tempest will cause the sea to vomit up silver onto dry land."
The unfortunate choice of verb caused the blacksmith to flinch. The Earl stepped in with a little jest: "That"s the only silver that will find its way onto English soil as long as the Mint over-pays for gold."
"I wish I had understood as much when I reached Plymouth!" Daniel said. "All I had in my purse was Pieces of Eight. Porters, drivers, innkeepers leapt after them like starving dogs-I fear I paid double or treble for everything everything at first." at first."
"What embarra.s.sed you in Plymouth inns, may enrich you here, a few miles north," said the Earl.
"It does not seem a propitious location," Daniel said. "The poor folk who lived here could not even keep their roof off the floor."
"No one lived here here-this was what the Old Men call a jews-house. It means that there was a lode nearby," said the Earl.
Newcomen added, "Over yonder by that little brook I saw the ruins of a trip-hammer, for crushing the shode." Having got his pipe lit, he thrust his free hand into a pocket and pulled out a black stone about the size of a bun. He let it roll into Daniel"s hand. It was heavy, and felt colder than the air. "Feel its weight, Dr. Waterhouse. That is black tin. Such was brought here, where we are standing, and melted in a peat-fire. White tin ran out the bottom into a box hewn from granite, and when it cooled, what came out was a block of the pure metal."
The Earl had his pipe blazing now too, which gave him a jovial, donnish affect, in spite of the fact that (1) he was all of twenty-three years old, and (2) he was wearing clothes that had gone out of fashion three hundred years ago, and furthermore was bedizened with diverse strange ancient artifacts, viz. some heraldic badges, a tin peat-saw, and a tiny bavin of scrub-oak twigs. "This is where I enter into it, or rather my predecessors do," he remarked. "The block tin would be packed down the same sort of appalling road we just came up, to one of the four Stannary towns." The Earl paused to grope among the clanking array of fetishes dangling from chains round his neck, and finally came up with a crusty old chisel-pointed hammer which he waved menacingly in the air-and unlike most Earls, he looked as if he might have actually used a hammer for some genuine purpose during his life. "The a.s.sayer would remove a corner from each block, and test its purity. An archaic word for "corner" is "coign," whence we get, for example, "quoin"-"
Daniel nodded. "The wedge that gunners use, aboard ship, to elevate a cannon, is so called."
"This came to be known as quoinage quoinage. And thence, our queer English word "coin," which bears no relation to any French or Latin words, or German. Our Continental friends say, loosely translated, "a piece of money," but we English-"
"Stop."
"Is my discourse annoying to you, Dr. Waterhouse?"
"Only insofar as I like like you, Will, and have liked you since I met you as a lad. You have always seemed of a level head. But I fear you are going the way of Alchemists and Autodidacts now. You were about to declare that English money is you, Will, and have liked you since I met you as a lad. You have always seemed of a level head. But I fear you are going the way of Alchemists and Autodidacts now. You were about to declare that English money is different, different, and that its difference inheres in the purity of the metal, and is signified in the very word "coin." But I a.s.sure you that Frenchmen and Germans know what money is. And to think otherwise is to let Toryism overcome sound judgment." and that its difference inheres in the purity of the metal, and is signified in the very word "coin." But I a.s.sure you that Frenchmen and Germans know what money is. And to think otherwise is to let Toryism overcome sound judgment."
"When you put it that way, it does sound a bit silly," the Earl said, cheerfully enough. Then he mused, "Perhaps that is why I have felt it necessary to make this journey with a blacksmith on one hand, and a sixty-seven-year-old Doctor on the other-to lend some gravity to the proposal."
By gestures so subtle and tasteful that they were almost subliminal, the Earl led them to understand that it was time they were underway. They returned to the coach, though the Earl lingered for a few moments on the running board to exchange civil words with a small posse of gentleman riders who had just come up out of the Gorge and recognized the arms painted on the carriage door.
For a quarter of an hour they trundled along in silence, the Earl gazing out an open window. The horizon was far away, smooth and gently varying except where it was shattered by peculiar hard shapes: protruding rocks, called Tors, shaped variously like schooners or Alchemists" furnaces or fortress-ramparts or mandibles of dead beasts.
"You put a stop to my discourse and quite rightly, Dr. Waterhouse. I was being glib," said the young Earl. "But there is nothing glib about this Dartmoor landscape, or would you disagree?"
"Plainly not."
"Then let the landscape say eloquently what I could not."
"What is it saying?"
By way of an answer, Will reached into a breast-pocket and pulled out a leaf of paper covered with writing. Angling this toward the window, he read from it. "The ancient tumuli, pagan barrows, Pendragon-battlegrounds, Druid-altars, Roman watch-towers, and the gouges in the earth wrought by the Old Men progressing west-to-east across the land, retracing the path of the Great Flood in their search for tin; all of it silently mocks London. It says that before there were Whigs and Tories, before Roundheads and Cavaliers, Catholics and Protestants-nay, before Normans, Angles, and Saxons, long before Julius Caesar came to this island, there existed this commerce, a deep subterranean flow, a chthonic pulse of metal through primeval veins that grew like roots in the earth before Adam. We are only fleas gorging our petty appet.i.tes on what courses through the narrowest and most superficial capillaries." He looked up.
"Who wrote that?" Daniel asked.
"I did," said Will Comstock.
Crockern Tor LATER THAT DAY.
SO MANY BOULDERS PROTRUDED through the moth-eaten tarp of dirt stretched over this land, that they had to stop and alight from the carriage, which had become more trouble than it was worth. They must either walk, or ride on arguably domesticated Dartmoor ponies. Newcomen walked. Daniel elected to ride. He was ready to change his mind if the pony turned out to be as ill-tempered as it looked. The ground underfoot was a wildly treacherous composite of boulders, and gra.s.s-tufts as soft as goose-down pillows. The pony"s attention was so consumed by deciding, from moment to moment, where it should place all four of its hooves, that it seemed to forget there was an old man on its back. The track ran north parallel to a small water-course below and to their left. It was only visible about a third of the time, but helpfully marked out by a breadcrumb-trail of steaming horse-patties left by those who had gone before them. through the moth-eaten tarp of dirt stretched over this land, that they had to stop and alight from the carriage, which had become more trouble than it was worth. They must either walk, or ride on arguably domesticated Dartmoor ponies. Newcomen walked. Daniel elected to ride. He was ready to change his mind if the pony turned out to be as ill-tempered as it looked. The ground underfoot was a wildly treacherous composite of boulders, and gra.s.s-tufts as soft as goose-down pillows. The pony"s attention was so consumed by deciding, from moment to moment, where it should place all four of its hooves, that it seemed to forget there was an old man on its back. The track ran north parallel to a small water-course below and to their left. It was only visible about a third of the time, but helpfully marked out by a breadcrumb-trail of steaming horse-patties left by those who had gone before them.
The stone walls that rambled over this land were so old that they were shot through with holes where stones had fallen out, and their tops, far from running straight and level, leaped and faltered. He would phant"sy he was in an abandoned country if it weren"t for the little pellets of sheep dung rolling away under Newcomen"s footsteps and crunching beneath the soles of his boots. On certain hilltops grew spruce forests, as fine and dense and soft-looking as the pelts of Arctic mammals. When the wind gusted through these, a sound issued from them that was like icy water hurrying over sharp stones. But most of the land was covered with heather, gone scab-colored for the winter. There the wind was silent, except for the raucous buller that it made as it banged around in the porches of Daniel"s ears like a drunk burglar.
Of a spa.r.s.e line of Tors stretching north over the horizon, Crockern was the smallest, humblest, and most convenient to the main road-which was probably why it had been chosen. It looked not so much like a Tor as like the stump and the crumbs left behind after a proper Tor had been chopped down and hauled away. They broke out onto the top of the moor and saw it above them. The men and horses huddling in its lee enabled them to judge its size and distance: farther away and higher up-hill than they had hoped, as was the case with all hard-to-reach destinations. It felt as though they had toiled for hours, and got nowhere, but when Daniel turned around and looked back at the way they had come, its many long meanders, which he had hardly noticed at the time, were all compressed so that they looked like the fingers of two interlaced fists.
The Tors were out-croppings of layered rocks of the kind that Leibniz thought were built up in riverbeds. Wind had eaten out soft layers to make them flattened lozenges piled atop each other in teetering stacks that leaned together for support-like piles of time-rounded books made in a library by a scholar who was trying to find something. Remnants of fallen ones were scattered down-hill for some distance, half-sunk into the ground at crazy angles, like three-volume treatises hurled into the ground in disgust. The wind only became stronger as they went up; small brown birds flapped their wings as hard as they could and yet fell behind this invisible currency in the air, so that they moved slowly backwards past Daniel.
Daniel estimated that two hundred and fifty gentlemen had answered the Earl"s summons, and gathered in the lee of the Tor. But in this place, that many men seemed like ten thousand. Few of them had bothered to dismount. For whatever sort of folk their forebears might have been, these truly were modern gentlemen, and they were as out of their rightful place, here, as Daniel was. The only man who seemed at home was the blacksmith, Thomas Newcomen, who looked like a chip off the old Tor as he stood to the side, broad shoulders an umbrella against the wind, scabby hands in pockets. Daniel saw him now for what he was, a Dwarf out of some Saxon ring-saga.
Between Stones and Wind this Tor ought by right to be dominated by elements of Earth and Air, if he were disposed to think like an Alchemist; but to him it seemed more a watery place. The wind sucked heat from his body as swiftly as snow-melt. The air (compared to the miasmas of cities) had a clarity and cleanliness, and the landscape a washed, lapidary quality, that made him feel as if he were standing on the bottom of a clear New England river at the moment when the ice broke up in the spring. So Water it was; but the presence of Thomas Newcomen spoke of Fire as well, for a Dwarf was never far from his Forge.
"Do not mistake me, I would fain be of service to the Proprietors of the Engine for Raising Water by Fire," Daniel had insisted, on the twelfth day of Christmas, after Newcomen had stoked the boiler, and the Engine he had wrought, sucking and hissing like a dragon, had begun to pump water up out of Lostwithiel"s mill-pond, and into a cistern on the roof of his house. "But I do not have money."
"Consider that stop-c.o.c.k by which Mr. Newcomen brings the machine to life," the Earl had said, pointing to a hand-forged valve-wheel mounted on a pipe. "Does that stop-c.o.c.k make steam?"
"Of course not. Steam is generated in the boiler."
"The trade of this country is a boiler that raises all the steam-which is to say, all the capital-we require. What is wanted is a valve," the Earl had said, "a means of conducting some of that capital into an engine where it may do something useful."
THE JUMBLE OF SHRUGGED-OFF slabs afforded natural benches, podia, lecterns, and balconies that served the tin-men as well as the same furnishings in a proper meeting-house. The Court of Stannary was convened there, as it had been for half a millennium, by reading certain decrees of King Edward I. Immediately the most senior of the gentleman of this Tin Parliament stepped forward and proposed that they adjourn, without delay, to a certain nearby Inn, the Saracen"s Head, where (Daniel inferred) refreshments were to be had. This was proposed without the least suspicion that it would be refused. "Twas like the moment at a wedding when the Priest polls the congregation for objections to the union. But the Earl of Lostwithiel astonished them all by refusing. slabs afforded natural benches, podia, lecterns, and balconies that served the tin-men as well as the same furnishings in a proper meeting-house. The Court of Stannary was convened there, as it had been for half a millennium, by reading certain decrees of King Edward I. Immediately the most senior of the gentleman of this Tin Parliament stepped forward and proposed that they adjourn, without delay, to a certain nearby Inn, the Saracen"s Head, where (Daniel inferred) refreshments were to be had. This was proposed without the least suspicion that it would be refused. "Twas like the moment at a wedding when the Priest polls the congregation for objections to the union. But the Earl of Lostwithiel astonished them all by refusing.
He had been seated on a mossy bench of stone. Now he clambered up onto it and delivered the following remarks.
"His Majesty King Edward I decreed that this Court meet in this place, and it has been phant"sied ever since that he did simply thrust the royal finger at a Map, indicating a place equidistant from the four Stannary Towns that surround the Moor, and never suspecting that by so doing he was choosing one of the most remote and horrible places in Britain. And so it is customary to adjourn to the comforts of Tavistock, on the supposition that the King of yore would never have intended for his gentlemen to hold their deliberations in a place like this. But I give King Edward I more credit. I daresay that he had a suspicion of Courts and Parliaments and that he wanted his Tin-men to spend their days in producing metal and not in carrying on tedious disputes, and perhaps forming Cabals. So he chose this place by design, to shorten our deliberations. I say that we ought to remain here, and profit from the King"s wisdom. For the tin and copper trades have fallen on hard times, the mines are flooded, and we have no real business to transact, other than what we gin up. I mean to gin some up now, and to go about it directly.
"My grandfather was John Comstock, the Earl of Epsom, and the scion of that branch of our ancient line, known vulgarly as the Silver Comstocks. As you know he came to ruin, and my father, Charles, fared little better, and even had to leave over the Earldom and immigrate to America when James I was overthrown. I make no bones about my ancestors.
"But even those of you who suppose that we are Jacobites (which we are not) and call us inveterate Tories (which we are) and who say that Queen Anne made me an Earl, only to pack the House of Lords with Tories when she needed to break Marlborough"s power (which may be true)-I say, even those among you who think nothing of me and my line, except what is deprecating and false, must know of the Royal Society. And if you think well of that Society and its works-as every sapient gentleman must-you may not take it amiss, if I remind you of the old connexions between that Society and my grandfather. John Comstock, though wedded to many of the old ways, was also a forward-thinking Natural Philosopher, who introduced the manufacture of gunpowder to England, and whose great distinction it was to serve as the first President of the Royal Society. During the Plague Year he succoured them as well, by offering them refuge on his estate at Epsom, where discoveries too many to list were made by John Wilkins, by the late Robert Hooke, and by him who stands at my right hand: Dr. Daniel Waterhouse, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Chancellor of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony Inst.i.tute of Technologickal Arts. Dr. Waterhouse has very recently re-crossed the Atlantic and is even now on his way to London to confer with Sir Isaac Newton..."
The mention of Daniel"s name caused a spa.r.s.e ripple of curiosity to propagate through the company of cold, irritable Gentlemen. The mention of Isaac"s created a sensation. Daniel suspected this had less to do with Isaac"s invention of the calculus than with the fact that he was running the Mint. The suspicion was confirmed by the next words of William Comstock, Earl of Lostwithiel: "It has been years since silver coins were to be seen in the market-places of this land. As many as are minted are taken to the furnaces of the money-goldsmiths and made over into bullion and sent into the East. Golden guineas are the currency of England now; but that is too great a denomination for common folk to use in their dealings. Smaller coins are wanted. Will they be minted of copper? Or of tin?"
"Copper," shouted a few voices, but they were immediately drowned out by hundreds shouting, "Tin!"
"Never mind, never mind, "tis no concern of ours, for our mines will not produce!" proclaimed the Earl. "Else, we would have never so much to talk about. To the Saracen"s Head we should adjourn, so as not to starve or freeze during our deliberations. But as all of our mines are flooded with water, the copper, or the tin, for the next English coinage shall perforce be imported from abroad. "Twill be of no concern and no profit to us. The doings of this ancient Parliament shall remain a mere antiquarian curiosity; and so why not not convene for a few ticks of the clock on a freezing moor, and have done with it? convene for a few ticks of the clock on a freezing moor, and have done with it?