The System of the World

New Palace Yard, Westminster

EVEN AS DANIEL’S PROCESSION has been assembling in the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey, in other buildings, palaces, and compounds around London other groups have been coalescing in more or less ancient and awesome buildings and converged on Westminster by boat, foot, or gilded carriage, and are now stacked outside of Star Chamber like so many battalions waiting to be summoned onto the Fields of Mars. It is no mean similitude. The Trial of the Pyx is so pompous precisely because it is such a dire and vicious clash. In its rudiments, this is a four-way knife-fight among the Sovereign (here represented by the Lords of the Council and the King’s Remembrancer), the Exchequer (which is playing host to the Trial), the Mint (today, synonymous with Sir Isaac Newton), and a medieval guild called the Company of Goldsmiths. In effect, what they are all here to do is to construct an airtight legal case against Sir Isaac, and find him guilty beyond doubt of Treason, in the form of embezzling from the Royal Mint, so that he may be punished straightaway and with no thought of any appeal. The penalties might range from ?ternal shame and obloquy on up to loss of the right hand (the traditional fate of fraudulent coiners) or even to the same treatment that Jack Shaftoe is about to receive at Tyburn. The challengers are the Goldsmiths, here represented by a jury of chaps in suitably medieval-looking garb, flashy with cloth-of-gold. They are Prosecutors, Mercenaries, and Inquisitors all rolled in to one. The choice is cunningly made, for the Goldsmiths have a natural and long-standing suspicion of the Mint and its produce, which from time to time flares up to out-and-out hostility. Hostility has been the rule during Sir Isaac’s tenure. Isaac has found ways to reduce the profit that the Goldsmiths reap when they deliver bullion to the Mint to be coined, and they have retaliated by crafting new trial plates of such fineness that Isaac has been hard pressed to mint guineas pure enough. For the Goldsmiths, as well as others in the money trade, such as Mr. Threader, the rewards of bringing down Isaac shall be immense.

The Serjeant at Arms Attending the Great Seal comes out in to the yard and summons Daniel’s contingent. They troop into the Palace and enter presently into Star Chamber. Last time Daniel was in this place, he was tied to a chair and being tortured for sport by Jeffreys. Today the scene’s a bit different. The furniture has been removed or pushed to the walls. In the middle of the chamber, planks have been laid down to protect the floor, and bricks piled atop them to make a platform at about the height of a man’s midsection. Resting atop this is a small furnace, similar to the one in which Daniel melted his ring last night. Someone must have been up tending it since the wee hours, for it’s already heated through, cherry red, and ready to go.

They pass out into a side chamber. Marlborough’s here, seated at the high end of a table along with the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the new First Lord of the Treasury-Roger’s replacement-and other Lords of the Council. Seated in the middle of the table, facing the door, and flanked by clerks and aides, is a chap in a white judicial wig, a three-cornered baron’s hat, and black robes. This, Daniel reckons, would be the King’s Remembrancer: one of the most ancient positions in the Realm. He is the keeper of the Seal that is the sine qua non of the power of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in the King’s name he rides herd on the Exchequer in diverse ways-including presiding over Trials of the Pyx.

Such a Trial cannot even get underway without the necessaries that it has been Daniel’s honor to fetch from the Abbey vault. And so what occurs next, encrusted as it might be with protocol and ceremony, is ever so straightforward: Daniel and the other five Key-holders are summoned to the table. The King’s Remembrancer asks for the Indentures, the Weights, and the Plates. These are handed over, but not before Daniel and the others have sworn on stacks of Bibles that they are the genuine articles. One of the King’s Remembrancer’s Clarkes opens up the chest containing the trial plates. There are two of these, one of silver and one of gold: slabs of metal inscribed with great hairballs of cursive asserting just how fine and just how authentic they are, and pocked here and there with goldsmiths’ seals. The Clarke reads these aloud. Another contingent of blokes is summoned and sworn: these have come from his majesty the King’s Treasury at Westminster, whence they’ve fetched out a little chest, sealed shut with a lump of wax. The seal is that of the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor himself is hauled in, at the head of a jury of twelve Citizens, Mr. Threader among them. The Lord Mayor verifies the seal on the chest. It is opened and a die is removed from a velvet bed. The die is compared, by the Mayor and the Citizens, to the stamps on the trial plates, and all agree that the match is perfect. These are indeed the true plates made by the Goldsmiths as a challenge to Sir Isaac Newton; the Trial may proceed.

Similar rites attend the box of weights. This is lined in green velvet, with neat depressions to contain the individual weights: the largest, a full pint or so of brass, marked 500 shillings and much smaller ones for 1 shilling and 4 pence and one pence, amp;c., amp;c., and finally a set of ivory-handled tweezers for manipulating the tiniest of them.

“Summon the Goldsmiths,” intones the King’s Remembrancer. To Daniel and his coterie, he says, “You may stand over there,” and waves at an open space in the corner. Daniel leads the group over, and turns around to find the eyes of the Duke of Marlborough on him: a reminder-as if Daniel needed any-that this is it. The new System is facing its first test, and it’s doing so under the most adverse possible circumstances: a sick and possibly demented Alchemist is in charge of the Mint and a Vagabond has tampered with the Pyx and is now going to meet his Maker without having coughed up the evidence they want. And Roger’s no longer around to make it all better.