In 1705, the honour of knighthood was conferred upon our author by Queen Anne, in consideration of his great merit. And in 1714, he was applied to by the House of Commons for his opinion upon a new method of discovering the longi tude at sea by signals, which bad been laid before them by Ditton and Whiston, in order to procure their encouragement; but the petition was thrown aside upon reading Newton's paper delivered to the committee.
The following year, 1715, Leibnitz, with the view of bringing the world more easily into the belief that Newton had taken the method of Fluxion from his Differential Method, attempted to foil his mathematical skill by the famous problem of the trajectories, which be, therefore, proposed to the English by way of chal. lenge ; but the solution of this, though the most difficult proposition he was able to devise, and what might pass for an ar duous affair to any other, yet was hardly any more than an amusement to Newton's penetrating genius : he received the pro blem at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, as he wasreturning from the Mint ; and, though extremely fatigued with business, yet he finished the solution before he went to bed.
As Leibnitz was Privy-Counsellor of Justice to the Elector of Hanover, so when that prince was raised to the British throne, Newton came more under the notice of the court : and it was for the immediate satisfaction of George the First, that be was prevailed on to put the last band to the dispute about the 'liven tiou of fiuxions. In this Court, Caroline, Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen con. sort to George the Second, happened to have a curiosity for philosophical in quiries • no sooner, therefore, was she informed of our author's attachment to the House of Hanover, than she engaged his conversation, which soon endeared him to her. Here site found, in every dif ficulty,that full satisfaction which she had in vain sought for elsewhere ; and she was often heard to declare, publicly, that she thought herself happy in coming into the world at a juncture of time which nut it in her power to converse with him. It was at this Princess's solicitations that he drew up an abstract of his Chronology; a; copy of which was at her request com municated, about 1718, to Signior Conti, a Venetian nobleman, then in England, upon a promise to keep it secret. But, notwithstanding this promise, the abbe, who while here had also affected to chew a particular friendship for Newton,though privately betraying him, as much as lay in his power, to Leibnitz, was no sooner got across the water, into France, than he dispersed copies of it, and procured an antiquary to translate it into French, as well as to write a confutation of it. This
being printed at Paris in 1725, was de livered as a present from the bookseller that printed it, to our author, that he might obtain, as was said, his consent to the publication ; but though he expressly refused such consent, yet the whole was published the same year. Hereupon Newton found it necessary to publish a defence of himself, which was inserted in the Philos. Trans. Thus, he who had so much alt his life long been studious to avoid disputes, was unavoidably all his lifetime, in a manner, involved in them ; nor did this last dispute even finish at his death, which happened the year follow ing. Newton's paper was republished in 1726, at Paris, in French, with a letter of the Abbe Conti, in answer to it ; and the same year some dissertations were print ed there by Father Souciet, against New ton's Chronological Index ; an answer to which was inserted, by Halley, in the Philos. Trans, No. 397.
Some time before this business, in his 80th year, our author was seized with an incontinence of urine, thought to proceed from the stone in the bladder, and deem ed to be incurable. However, the help of a strict regimen, and other precautions, which till then he never had occasion for, he procured considerable intervals of ease during the five remaining years of his life. Yet he was not free from some se vere paroxysms, which even forced out large drops of sweat that ran down his face. In these circumstances he was never observed to utter the least com. plaint, nor express the smallest impa tience ; and as soon as he had a moment's ease he would smile, and talk with his usual cheerfulness. He was now obliged to rely upon Mr. Conduit, who bad mar. tied his niece, for the discharge of his office in the Mint. Saturday morning, March 18, 1727, he read the newspapers, and discoursed a long time with Dr. Mead, his physician, having then the per fect use of all his senses and his under standing ; but that night he entirely lost them all, and not recovering them after wards, died the Monday following, March 20, in the 85th year of his age. His corpse lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and on the 28th was conveyed into West minster-Abbey, the pall being supported by the Lord Chancellor, the Dukes of Montrose and Roxburgh, and the Earls of Pembroke, Sussex, and Macclesfield. Me was interred near the entrance into the choir, on the left hand, where a stately monument is erected to his memory, with a most elegant inscription upon it.