1705. He was M.P. for Whitchurch 1715-34, after which he was elected for Southampton. He was Master of the Mint 1727-37. He succeeded Sir Isaac Newton, but previously to the death of Newton he relieved him of his most onerous duties for some years. He married Mrs. Catherine Barton, Newton’s niece, on 20th August, 1717.
“His only daughter married Viscount Lymington, son of the first Earl of Portsmouth, which accounts for the fact that Newton’s MSS., etc., are in the possession of the Portsmouth family; also the magnificent portrait of Newton by Kneller.
“Conduitt wrote, in 1730, Observations on the Present State of our Gold and Silver Coins, which came into the possession of Dean Swift, and after remaining many years in MS. was published in 1774. Jevons praised the work very highly.
“Conduitt was buried in Westminster Abbey, close by Newton’s grave.
“There is a scandal connected with Mrs. Catherine Barton which biographers of Newton have generally agreed to ignore. She is known to have kept house for Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax (who died in May, 1715), and is generally spoken of as his mistress by the gossips of the day. Augustus de Morgan wrote a book on the subject, which was published after his death, and entitled, Newton, his Friend, and his Niece. 1885. In this De Morgan argued for the opinion which he had formed that Lord Halifax (who died May, 1715) married Mrs. Barton privately about April, 1706. He made out a fair case, but he could obtain no actual evidence, and when Mrs. Barton married Conduitt she was described as a spinster.”
Of his own bookplate, here reproduced, Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A., kindly writes to me:—
“I gave Hamilton an account of its origin, which he printed in the little book on members of the Society of Odd Volumes. The room represented was on the back first floor of the house in Caroline Street, Bedford Square, which had been built out for John Philip Kemble to accommodate his fine collection of plays, now in the library of the Duke of Devonshire. I used the room as my library during the six years I lived in the house, and a very pleasant room it was, looking out upon trees which occupied an open space between Caroline and Charlotte Streets. It, with other houses, was pulled down soon after I left in 1889, and the