Why Queen Anne knighted Isaac Newton in 1705

Queen Anne knighted Isaac Newton on 16 April 1705, during a royal visit to Trinity College, Cambridge, his old college. He is often called the first scientist to be knighted for his work, but historians have long suspected the honour owed as much to politics as to the Principia.

By 1705 Newton was 62 and a London public figure. He had left Cambridge to become Warden of the Royal Mint in 1696 and Master in 1699, steering the Mint through a difficult recoinage and pursuing counterfeiters with zeal. Since 1703 he had also been president of the Royal Society, re-elected every year until his death in 1727.

The traditional explanation for why Anne knighted him is party politics. Newton had sat in Parliament for Cambridge University in 1689 and again in 1701–02, and in 1705 he was campaigning to win the seat back; a knighthood from the Queen could only help. He never returned to the Commons.

A 2015 discovery added a second possible reason. In Mint papers at the National Archives in Kew, Oxford doctoral researcher Joseph Hone showed that sketches and notes in Newton’s hand covered Anne’s 1702 coronation medal, a design long credited to the court painter Sir Godfrey Kneller. It shows Anne as Pallas Athene striking down a double-headed monster, which scholars had read as domestic faction. Newton’s notes call it a symbol of “any Enemy with which Her Majesty hath or may have War”, which Hone takes to mean Louis XIV of France and the Old Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart.

The medal “signifies that her Majesty continues the scene of the last reign.” — Isaac Newton, notes on the design

Designing medals was normally a job for junior Mint staff. Hone suggests that Newton’s personal service to the new queen’s image may also have helped earn him the title Sir Isaac.