Name Catherine Barton Died 1739 | Role John Conduitt's wife | |
 | ||
Full Name Catherine Barton Relatives Robert Barton (father)
Hannah Smith (mother)
Isaac Newton (uncle) Spouse John Conduitt (m. 1717–1737) | ||
Catherine Barton
Catherine Barton (1679–1739) was Isaac Newton's half-niece, probable mistress of Charles Montagu and later, the wife of John Conduitt.
Contents
Early life
She was the second daughter of Robert Barton and his second wife, Hannah Smith, half-sister of Isaac Newton, and was baptized at Brigstock, Northampton on 25 November 1679.
She was remarked upon by several men to be beautiful, witty and clever. Sometime after her uncle Isaac moved to London to become Warden of the Mint in April 1696 she moved there to live with him. She was known as a brilliant conversationalist, and attracted the admiration of such famous figures as Jonathan Swift and Voltaire. Her uncle Isaac was also fond of her; an excerpt of an uncharacteristically warm letter from Newton survives, regarding her contraction of smallpox: "Pray let me know by your next how your face is and if your fevour be going. Perhaps warm milk from ye Cow may help to abate it. I am Your loving Unkle, Is. Newton."
Voltaire insinuated that Newton's preferment to the Royal Mint was the result of her alleged affair with Charles Montagu. However, although it is true that Isaac was appointed under the patronage of Charles Montagu, it is clear that Catherine Barton came up to London and met Montagu after the appointment, not before.
Relationship to Charles Montagu
Following the death of Charles Montagu's wife in 1698, Barton became his housekeeper and probably his mistress. There was much contemporary gossip on the subject, and thinly disguised accusations appeared in print. Delariviere Manley's Memoirs of 1710 featured a character called Bartica who was widely taken to represent Barton.
Montagu, by then Earl of Halifax, died of an inflammation of the lungs in May 1715.
His will contained two codicils: the first dated 12 April 1706, left the sum of £3000 and all his jewels to Barton; a second dated 1 February 1713 left her an additional £5000 plus his interest in the rangership of Bushey Park and his manor of Apscourt in Surrey to pay for the repairs to Bushey Lodge. On 30 August, however, he revokes the first codicil and begs his executor, his nephew George Montagu, not to make a dispute over her legacies. Montagu wrote that these bequests were "as a token of the sincere love, affection and esteem, I have long had for her person, and as a small recompense for the pleasure and happiness I have had in her conversation."
Marriage
Barton then returned to live with her uncle at his home in St Martin's Street. On 9 July 1717 she became engaged to marry John Conduitt who had only set foot in England a few weeks earlier in May of that year. On 23 August they were issued a licence to marry at St Paul's Covent Garden, but actually married three days later at St Martin in the Fields. The couple had one daughter, Catherine, born in 1721.
Later life
The couple lived at Cranbury Park, near Winchester; towards the end of his life, Sir Isaac Newton took up residence at Cranbury with his niece and her husband until his death in 1727.
Her husband John Conduitt died on 23 May 1737; she died in 1739 and was buried with her uncle and husband in Westminster Abbey. Their only daughter and heir Catherine married John Wallop, Viscount Lymington, the eldest son of the first Earl of Portsmouth, and their son, John Wallop, succeeded as second Earl of Portsmouth.
In fiction
A fictional Barton has a small role in Neal Stephenson's novel The System of the World, the final installment in Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.
She also has a role in Philip Kerr's novel Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton.