In 1662, a 19 year old Isaac Newton wrote a list of all the sins he believed that he’d committed ‘before and after Whitsunday of that year’. They included:
Making pies on Sunday night
Threatning my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over them.
Making a feather while on Thy day.
Denying that I made it.
Putting a pin in Iohn Keys hat on Thy day to pick him.
Striving to cheat with a brass halfe crowne.
Having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese.
Striking many
Wishing death and hoping it to some
Denying my chamberfellow of the knowledge of him that took him for a sot.
MORE: The Newton Project
(Pic: portrait of Isaac Newton by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1689)
Who here hasn’t made an aul pie of a sunday night, ha?
I assume that Newton listed the sins in some kind of order of importance.
Making a pie on a Sunday is obviously more sinful than threatening to set one’s parents on fire.
“Having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese” and yet he died a virgin.
NOt surprising – the state of him.
Did he know our Janet?
Says who?
Naughty,
and his spelling is kack
is it really a sin to deny your chamberfellow of the common knowledge that he is a sot? cos if i had to tell every gobsh1te I know what others thought of them i’d get nothing done..
How did he “make a feather”?
Was his interest in the law of gravity related to an ability at flying?
I, of course, do not ask out of any interest in making feathers myself, for that would clearly be sinful, at least on a Sunday.
Is it a bet or wager?
You know, ‘have a flutter’ etc?
Feathers were used as pens – it is possible that he converted a feather into a quill-pen on a Sunday.
“Striking many”
crikey.
Oh the humanity!
Maybe making a feather was slang for farting or some such vileness not to be done on Thy day?
He was particularly fond of defacing Thy day; he also contrived of the chimes, made a mousetrap, swam in a kimnel…
Cheezus
His spellins worse than mine