Catalogue Entry: THEM00066
Treatise on Revelation
Custodial History
Bought by Maggs Brothers at the Sotheby sale for £44 and offered to Keynes on approval on 4 August 1936 for the sale price plus 20%. Subsequently exchanged, together with SL236 (now Yahuda Var. 1 Ms. 5) and SL263 (now Babson Ms. 434) for SL33 (now Keynes Ms. 30) and SL72 (now Keynes Ms. 44). See Spargo, '1936 sale', 130-31.
Sotheby Lot
SL258Contents
Not by Newton and certainly not in his hand (though described as 'autograph' in the Sotheby catalogue): according to Westfall ('Newton's Theological Manuscripts', 142) it is in that of John Wickins, his Cambridge room-mate from some time after 1663 to 1683, in which case the document presumably dates from that period (but it may of course be a copy of an older work). The piece is strongly anti-Roman Catholic in tone and reads the prophecy as foretelling the downfall of the Papacy in c. 60 years.
[1] qui tenebat de medio fit & non intelligimus Antichristum appropinquant. Saint Ierom: on Alaricus the Goths taking Rome Anno 410.
