Isaac Newton died without a will, and his heirs held his alchemy and theology papers for 209 years before selling them for £9,000

Isaac Newton died on 31 March 1727, aged 84. He left no will and no instructions for his manuscripts, though he burned some papers in his last weeks. His estate was worth about £30,000, mostly stock and annuities. The relatives divided the money and agreed to release the papers to his half-niece and housekeeper, Catherine Conduitt, and her husband John, who succeeded Newton as Master of the Mint. Their daughter married John Wallop, Viscount Lymington, in 1740, and the papers stayed with the Earls of Portsmouth at Hurstbourne Park for nearly two centuries. In 1872 the fifth Earl gave the scientific papers to Cambridge University. A university committee took 16 years to sort them and sent back the alchemy and theology as of little value. In 1936 Gerard Wallop, Viscount Lymington, sold those papers at Sotheby's to pay death duties on his aunt's estate and the costs of his divorce. He also sold Hurstbourne Park. More than 300 lots raised just over £9,000. No institution bid. The economist John Maynard Keynes bought alchemy papers and left them to King's College, Cambridge, in 1946. The scholar Abraham Yahuda bought theology, partly with his wife's inheritance. His collection went to the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, now the National Library of Israel. In 2001 a single sheet sold for $18,000.