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Thomas Paine
1737–1809 · 72 years Tier I
Failed at every trade in England, then wrote the revolution
His father cut whalebone stays for women's corsets in Thetford and put the boy to the trade at 13. Paine got out at 19 aboard the privateer King of Prussia. He set up as a master staymaker in Sandwich, married Mary Lambert in 1759, and lost her and the child in childbirth the following year. He taught school in London, joined the excise service, was dismissed in 1765 for certifying goods he had not inspected, argued his way back in, and was dismissed again in the spring of 1774. The tobacco shop he kept in Lewes failed. On April 14, 1774, he sold the contents of his house to stay out of debtors' prison, and seven weeks later he and his second wife formally separated. He was 37.
Everything he wrote was an argument, and the arguments were expensive. England convicted him of seditious libel in absentia in 1792 over Rights of Man. France elected him to the National Convention for Pas-de-Calais though he could not speak the language, then jailed him for insisting that Louis XVI be exiled rather than killed. Agrarian Justice, in 1797, proposed a guaranteed minimum income paid for by a tax on inherited land. The pamphlets and the revolutions they served are BriefHistory's territory. This page follows him through the parts nobody quotes.
The most widely read political writer in the English-speaking world spent 1787 trying to raise money for a bridge. He had designed a single-span iron arch to cross the Schuylkill at Philadelphia, found no backers, carried the scheme to Europe looking for them, and took out a British patent on it. He also built a smokeless candle and worked with John Fitch on steam engines. The politics went the way of the engineering. Congress pushed him off the Committee for Foreign Affairs in 1779 after he alluded in print to the secret negotiations with France. In 1796 he published an open letter calling George Washington an incompetent general and a hypocrite. In Paris he was one of three deputies who voted against the constitution of 1795 because it abolished universal suffrage. He was right, alone and broke.
The Quakers would not take his body, so he was buried under a walnut tree on the New Rochelle farm New York had given him. In 1819 the radical journalist William Cobbett dug up the bones and shipped them to England for a hero's reburial that never happened. They were still among Cobbett's effects when he died 15 years later, and then they were lost. People have claimed the skull, and the right hand. Nothing is confirmed. The words did better. Monuments went up in Paris in 1948, Morristown in 1950 and Thetford in 1964, Thomas Edison called him one of the greatest of all Americans, and a 2002 BBC poll of the greatest Britons put him 34th.
Lifespan
Thomas Paine's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
The Case of the Officers of Excise
book
His first political writing — he spent a London winter handing out the 4,000 copies 1772 -
Common Sense
book
Published in Philadelphia on January 10 and signed only by an Englishman 1776 -
The American Crisis
book
Sixteen numbered essays written across the length of the war 1776 -
Rights of Man
book
His answer to Edmund Burke, and the reason England tried him for sedition 1791 -
The Age of Reason
book
A deist attack on revealed religion, the first part finished just before his arrest 1794 -
Agrarian Justice
book
Argued for a guaranteed minimum income funded by a tax on inherited land 1797
Life in brief
with age at each point- September 27, 1759 aged 22 Marries Mary Lambert at Sandwich She died in childbirth the next year, and so did the child.
- August 27, 1765 aged 28 Dismissed from the excise service He had certified goods he never inspected. He was reinstated the following July.
- 1772 aged ~35 Publishes The Case of the Officers of Excise and lobbies Parliament for better pay
- April 14, 1774 aged 37 Sells his household goods to escape debtors' prison He separated from Elizabeth Ollive seven weeks later and left for London.
- March 1775 aged 38 Becomes editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine
- 1787 aged ~50 Proposes a single-span iron bridge over the Schuylkill and cannot raise the money He carried the design to Europe and eventually patented it in Britain.
- September 1792 aged 55 Elected to the French National Convention for Pas-de-Calais He did not speak French.
- December 28, 1793 aged 56 Arrested on Vadier's order and taken to Luxembourg Prison James Monroe used his diplomatic standing to get him out in November 1794.
- 1819 aged ~82 William Cobbett digs up his bones and ships them to England They were lost after Cobbett died. Nobody knows where they went.
