Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was an English-born political writer and revolutionary from Thetford in Norfolk. He reached Philadelphia in 1774 with Franklin's recommendation. Common Sense (January 1776), signed only 'by an Englishman', blamed George III and argued for separation plainly.

His American Crisis papers, opening 'These are the times that try men's souls', were read to Washington's troops. Back in England, his Rights of Man (1791) answered Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution; threatened with arrest, he fled to France in September 1792 and was convicted of seditious libel in absentia.

Elected to the National Convention despite no French, he was jailed by the Montagnards in December 1793 until James Monroe freed him in November 1794. His deist Age of Reason made him notorious, and in America after 1802 he was widely shunned. He died in New York on 8 June 1809; only six mourners attended his funeral.