Thomas
Paine
Thomas Paine was, and still is, hugely controversial. He was a
prolific writer and activist, involved personally in the American
War of Independence and the French Revolution. He was tried
and found guilty of sedition by the English and jailed in France
narrowly escaping the guillotine for defending the life of the
French King. His writing is still being studied today with lessons
still to learn from his observations.
He was a lowly Officer of Excise for six
years in Lewes just before his departure
to the American Colonies in 1774.Just a
few months later in America; he would
pen “Common Sense” the pamphlet
that inspired a nation to war.
How could this happen to anyone?
This is the story.
There was vagueness about the time
that Thomas Paine spent in Lewes.
Many said he was not born here,
so why make a fuss? It was against
this backdrop that a small research
team started in early 2008. . It was
an interesting mix; Dr Colin Brent,
an eminent local historian, Dr Seth
Gopin, an American art historian and
director of abroad studies for Rutgers
University of New Jersey, and myself
from the discipline of psychology at the
University of Sussex.
Seth’s question was, how did Paine
know so much when he wrote the
pamphlet ‘Common Sense’ that
incited the colonists to the War of
Independence just seventeen months
after leaving Lewes? My view was that
a developmental process seemed to be
missing.
Oldys wrote the first biography of
Paine in 1791 at the behest of the
Pitt government. The book was well
researched, but George Chalmers, the
real name of the author, never missed
an opportunity to defame Paine. And so
the mud stuck, and has remained stuck
in many minds for the last two hundred
years.
Thomas Paine wrote “The Case of
the Officers of Excise”, and William
Lee, proprietor of the Lewes Journal,
printed four thousand copies in Lewes.
But there was no original to hand, not
one left in Lewes. Eventually a scan of
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