The Foots and The Poets, Derek Summers (ed.). London, Jarndyce, 2010, Paperback, 123 pages; ISBN 978-1-900718-75-2. 

Plato wanted poetry banned in his republic. Like many totalitarian reactionaries he saw poetry as essentially subversive. This book shows the relationship between poetry and three generations of a family which if not subversive were at the very least politically radical. 

The first subject is Isaac Foot, the son of a Plymouth carpenter who qualified as a solicitor and became the Liberal MP for Bodmin. An avid reader, he collected 70,000 books. He also admired the Civil War parliamentary Oliver Cromwell and his Latin Secretary, the blind poet John Milton. He founded the Cromwell Association and kept a commonplace book full of quotations from Milton. The book contains several of Milton’s works in poetry and prose although sadly not his poem in praise of the executed regicide Sir Henry Vane. In his biography of his father, written with Alison Highet, Michael records Isaac’s love of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Thomas Hardy and R.L. Stevenson. 

The youngest of Isaac’s children was the late Michael Foot MP for Plymouth Devonport and then Ebbw Vale, editor of Tribune and leader of the Labour Party in the 1980s. Michael converted from Liberalism to Socialism when he saw poverty and unemployment in Liverpool where he worked as a shipping clerk. Michael was not only the biographer of Aneurin Bevan but also studies of Byron and Jonathan Swift. 

Another source of inspiration was the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx’s cousin. Heine was not only a poet but also a political philosopher. In his On The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, published in 1834. He maintained that the German philosophical revolution, which culminated in the work of Hegel, was the prelude to a political democratic revolution. Included in the selection of Heine’s writings in the book is his poem / Don’t Believe In Heaven. ” I don’t believe in the devil,/ In Hell or its counterpart:/ I believe in your eyes only/And in your devilish heart.” There is also his celebration of a Luddite-style uprising by the weavers of Silesia.

Michael was also interested in more recent poets, Among them was Adrian Mitchell. When proposed for the position of Poet Laureate, he wrote a poem on why he wanted the monarchy abolished. Mitchell first read his poem To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies About Vietnam) at an anti-war rally in 1964 and revised it to include subsequent conflicts. Other modern poets who interested Michael included Tony Harrison, Derek Walcott and U. A. Fanthorpe, “Her poetry is one of the delights of the age,” said Michael. 

Michael had an interest in the radical essayist William Hazlitt and in the poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth’s sonnet to Milton and his sonnet to Toussaint L’Ouverture, the former slave who overthrew the rule of the French slave owners in Haiti, are included in the book. Wordsworth may seem a strange choice. He at first supported the French revolution, “But Europe at that time was filled with joy/France standing on the top of golden hours/And human nature seeming born again”, but later became reactionary. Some would call him a class traitor. 

The last Foot is Paul, Michael’s nephew, one of the more intelligent and attractive members of the Socialist Workers’ Party. He was another convert from Liberalism to Socialism, Socialism, not of the social-democratic, but of the Trotskyist kind. At public school he met Richard Ingrams, editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye, and wrote for it for several years. For 14 years he wrote for the Daily Mirror and later edited the SWP’s paper Socialist Worker. 

Paul’s hero was the romantic poet Percy Shelly, an atheist who was seen as a precursor of Socialism. Paul wrote two books on Shelly and a number of pamphlets including work on the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and the miners’ leader A. J. Cook. The book includes selections from Shelly’s Masque of Anarchy which was inspired by the events in St. Peter’s Field in Manchester. Thousands of radical reformers gathered to listen to Henry Hunt only to be cut down by the sabres of the yeomanry. It calls for resistance by the oppressed and exploited: “Shake your chains to earth like dew/Which in sleep had fallen on you/ Ye are many, they are few.” 

The book contains a useful biography of source books and further reading.

There are those who disparage poetry, who dismiss it a so much romantic waffle, but as this book shows it can excite and inspire the struggles which still need to be fought. 

The post BOOK REVIEW: The Foots and The Poets appeared first on Thomas Paine Historical Association.

Paine is well known as a writer. His Rights of Man is an incisive critique of monarchy and a passionate advocacy of republican democracy; his Age of Reason from a deist standpoint undermines religious orthodoxy. He is far less well known as a poet. This article seeks to place him in the tradition of English Radical Poetry and compare his work with some of his contemporaries and some of those who came after him. 

In 2005 the Freethought History Research Group and the Thomas Paine Society took the bold step of republishing Miscellaneous Poems Of That Noble of Nature, Thomas Paine, which had first been published by James Watson around 1840. This is a collection of 16 poems of various quality, they deal with subjects ranging from love to the death of General Wolf, and his troubled relationship with George Washington. His best is the Liberty Tree, a song to be sung to the tune of The Gods Of The Greeks. Paine writes : ” But hear o ye swains Ctis a tale most profane)/How all the tyrannical powers/King, Commons and Lords, are uniting amain/To cut down this guardian of ours/From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms/Through the land let the sound of it flee/Let the far and the near all unite with a cheer/ In defence of our Liberty Tree”.*This pamphlet can still be had from either organization at £2 plus postage.

If English Radical Poetry can be said to have a beginning it is in the work of John Milton ( 1608-1674 ). He was a strong supporter of Cromwell and the Commonwealth and Cromwell’s Latin Secretary of Foreign Tongues. Apart from being a poet he was also a pamphleteer. In 1649 he wrote The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, ” It is lawful”, wrote Milton, “for any who have the power, to call to account a tyrant, or wicked king, and after due conviction, to depose and put him to death…” In 1660 he wrote The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth. But the Establishment, fearing a revival of the revolutionary democratic ideas of the Levellers, had already decided to restore the Stuart monarchy. Milton withdrew from public life and went into hiding. He could have easily suffered the fate of Sir Henry Vane who was executed for regicide. 

In 1667 Paradise Lost was published. This epic poem was written ostensibly from an orthodox Anglican viewpoint but Blake and Shelly felt Milton showed great sympathy for the devil who was seen as an archetypal rebel. Shelly wrote, “Milton stands alone in the age which he illumined.” Blake created illustrations for Paradise Lost and wrote Milton: A Poem. 

William Blake ( 1757-1827 ) was an engraver and poet who was a friend of Shelly and Paine. It is said that it was he who alerted Paine that the authorities were seeking to arrest him on a charge of seditious libel. As it was, Paine was already en route to France having been elected a deputy to the National Convention. Unlike Paine, Blake was not an Enlightenment deist. He was a religious mystic influenced by Emmanuel Swedenborg. His views were not those of orthodox Christianity with its promise of heaven for the rich and hell for the sinful poor, but of a new millennium with sexual and racial equality and justice for all. “My business”, said Blake, “is to create Jerusalem.” In 1791 Blake wrote The French Revolution, A Poem in Seven Books. He is firmly on the side of the revolutionaries. In his Proverbs Of Hell, he wrote Prisons are built with stones of law, Brothels with Bricks of Religion, and “As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys”. Such views bring him near to the anti-clerical millenarian sects of the 17th century. For Blake, “The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction”. 

In the ranks of the tigers of wrath was Percy Shelly (1792-1822). Born into a Whig family, he was expected to inherit the family baronetcy. He was educated at Eton where he read Paine and in 1810 went to Oxford University. He was expelled in 1811 for writing The Necessity Of Atheism. “If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest.” This led to a falling out with his father, and an often impoverished and nomadic life. Shelly became friends with William Godwin whose Political Justice is a precursor of Anarchism. Shelley eventually eloped with Godwin’s daughter Mary. Unlike Godwin, Shelley involved himself with the working people around him. In Wales he would often go out at night and have long conversations with the reservoir workers who were forced to grow their own food by moonlight in order to live. 

In an England being rapidly changed by the industrial revolution, Shelly defined slavery thus: “Tis to let the ghost of Gold, Take from toil a thousand fold. More than e’er its substance could. In the tyrannies of old.” Freedom is, “food , clothes and fire and food for the trampled multitude.” He calls for words not deeds. He sent his poem, The Masque of Anarchy with its call to revolution, to his friend Leigh Hunt in 1819. But it was not published until 1831 amid growing demands for reform. Shelly died in a boating accident in Italy. 

Shelly influenced a whole generation of Chartist poets and Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx lectured on his Socialism. Among these poets was John Bedford Lena. Leno was born in Uxbridge in 1826 and came to work in London. He was a Chartist, having founded Chartist branches in Uxbridge and Windsor, and a member of the First International. He met Marx several times and was friends with Deptford’s Red Republican George Hamey. In 1848 he was batoned in the face by the police during demonstrations on Clerkenwell Green. 

When the Reform League to campaign for an extension of the male franchise was formed in 1865 he became a leading member. The League held some of the largest demonstrations, some of them ending in riots, the largest seen since Chartist times. The League qualified its demand for manhood suffrage with the term “registered and residential” thus excluding the unemployed and casual workers. After the Reform Act of 1867, the League’s leader Robert Applegrath literally sold out to the ruling class by taking Home Office bribes to mobilise the new enfranchised working class behind the Liberal Party. Leno became a Liberal election agent for the League’s former General Secretary, George Howell. 

In 1867 Leno and other Reform League members were met by the French revolutionary Gustave Cluseret. Cluseret offered to start a revolution employing the services of 2,000 Fenian Irishmen. Leno declined which was just as well because the next day there was a full report of the meeting in The Times. 

Leno was a prolific poet, The Woolwich Gazette called him the “poet of the poor”. Among his -best known works are King Labour, Judge Not A Man The Song Of The Spade and The Dreamer. Riddled with gout, he spent the last two years of his life in Uxbridge and died in 1894.

It is not known if William Morris (1834-1896) read either Milton or Paine, but his Kelmscott Press produced a magnificent edition of Shelley’s works and he admired John Leno. Morris was born into a prosperous middle class family and was originally destined for the church. His mother had visions of his becoming an archbishop. But after his education at Oxford University he opted for a career of creative design. A polymath he excelled at everything he did from stained glass windows and fabric and wallpaper design to poetry and painting. 

The threat of war brought him into politics and eventually he crossed what he called the river of fire and became a socialist. Peeved with the dictatorial way H. M. Hyndman conducted the affairs of the Social Democratic Federation, together with Eleanor Marx, Belfort Bax and others he broke away and formed the Socialist League becoming editor of its paper the Commonweal. 

For Morris the pioneer socialists, the few against the world today condemned as fools and dreamers would tomorrow be seen as the brave and wise. No mean poet, after the death of Lord Tennyson he was considered for the post of poet laureate. One wonders what he would have written about Queen Victoria, nicknamed by the radicals of the time Empress Brown. His best known socialist poem is the one he wrote for the funeral of Alfred Linnell who was killed during a Trafalgar Square demonstration. Its refrain of “Not one, not one, but thousands must they slay, but one and all if they would dusk the day” hurls defiance in the face of a murderous ruling class. There were many anarchists in the Socialist League and eventually they removed Morris from the editorship of Commonweal. He wrote his futuristic novel News From Nowhere, which gives a glimpse of what a socialistic society might be like and carried on working for a united socialist party in the Hammersmith Socialist Society until his death in 1896. 

What unites all of these poets and countless more are some common themes: opposition to priestcraft and kingcraft, unorthodoxy or event overt atheism, a desire to improve the lot of working people either by radical reform or revolution and visions of a new and better world based on liberty, equality and fraternity. 

The Freethought History Research Group, joint publisher of Paine’s poetry, continues this tradition and has recently published, Ca Ira: Poems to Shake the Walls of Church and State. It includes two poems by Terry Liddle, who is a Thomas Paine Society committee member. It can be had for £3.50 post free from the address above.

The post Paine’s Place In Radical English Poetry  appeared first on Thomas Paine Historical Association.

We thank Paul Myles for the transcript of this important letter, now in the British Library (BL ADD 58968 F 67 Account of Dover to Calais by J. Mason), from the government agent J. Mason, to J.B. Surges. an under secretary for foreign affairs, which demolishes the constantly repeated mantra of Paine having fled the country to escape arrest. It is clear from what Mason writes that Paine had agreed to travel to France following the arrival of an official representative from the municipality of Calais, the people of which had elected him to represent them in the French National Assembly, sent to invite and accompany him there. The text remains as written.

– R.W. Morrell

To James Bland Burges Esq 

etc. etc. etc. 

Whitehall 

to Dover by favor of the captain of the Kings Packet the Courier Sept 15th London 

I take the liberty of informing you that in the packet which brought me from Dover here, this morning, came Mr Thos Paine, the Great Patriot accompanied by a Mr Audibert , a [ municipal officer] of this place, who, by the accounts before I left Paris was sent to London to fetch him, a Mr Frost an Attorney, of Electioneering memory if I am mistaken not, accompanied them, and is going to Paris with them- They arrived at Dover at halt past ten, this morning, and, as Mr Audibert said were followed from London by a P. Chaise all the way, when they got to the inn the officers of the customs came and insisted on searching them, which, after some objections on their part, was submitted to, as force was threatened in case of refusal, the officers said they on information etc, which Mr Audibert wanted them to produce, but they did not, they were kept an hour and 5 minutes in the room, with the door locked a great part of the time, 

Mr Frost (I heard him) said he wanted to go to the recugury (toilet) and they refused to let him go. They examined their papers very strictly and opened some of their letters, the most suspected no doubt and took the directions of the others, when asked what money they had, Mr P. told that in the Packet, he had about 25 guineas. I believe they made him count them. I think, but not so positive as to this, Mr A. said he tore a letter that their curiosity might not be satisfied in reading it notwithstanding it was of no consequence, according to his account. Mr Audibert complains violently of the ill treatment they received, and being kept in prison for an hour and 5, after his being so serviceable to members of English at Calais etc.etc.etc. 

Threatens he will publish it in all the English papers, if they will not put it in, he says he will have bills posted up at his expense in London to publish it to the nation. This group of 3 set off tomorrow I believe, for Paris, therefore the National Assembly will be informed of it in the course of a few days. This company sir, went on board the packet immediately on being liberated, the packet was followed ’till out of the pier, which might be a quarter of an hour, by numbers of people, to stare at Tom Paine, as they called him, he was hissed a great deal, and a many ridiculous speeches made relative to his trade, / he has been a stay maker at Dover / the crowd increased very much, the wind being stuck the Packet was obliged to be towed out, I believe had we remained much longer, they would have pelted him with stones from the beach. 

Personally Sir, he is a very mean looking man, it is in my opinion a disgrace to them, rather than a merit that a better representative can not be found at home without having recourse to a foreigner, like him. He is the picture of a journeyman Taylor who has been drunk and playing at nine pins for the 3 first days of the week, and is returning to his work on Thursday. We arrived at Calais and as soon as he was known to be on the shore the people flocked to see him, and it was talked of saluting him with the guard as he passed the Place d’ Armes, it rained hard as I left him. 

He has had an interview this evening with Lord Landerdale, who I believe was desirous of seeing him and has been also at the assembly of the [ In e o buis ] here, which I believe is held three times a week, Mr Paine made a very short speech there I in English / en quatre mots / saying that he was proud of the honour the citizens of the Pas du Calais, had done him in electing him etc. That he had ever been a friend to the rights of man. and hoped that he should continue to be so nearly these words. 

The captain of the Packet told me it was an order from the Treasury to examine them- I perhaps need not inform you of that Sir. I saw this morning at Dover a man of the name of Clark, from the upper office, who was just arrived from London, who with one of this place, Dover, possibly came about this business. I hope Sir, this might come safe to your hand, the Captain Jo. Oyton of the courier packet who sails tomorrow has promised to put it in the post at Dover, I leave it in the care of the Landlord here, for this purpose. 

Upwards of 200 Frenchmen arrived yesterday at Dover from Dieppe etc. this morning about 60 sailed in a boat for Ostend, the Town is full of them. 

I have the honour to be, with the utmost respect 

Sir 

your most obedient and most humble servant 

J. Mason 

Calais 

11 o’ clock, Friday Morning Sept. 14th 1792 

J B Burges Esq. 

London 

(BL ADD 58968 F. 67 Account of Dover to Calais by J. Mason) 

(The London Mission of Thomas Pinckney, 1792-1798 Author(s): Samuel Flagg Bemis Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Jan., 1923), pp. 228- 247)

The post Paine Departs From England For The Last Time  appeared first on Thomas Paine Historical Association.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was one of the most active and prolific radicals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and perhaps “the first man to practice revolution as a sole reason for being.”¹ He wrote and fought for American independence from England, encouraged the abolition of slavery,² helped shape Pennsylvania’s constitution,³ advocated a restructuring of English government,⁴ argued for elimination of the death penalty,⁵ participated in France’s legislature,⁶ and “laid out the first design of a modern welfare state,”⁷ among other activities.⁸ While he lived, he directly influenced politics in America (perhaps even coining the name “United States”⁹), in England, and in France, and long after his death his writings have continued to be primary documents in the struggle for freedom and human rights worldwide.¹⁰ But what connection, if any, did the famous — and, at times, notorious — author of Common Sense, The Crisis, Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason have with the Masonic Order? 

In Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom, Professor Jack Fruchtman writes that there is insufficient evidence to answer the question with certainty: “It has long been questioned whether Paine was a member of the Masons. There is no definitive proof either way. There is no specific date known on which he joined nor a specific lodge to which he was attached.”¹¹ Nonetheless, it has been common to ascribe Masonic membership to Paine. This is seen in the tendency of some Grand Lodges, during the 1990s, to publish brochures that placed Paine on the roster of famous Masons.¹² One such example, “The Real Secret of Freemasonry,” an informational brochure put out by the Grand Lodge of Oregon, states: “The pantheon of Masons holds George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, among others.”¹³ Various Masonic Web-sites continue to make similar claims about Paine and Masonry, as well.”¹⁴

In The Transatlantic Republican: Thomas Paine and the Age of Revolutions, Bernard Vincent devotes a chapter to “Thomas Paine, the Masonic Order, and the American Revolution,” and explains several aspects of the inclination to consider Paine a Mason: 

While working on my Tom Paine biography, I was intrigued from the outset by the fact that all of a sudden, within just a few weeks or months, and as if by magic, Paine leaped from his obscure humdrum existence in England—where he had worked as a corset-maker and Excise officer—onto the American literary and political stage, there to become, at the age of almost forty, one of the leading lights of the Revolutionary movement. 

How was it that a man who was little short of a failure in his native country became acquainted so rapidly with the most prominent figures in the Colonies, even becoming a friend of theirs in many cases? How can one account for the quickness of his ascent and the suddenness of his glory?

One way of accounting for this, one hypothesis (which has several times been made), is to consider that Paine became a Freemason and that, as such, he enjoyed, first in America, then in England and France, the kindly assistance of certain lodges or of certain individual Masons.¹⁵ 

Vincent rejects this hypothesis, however, due to a lack of corroborative evidence. It is certain that Washington and Franklin were Masons, for example, but there is no equivalent support for such a claim about Paine. 

Assertions of Paine’s Masonic membership also rest on the fact that between 1803 and 1805, after returning to America from England and France, he penned the essay “Origin of Free-Masonry.”¹⁶ For some, Paine’s curiosity about Freemasonry, and his decision to write about it, have been, in and of themselves, sufficient proof that he was a Mason. However, Vincent rejects this line of reasoning as well:

Paine’s interest in Freemasonry was such that toward the end of his life, in 1805, he wrote a lengthy piece entitled An Essay on the Origin of Freemasonry… But this does not prove, any more than any other detail or fact that we know of, that Paine was a Mason. There is indeed no formal trace of his initiation or membership in England, none in America, and none in France. Questioned about Paine’s membership…the United Grand Lodge of England had only this to answer: “In the absence of any record of his initiation, it must, therefore, be assumed he was not a member of the order.”¹⁷ 

Though not necessarily a Mason himself, Paine certainly had several close friends who were members of the Order. For example, while living in France, after fleeing England in order to escape charges of sedition, Paine resided at the home of Nicolas de Bonneville. Samuel Edwards describes Bonneville as lain active Freemason” who “was convinced that the principles and aims of Masonry, if applied to the world’s ailments, would bring peace and prosperity to all nations.”¹⁸ The bond between the two men was quite strong: “From 1797 until 1802, Paine lived with the Bonnevilles in Paris, and Marguerite, Nicolas’ wife, and their sons eventually followed Paine to America.”¹⁹ Fruchtman suggests that during Paine’s time in Paris, Bonneville introduced him to the philosophies of Freemasonry and Theophilanthropism.²⁰ 

William M. Van der Weyde, in The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, also mentions Paine’s Masonic associations, while at the same time emphasizing that these friendships are not evidence he belonged to the fraternity: “Paine was the author of an interesting and highly instructive treatise on the Origin of Freemasonry…but, although many of his circle of friends were undoubtedly members of that order, no conclusive proof has ever been adduced that Paine was a Mason.”²¹ Likewise, Moncure Daniel Conway proposes that “Paine’s intimacy in Paris with Nicolas de Bonneville and Charles Francoise Dupuis, whose writings are replete with masonic speculations, sufficiently explains his interest in the subject” of Freemasonry, even though he himself was probably not a Mason.²² 

Bonneville’s widow published Paine’s “Origin of Free- Masonry” in 1810, after his death, although she chose to omit certain passages in it that could be seen as disparaging to Christianity. Most of these were restored in a later printing, in 1818.²³ Paine’s central premise in “Origin of Free-Masonry” is that the Order “is derived and is the remains of the religion of the ancient Druids; who, like the Magi of Persia and the Priests of Heliopolis in Egypt, were Priests of the Sun.”²⁴ The idea that Masonry derived from the Druids did not begin with Paine, and has been advanced by others after him.²⁵ According to Paine, however, this Druid origin is the true and deepest secret of Masonry, from which extend all the ceremonies and concealment Masons engage in: 

The natural source of secrecy is fear. When any new religion over-runs a former religion, the professors of the new become the persecutors of the old… [Wjhen the Christian religion over-ran the religion of the Druids…the Druids became the subject of persecution. This would naturally and necessarily oblige such of them as remained attached to their original religion to meet in secret, and under the strongest injunctions of secrecy. Their safety depended upon it. A false brother might expose the lives of many of them to destruction; and from the remains of the religion of the Druids, thus preserved, arose the institution which, to avoid the name of Druid, took that of Mason, and practiced under this new name the rites and ceremonies of Druids.²⁶ Commenting on Paine’s “Essay on Freemasonry,” Masonic author Albert G. Mackey quips that Paine “knew, by the way, as little of Masonry as he did of the religion of the Druids.”²⁷ 

Indeed, it is evident from Paine’s essay that he was not very knowledgeable of Freemasonry — although that fact alone does not, of course, prove he was not a Mason when he wrote it. Paine’s general tone, however, shows him to be an outsider trying to assess what is in the Order, rather than a member of it, and that, more than anything else, indicates that he was not a Mason at the time he composed “Origin of Free- Masonry.” For example, after referring to certain statements about Masonry made by the Provincial Grand Master of Kent, Captain George Smith, in the latter’s The Use and Abuse of Free-Masonry (1783), Paine concludes: 

It sometimes happens, as well in writing as in conversation, that a person lets slip an expression that serves to unravel what he intends to conceal, and this is the case with Smith, for in the same chapter he says, “The Druids, when they committed any thing to writing, used the Greek alphabet, and I am bold to assert that the most perfect remains of the Druids’ rites and ceremonies are preserved in the customs and ceremonies of the Masons that are to be found existing among mankind.” “My brethren” says he, “may be able to trace them with greater exactness than I am at liberty to explain to the public.” 

This is a confession from • a Master Mason, without intending it to be so understood by the public, that Masonry is the remains of the religion of the Druids…²⁸ 

These are not the words of a man who is himself a Master Mason, but rather of one who is guessing at what secrets a Master Mason knows and may be inadvertently revealing. Paine, an outsider, mistakes Smith’s personal conjectures for an unintended confession. If he was not a Master Mason at the time he wrote the essay, could Paine have been an Entered Apprentice or a Fellow-Craft? It is difficult to argue that Paine was curious enough about Freemasonry’s origin and philosophy to write seriously about the fraternity, and also to begin the Craft degrees, but that he did not wait until he had concluded them before finishing his essay. It is far more likely that he was not at all a member of the fraternity at the time of its composition, and was writing as a complete outsider. 

In his essay on Thomas Paine in Freemasonry Today, David Harrison speculates: “If Paine did enter into Freemasonry, it would have been during the period of the American Revolution, his life being at the epicentre of the social elite at that time, his closeness to Franklin, Washington, Lafayette and Monroe suggesting that he was undoubtedly aware of their Masonic membership.”²⁹ Paine’s “Origin of Free-Masonry,” however, indicates that despite his closeness to these men, he did not enter into Freemasonry at that time. Years later, around 1803-1805, he was still writing as an outsider. 

Although he may not have been a member, facets of Paine’s thought can be seen to correspond to Masonic principles. In The Age of Reason (of which “Origin of Free- Masonry” may have originally been intended to be a part),³⁰ for example, Paine explains his religious beliefs:

 I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. 

I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.³¹ 

Such statements, which have a Masonic ring to them, prompted Masonic historian Joseph Fort Newton to write of Paine: 

Thomas Paine…though not a Mason, has left us an essay on The Origin of Freemasonry. Few men have ever been more unjustly and cruelly maligned than this great patriot, who was the first to utter the name “United States,” and who, instead of being a sceptic, believed in “the religion in which all men agree” — that is, in God, Duty, and the immortality of the Soul.³² 

Similarly, Vincent concludes in The Transatlantic Republican that while Paine “probably never belonged to any specific fraternity, he nevertheless actively sympathized with the Masonic movement and the philosophy it espoused.”³³ 

Although Voltaire, for example, became a Mason shortly before passing away,³⁴ there is nothing to suggest that Paine became a Mason in the interval between composing “Origin of Free-Masonry” and his death a few years later, in 1809. As he was certainly not a Master Mason when he wrote the essay — and as there is no evidence he joined the fraternity after then — one may conclude, as have Mackey, Newton, and others,³⁵ that Paine was not a Freemason. Still, though the “pantheon of Masons” may not hold Thomas Paine, this influential and controversial man is nonetheless indelibly connected to Freemasonry, if only due to the close friendships he had with some in the fraternity, and to his having written an intriguing essay on its origins.

NOTES

1. Jerome A. Wilson and William F. Ricketson, Thomas Paine (Boston: Twayne Publisher, 1978), p. 163. 
2. Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man: A Biography (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006), pp. 28-29 and 43-44. 
3. Isaac Kramnick, ed., Common Sense (London: Penguin, 1986), p. 31. 
4. Kramnick, Common Sense, p. 33. 
5. Hitchens, Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, p. 60. 
6. Kramnick, Common Sense, pp. 34-36. 
7. Hitchens, Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, p. 109. See also p. 120. Bernard Vincent devotes a chapter to “Paine’s Agrarian Justice and the Birth of the Welfare State.” See Vincent’s The Transatlantic Republican: Thomas Paine and the Age of Revolutions (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), pp. 125-135. 
8. Kramnick (Common Sense, p. 28) believes Paine also supported women’s rights. Hitchens, however, disagrees: “he was not a notable advocate of the rights of women” (Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, p. 98). So does Vincent, who considers Paine’s attitude toward women’s suffrage to have been pedestrian: “For once, Paine failed to be a prophet” (The Transatlantic Republican, p. 124). 
9. Hitchens, Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, pp. 8 and 36. Joseph Fort Newton, among others, believed this to be the case. See below, note 32. 
10. Hitchens, Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, pp. 141-142. 
11. Jack Fruchtman, Jr., Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994), p. 491, note 28. 
12. “Famous Non-Masons,” on the Web-site of Anti-Masonry – Points of View, <https://www.masonicinfo.cornifamousnon.htrn>. 
13. “The Real Secret of Freemasonry,” published by authority of the Trustees of The Grand Lodge of A.F. & A.M. of Oregon (U.S.A.: Still Associates, 1990). 
14. Two such examples: The Key West Masons Web-site, <https://www.kevwestmason.com>, which has a page of famous Masons, among whom Paine is listed, and the Web-site of the Valley of Albany, New York, <https://wwiv.vallevofalbany.aasrmasonrv.us/>, where a quote from the opening lines of The Crisis is attributed to “Bro. Thomas Paine.” 
15. Vincent The Transatlantic Republican, p. 35. 
16. Vincent (The Transatlantic Republican, p, 36) cites 1805 as the year “Origin of Free-Masonry” was written, as does Fruchtman (Thomas Paine; Apostle of Freedom, p. 491, note 29). However, William Van der Weyde places its writing in 1803. See “Chronological Table of Thomas Paine’s Writings,” on the Web-site of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, <htto://www.thomaspaine.orolchron.html>. 
17. Vincent The Transatlantic Republican, p. 36. It may be incorrect to describe “Origin of Free-Masonry,” as Vincent does, as “a lengthy piece.- It is actually less than 5,000 words long. 
18. Samuel Edwards, Rebel! A Biography of Tom Paine (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974), p. 227. 
19. Fruchtman, Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom, p. 275. 
20. Fruchtman, Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom, p. 275 and pp. 379- 380. 
21. William M. Van der Weyde, The Life and Works of Thomas Paine (New York: Thomas Paine National Historical Association, 1925), vol. 1, p. 171. 
22. Moncure Daniel Conway, ed., “Origin of Free-Masonry,” in The Writings of Thomas Paine (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1967), vol. 4, p. 290, note 1. 
23. Conway, The Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 4, p. 290, note 1. 
24. Conway, The Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 4, p. 293. 
25. Albert Gallatin Mackey addresses these ideas In his chapter on “Druidism and Freemasonry” in The History of Freemasonry (New York: The Masonic History Company, 1898), vol. 1, pp. 199-216. See also Andrew Prescott’s lecture on “Druidic Myths and Freemasonry,” on the Web-site of The Centre for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, <htte://freemasonrv.deptsheLac.uldindmohp?lann=081tvoe5mee&level 0=243&level1=387&level2=392&oo=381>. 
26. Conway, The Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 4, p. 303.
27. Mackey, The History of Freemasonry, vol. ‘1, p. 199. 
28. Conway, The Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 4, pp. 294-295. 
29. David Harrison, “Thomas Paine, Freemason?,” Freemasonry Today, Issue 46, Autumn 2008, <htto://www.freemasonrvtoday.com1461p11.php>. Arguing the possibility that Paine became a Mason during this time, Harrison continues: “Paine was certainly attracted to clubs and societies throughout his life, such as the White Hart Club which Paine attended when he was an exciseman in Lewes. He was a founding member of the first Anti-Slavery Society in America and he was involved in the society of Theophilanthropists and Philosophical Society…” In contrast, Vincent argues: “A rugged individualist, Paine neither liked collective ceremonies nor secret practices… Both his nature and the lessons of experience made him loathe the idea of regimentation. He never was a declared member of any party or sect or church, and it is highly probable that he never joined the Masonic Order” (The Transatlantic Republican, p. 39). 
30. Conway, The Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 4, p. 290, note 1. 
31. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (Boston: Josiah P. Mendum, 1852), part 1, p. 6. These sentences are quoted, with slightly different wording, in Hitchens’s Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, p. 126. 
32. Joseph Fort Newton, The Builders: A Story and Study of Masonry (Iowa: The Torch Press, 1916), pp. 225-226, note 3. 
33. Vincent, The Transatlantic Republican, p. 35. 
34. Vincent The Transatlantic Republican, p. 38. 
35. For another example, see Augustus C. L Amold’s Philosophical History of Free-Masonry and Other Secret Societies (New York: Clark, Austen, and Smith, 1854), p. 204, second note. Arnold concludes that Paine was not “a member of the brotherhood.” He reproduces Paine’s entire essay in his Philosophical History, adding his own notes to it, with the aim of, among other things, correcting what he considers to be Paine’s mistaken assertions about the fraternity. See Philosophical History, p. 204, first note. See also the entry on Paine in William R. Denslow’s 10,000 Famous Freemasons, vol. 3: “Although Paine wrote An Essay on the Origin of Freemasonry, he was not a Freemason… Certain writers have made claims that he was a member of various lodges both in America and France.”

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