Thomas Pain (later changed to Paine) was born in Thetford, Norfolk, England.

Paine attended Thetford Grammar School for five years.

At age 13, Paine began work as an apprentice for his father’s business as a staymaker, making stay ropes used on the masts of sailing vessels.

In late 1756, 19-year-old Paine ran away to London and signed up as a ship hand for a naval ship called the Terrible. His father tracked him down in time to persuade him to give up his plans (Britain was engaged in the Seven Years’ War with France at the time). Fortunately, Thomas acquiesced. The Terrible would soon thereafter engage in fierce battles against the French and was in the end defeated by a French privateer called Vengeance. The few surviving members of the Terrible’s crew were subsequently taken prisoners—a fate which Thomas Paine narrowly escaped thanks to his father’s intervention. Instead, Paine set up shop as a staymaker in London.

Paine joined the crew of the King of Prussia for a six-month’s stint on the high seas.

At age 22, Paine opened his own staymaking shop in Sandwich, Kent.

Paine married a local girl named Mary Lambert.

Sadly, Paine’s wife Mary died after giving birth to a stillborn child. At the same time, Paine’s shop staymaking business failed.

After moving back to his hometown of Thetford, Paine started work as an excise officer, inspecting shipments arriving by boat and collecting customs duties and taxes.

Paine moved to Lewes, Sussex for a new position as an excise officer. He moved in as a boarder at the home of local tobacconist Samuel Ollive. During this time, Paine started taking an interest in politics.

Married Elizabeth Ollive, his landlord’s daughter.

Thomas Paine crafted his very first political pamphlet, a 12-page article called The Case of the Officers of Excise, in which he put down all of the complaints of his fellow excise officers and addressed the powers that be for immediate change in their working conditions. One of the chief complaints that Paine leveled was the fact that the average excise officer on patrol only received £50 a year.

After he was dismissed from his work as excise officer, Paine and his wife separated. Paine then moved to London where he first met Benjamin Franklin. Franklin recommended Paine to move to colonial America and supplied him with a letter of recommendation.

Thomas Paine arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Paine contributed articles to several newspapers and worked as editor for the Pennsylvania Magazine. Paine championed such things as greater rights for the average worker, abolition of slavery, and independence from British rule.

In Common Sense, Paine masterfully presented the argument for American independence in a light that Americans could easily understand and identify with. Signed “by an Englishman,” this one publication quickly had over 100,000 copies in circulation throughout all 13 American colonies.

The official Declaration of Independence was issued.

In The American Crisis, Paine sought to rally the troops and encourage the fight against the British. The pamphlet was read aloud to the Continental Army on December 23, 1776, three days before the Battle of Trenton.

For three years, Paine served as the Secretary to the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs.

In 1781, Paine accompanied a delegation to France. The group’s objective was to gain a loan from the French in order to help the Americans continue the war effort against the British. The group returned to America in August, having secured a loan of 10 million, as well as a gift of 6 million. In addition to securing these financial infusions, Paine had also networked with several important figures during his time in Paris who aided him in creating the Bank of North America as an ongoing finance arm for the Continental Army.

American and French forces decisively defeated the British in Yorktown, Virginia, which led to the beginning of peace talks between the new United States of America and its former overlords, the British.

In France, Paine became involved with prominent Frenchmen such as the Marquis de Lafayette, a general who had participated in the American Revolution. During the next couple of years, Thomas Paine would travel back and forth between Britain and France, consulting with intellectuals on both sides of the Channel.

Paine’s Rights of Man and its continuation Rights of Man, Part the Second, Combining Principle and Practice, published in 1792, became a must-read among the working class of Britain. In Rights of Man, Paine defended the French Revolution and the basic civil rights he believed should be bestowed, even going so far as to call Britain an illegitimate government.

Because of his publication of Rights of Man, Paine was indicted for sedition in Britain. He was found guilty in absentia and would not be able to return to Britain again.

Paine was arrested because of his involvement in the French Revolution. Slated for execution along with countless other victims of France’s unrelenting crackdown on subversives, Paine is said to have only very narrowly avoided the guillotine.

Paine was released from prison.

Paine’s treatise on religion, entitled The Age of Reason, was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807. In it, Paine made his beliefs clear by unequivocally stating that “all national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

As soon as he was released from prison, Paine went back into the fray, and by the summer of 1795, he was allowed back into France’s reorganized National Convention. The convention sought to draft yet another constitution, and Paine was one of the few to oppose the new draft due to its exclusion of universal suffrage.

Napoleon Bonaparte, a French general of Italian descent, managed to seize power in France on November 9, 1799. Napoleon was awarded the title of first consul over the French Republic for ten years. Although Napoleon’s role was crafted in language that would make his position seem to be a temporary one, this was actually the beginning of a long dictatorship.

As Napoleon’s dictatorship grew more and more oppressive, Paine decided to return to the United States. Paine arrived in Baltimore in 1802, and the timing couldn’t have been worse as far as his popularity was concerned among the American people. Paine was despised by religious groups, he was considered suspect for the role he played in the revolution in France, and he was reviled for his attacks on George Washington.

Aged 72, Thomas Paine passed away in New York City.