A notorious free-thinker and democrat, born in Thetford; emigrated to America, contributed, as he boasted, by his pamphlet "Common Sense," to "free America," by rousing it to emancipate itself from the mother-country; wrote the "Rights of Man" against Burke's "Reflections"; had to emigrate to France; took part in the Revolution to aid in its emancipation also, offended Robespierre, and was put in prison, where he wrote the first part of his "Age of Reason," a book which offended the Christian world and procured him ignominy and even execration in many quarters; died in New York, but his bones were conveyed to England by Cobbett in 1819 (1737-1809).