competing Life of Thomas Paine, asserting that the man had been a saint, an absolute saint. Not that Rickman was averse to making money himself-for his printing and engraving shop, he hastened to tell readers, also sold books, music, and Rickman's own "PATENT SIGNAL TRUMPET, For Increasing The Power Of Sound ."
Local doggerel scribblers were even faster out of the gate. Under a picture of Cobbett bearing a coffin on his back came one broadside: 'This is WILL COBBETI', with Thomas Paine's bones / a bag full of brick-bats, and one full of stones," it chanted, ". . . Tis Cobbett the changeling, worthless and base /Just arrive'd from New York, with his impudent face." A printer on Threadneedle Street merrily issued Sketches of the Life of Billy Cobb and Death of Tommy Pain , with a cover depicting both Satan and Paine's vengefully reanimated skeleton grabbing Cobbett at the graveside and choking him: 'Up THOMAS jumped, (and Satan too) / And caught him by the pipe / In which the wind keeps passing through . . ."
Even Lord Byron descended briefly from his empyrean realm of poetry to take a swipe at him:
In digging up your bones, Tom Paine,
Will Cobbett has done well
You visit him on earth again,
He'll visit you in hell.
Cobbett had not even issued his first call for donations yet, and money was already pouring in . . . to booksellers. But hanging over them all year had been the real questionâhe belling of the cat. It had been a quarter of a century since anyone had openly sold the treasonous books of Cobbett's martyr. Who would now dare to reprint the works of Thomas Paine?
The Bone Grubbers
JUDGE BAILEY EMERGED from the chambers, stern in his robe and wig, and sat high in his chair overlooking the defendant. The latest case in his docket had become an utter headache. Just blocks away, copies of Cobbett's Political Register were being hawked with news of the return of Thomas Paine. How could one have imagined such nonsense? And delivered on the day of sentencing? The awful timing of Paine's return was now threatening to turn what should have been a straightforward blasphemy prosecution into a cause celebre. It was bad enough that the defendant was a notorious local seller of Cobbett's Register . But the slight and defiant-looking young man standing in the docket, one Richard Carlile of 55 Fleet Street, had done something more, something that made him a match waiting to be thrown into a tinderbox.
"The crime of blasphemy is one of the most serious offenses known to our law," Bailey began his pronouncement. "The sentence of the court upon you, Richard Carlile, is that, for publication of Paine's Age of Reason , you pay a fine to the king of El000 and be imprisoned for two years in the county gaol of Dorset, in the town of Dorchester; and that for the second offence, the publication of Palmer's Principles of Nature , you pay a further fine to the King of E500, and be further imprisoned for one year in the said gaol in Dorchester." The judge rambled on with his sentence-more fines, more crushing sureties required upon release-and the young man bowed his head.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Carlile came from a God-fearing family, and his mother and older sister couldn't fathom what had brought their misguided Richard to this place. One of his earliest boyhood memories, after all, was of gathering kindling with other village children to burn Thomas Paine in effigyâ"Scouring the hedges for miles around," Carlie mused, "from daylight till dark, to gather a faggot wherewith to burn the effigy of 'old Tom Paine,' my now venerated political father!"
Then again, Richard needed a father. He'd lost his own in 1794, when he was but four years old. "Having no father to guide me," he recalled, "I must say that, until twenty years of age, I was a weed left to pursue its own course." He learned his letters from a local schoolmistress with the delightful name of Cherry Chalk, but by age twelve he'd dropped out of school
Local doggerel scribblers were even faster out of the gate. Under a picture of Cobbett bearing a coffin on his back came one broadside: 'This is WILL COBBETI', with Thomas Paine's bones / a bag full of brick-bats, and one full of stones," it chanted, ". . . Tis Cobbett the changeling, worthless and base /Just arrive'd from New York, with his impudent face." A printer on Threadneedle Street merrily issued Sketches of the Life of Billy Cobb and Death of Tommy Pain , with a cover depicting both Satan and Paine's vengefully reanimated skeleton grabbing Cobbett at the graveside and choking him: 'Up THOMAS jumped, (and Satan too) / And caught him by the pipe / In which the wind keeps passing through . . ."
Even Lord Byron descended briefly from his empyrean realm of poetry to take a swipe at him:
In digging up your bones, Tom Paine,
Will Cobbett has done well
You visit him on earth again,
He'll visit you in hell.
Cobbett had not even issued his first call for donations yet, and money was already pouring in . . . to booksellers. But hanging over them all year had been the real questionâhe belling of the cat. It had been a quarter of a century since anyone had openly sold the treasonous books of Cobbett's martyr. Who would now dare to reprint the works of Thomas Paine?
The Bone Grubbers
JUDGE BAILEY EMERGED from the chambers, stern in his robe and wig, and sat high in his chair overlooking the defendant. The latest case in his docket had become an utter headache. Just blocks away, copies of Cobbett's Political Register were being hawked with news of the return of Thomas Paine. How could one have imagined such nonsense? And delivered on the day of sentencing? The awful timing of Paine's return was now threatening to turn what should have been a straightforward blasphemy prosecution into a cause celebre. It was bad enough that the defendant was a notorious local seller of Cobbett's Register . But the slight and defiant-looking young man standing in the docket, one Richard Carlile of 55 Fleet Street, had done something more, something that made him a match waiting to be thrown into a tinderbox.
"The crime of blasphemy is one of the most serious offenses known to our law," Bailey began his pronouncement. "The sentence of the court upon you, Richard Carlile, is that, for publication of Paine's Age of Reason , you pay a fine to the king of El000 and be imprisoned for two years in the county gaol of Dorset, in the town of Dorchester; and that for the second offence, the publication of Palmer's Principles of Nature , you pay a further fine to the King of E500, and be further imprisoned for one year in the said gaol in Dorchester." The judge rambled on with his sentence-more fines, more crushing sureties required upon release-and the young man bowed his head.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Carlile came from a God-fearing family, and his mother and older sister couldn't fathom what had brought their misguided Richard to this place. One of his earliest boyhood memories, after all, was of gathering kindling with other village children to burn Thomas Paine in effigyâ"Scouring the hedges for miles around," Carlie mused, "from daylight till dark, to gather a faggot wherewith to burn the effigy of 'old Tom Paine,' my now venerated political father!"
Then again, Richard needed a father. He'd lost his own in 1794, when he was but four years old. "Having no father to guide me," he recalled, "I must say that, until twenty years of age, I was a weed left to pursue its own course." He learned his letters from a local schoolmistress with the delightful name of Cherry Chalk, but by age twelve he'd dropped out of school
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