I’m not totally certain if there’s a complete answer to this question, but I thought I’d see how far it can be answered.
I finally got around to reading Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, and there’s an assertion in there that I’ve never come across anywhere else.
In the section entitled, “Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession,” he writes–
The most plausible plea which hath ever been offered in favor of hereditary succession is, that it preserves a nation from civil wars; and were this true, it would be weighty; whereas it is the most bare-faced falsity ever imposed upon mankind. The whole history of England disowns the fact. Thirty kings and two minors have reigned in that distracted kingdom since the conquest [he means William the Conqueror], in which time there has been (including the revolution) no less than eight civil wars and nineteen Rebellions. Wherefore instead of making for peace, it makes against it, and destroys the very foundation it seems to stand upon.
Does anybody know, or think they can make a good guess, what events he had in mind when he said “eight civil wars”?
Also, that list linked to, does not include the clashes that were probably recent enough to be front of mind to Paine. The two rebellions by the pretenders, James and Charlie, 1715 and 1745 respectively - brought about by James II being ousted in an invasion by William and Mary (the Glorious Revolution) 1688.
All these were nominally disputes over the line of succession, which is the topic Paine is in on about. Particularly, the rebellion by Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745 came very close to taking London, so would probably be front of mind for Englishmen less than 30 years later if someone suggested hereditary monarchy was stable…
Surely Thomas Paine had “The History of England” by David Hume and indeed this question would be about Thomas Paine taking on David Hume on the topic, David Hume saying that the monarchy system created stability
The History of England is philosopher and writer David Hume’s great work on England’s history from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688 , written while he was serving as librarian to what became the National Library of Scotland. It was published in six volumes in 1754, 1756, 1759, and 1761.
Common Sense is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies.
I suppose Tom would have had some means of getting his hands on six volumes published two decades earlier. He actually only moved to the colonies in the early 1770’s so access to published works would not have been a problem, and knowledge of English history would be pretty common, one imagines, for an well-read person in London. He wasn’t that well off, I presume, considering he started as a corset maker (apprenticed to his father) at 13, and had assorted jobs, including being fired from the Excise job for advocating higher pay (to stop corruption). Would there be libraries in those days?
Sorry to be an insufferable pedant, but I think that is seriously over-stating Charlie’s threat. He never got further south that Derbyshire and if he had rolled the dice and kept going, I think the general consensus is that, lacking any real ability to conduct a siege, he would have almost certainly have eventually been overwhelmed. Jacobite support in England was not nearly as robust as he had hoped and retreating was probably his only reasonable option.
The French who (pretty weakly) backed his invasion were under no illusion as to its chance of success. It was just a useful distraction in the ongoing War of Austrian Succession, which was at a low point for the British after they had just been mauled on the Continent at Fontenoy.
I agree it definitely would have been on Paine’s mind though.
Hume’s History of England was a major bestseller and had never been out of print. There was even a popular abridged version which itself had recently been reprinted. But Hume’s work was simply the most high-profile work on the subject. Lots of books on English history were published throughout the eighteenth century. Moreover, the idea that the English (and Scottish) royal succession had been far from smooth was not in itself new.
In 1776 Paine was living in Philadelphia, not the middle of nowhere. They had libraries there. His personal connections with booksellers would have been another way of getting access to books without necessarily buying them, especially as he was editing a widely-read magazine at the time.