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This is the story of how an unknown and lowly Englishman came to be thrust onto the international stage with world-changing effect. While Thomas Paine is known by Americans as one of their founding fathers, he remains relatively obscure in the UK. Thomas Paine's skill as a writer was recognised by George Lewis Scott, a commissioner of Excise, who was at the height of English society. Scott had been trying to reduce the corruption that was endemic in the Excise Service, Paine had suffered it at first hand. This was in 1772 in Lewes, the County town of East Sussex while Paine was still just an outrider of Excise. Paine articulated the argument in his first pamphlet, but despite 4000 copies being printed the four years-long campaign came to nought. Paine left England for the North American colonies with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin. Within a year Paine had written Common Sense, the document that kindled the War of Independence. Paine followed this with 13 Crisis papers that were highly influential in steadying the American troops in the fight against their mother country. This story uses previously unseen documents from the Treasury boxes in the National Archives in Kew. Several strands have been drawn together that show that the United Kingdom was incapable of managing an expanding empire along with the effects of monetary inflation at home. These two main factors, explained in some depth here, conjoined to result in the North American Colonies throwing off the shackles of British governance, clumsily administered from afar with a time lag of transatlantic travel.