on of Tom Paine naturally calls to mind his friend and biographer
(and my thrice great uncle), Thomas "Clio" Rickman, the Citizen of the
World, who was born at Lewes in 1760. Rickman began life as a Quaker,
and therefore without his pagan middle name, which he first adopted as
the signature to epigrams and scraps of verse in the local paper, and
afterwards incorporated in his signature. Rickman's connection with Tom
Paine and his own revolutionary habits were a source of distress to his
Quaker relatives at Lewes, so much so that there is a story in the
family of the Citizen being refused admission to a house in the
neighbourhood where he had eight impressionable nieces, and, when he
would visit their father, being entertained instead at the Bear. His
Bible, with sceptical marginal notes, is still preserved, with the bad
pages pasted together by a subsequent owner.

After roving about in Spain and other countries he settled as a
bookseller in London, and it was in his house and at his table that _The
Rights of Man_ was written. "This table," says an article on Rickman in
the _Wonderful Museum_, "is prized by him very highly at this time; and
no doubt will be deemed a rich relic by some of our irreligious
connoisseurs." It was shown at the Tom Paine exhibition a few years ago.
Rickman escaped prosecution, but he once had his papers seized.

[Sidenote: TIPPER'S EPITAPH]

According to his portrait Clio wore a hat like a beehive, and he
invented a trumpet to increase the sound of a signal gun. His verse is
exceedingly poor, his finest poetical achievement being the epitaph on
Thomas Tipper in Newhaven churchyard. Tipper was the brewer of the ale
that was known as "Newhaven Tipper"; but he was other things too:

Honest he was, ingenuous, blunt and kind,
And dared what few dare do, to speak his mind.
Philosophy and history well he knew,
Was versed in Physic and in surgery too,
The best old Stingo he both brewed and sold,
Nor did one knavish act to get his gold.
He played through life a varied comic part,
And knew immortal Hudibras by heart.

Charles Lamb greatly admired the end of this epitaph. Clio Rickman died
in 1834.

Among other men of note who have lived in Lewes or have had association
with it, was John Evelyn the diarist, who had some of his education at
Southover grammar school: Mark Antony Lower, the Sussex antiquary, to
whom all writers on the county are indebted;