Thomas Spence was a seminal figure in British radicalism, primarily for his innovative critique of private ownership of land on the basis of a philosophical argument that broke free from the contemporary dominance of John Locke. His ideas were a distinctive amalgam of seventeenth-century and Enlightenment thought, iconoclastic Calvinism, and indigenous English radicalism with strong millenarian overtones. The case Spence made for common ownership of the land set a precedent to which many subsequent reformers referred. He was also an innovative thinker on the issues of women's rights and the reform of the English language and a significant popularizer of radical ideas. As a pamphleteer, bookseller, and propagandist Spence widened political awareness in plebeian London at the turn of the eighteenth century.

Thomas Spence was born on 21 June 1750. His parents, Jeremiah and Margaret (Flet) Spence, were among the large Scottish population of Newcastle upon Tyne, the provincial center...