M. and Madame Bonneville had befriended Paine, had invited him to their home where for years he enjoyed their hospitality. When Bonneville was imprisoned and impoverished and his family reduced to penury, Paine would have been a base ingrate had he not befriended them.
Dr. Lucy Waite: "The one circumstance in the life of Thomas Paine that to my mind more than any other reflects credit upon him as a man, has been made the target of the most bitter attacks against him—his relations to Madame Bonneville.... His detractors would no doubt have considered it a more 'moral' act if he had sent them to the poor-farm instead of to his own farm at New Rochelle; but to the everlasting credit of this great man he defied the town gossips, and made them comfortable in his own home."
Slanders concerning Paine's marital troubles have been published. He was married twice before coming to America, in 1759 to Mary Lambert, who died, and in 1771 to Elizabeth Olive, from whom he was separated. The separation was by mutual consent and nothing discreditable to either party was alleged. As to the cause of the separation all that is known, or rather surmised, is stated in McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia, an Orthodox authority: "His first wife had died about a year after their marriage; he lived about three years with his second, when they separated by mutual consent, it is said, on account of her physical disability."
Paine's subsequent treatment of his wife was in the highest degree honorable. He had but little property, but what he had he gave to her. Regarding his conduct in this matter Clio Rickman, his most intimate friend in England, and a highly honorable man, bears this testimony:
"This I can assert, that Mr. Paine always spoke tenderly and respectfully of his wife; and sent her several times pecuniary aid, without her knowing even whence it came."
Concerning this slander W. T. Stead says: "No one even among Paine's worst libelers suggests that she had any reason of complaint against him." One of Paine's calumniators, "Francis Oldys" (George Chalmers), a pretended biographer of Paine whose statements are nearly all false or misleading, says that while he was an excise officer he bought smuggled tobacco and was dismissed from the service for the offense. This statement is false. Dr. Conway says:
"I have before me the minutes of the Board concerning Paine, and there is no hint whatever of any such accusation."
Falsehoods generally grow rather than diminish with age, and now we are told that Paine himself was a smuggler and was dismissed for smuggling. The Excise laws were the most odious laws in England, odious alike to the people and to the excise officers, who were underpaid (fifty pounds a year) and otherwise mistreated. Paine espoused the cause of his fellow excisemen and in a memorial addressed to Parliament pleaded for a redress of their grievances. His activity in this matter offended the Government and a trivial irregularity commonly practiced by the excisemen was made a pretext for his dismissal.
The Everyman Encyclopedia: "Became an excise officer, but agitating for the removal of grievances, was dismissed from the service."
Had Paine been discharged for any dishonest or immoral act Franklin would have known it and would not have recommended him as "a worthy young man."