''The Massachusetts Spy'', later subtitled the '' Worcester Gazette'', (est.1770) was a newspaper published by Isaiah Thomas in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and in

Worcester, Massachusetts Worcester ( , ) is a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the second-List of cities i ...

, in the 18th century. It was a heavily political weekly paper that was constantly on the verge of being suppressed by the Royalist government, from the time of its establishment in 1770 to 1776, during the runup to the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...

. In 1771–1773 the ''Spy'' featured the essays of several anonymous political commentators who called themselves " Centinel," "Mucius Scaevola" and "Leonidas." They spoke in the same terms about similar issues, kept Patriot polemics on the front page, and supported each other against attacks in pro-government papers. Rhetorical combat was a Patriot tactic that explained the issues of the day and fostered cohesiveness without advocating outright rebellion. The columnists spoke to the colonists as an independent people tied to Britain only by voluntary legal compact. The ''Spy'' soon carried radicalism to its logical conclusion. When articles from the ''Spy'' were reprinted in other papers, as the country as a whole was ready for Thomas Paine's ''

Common Sense ''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. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political argu ...

'' (1776). The newspaper had to be removed from Boston to Worcester "after the April 6, 1775 issue" just before the

Battles of Lexington and Concord The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. The battles were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord ...

and the subsequent

Siege of Boston The siege of Boston (April 19, 1775 – March 17, 1776) was the opening phase of the American Revolutionary War. New England militiamen prevented the movement by land of the British Army, which was garrisoned in what was then the peninsular town ...

to prevent the arrest of the publisher and printers and the presses from being seized and destroyed by the British; it resumed publication in Worcester on 3 May 1775. The paper was later published by the son of Isaiah Thomas, Isaiah Thomas, Jr. and continued under similar names and different owners until some time in the first decades of the 19th century.

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