Robert Emmet

Robert Emmet (4 March 177820 September 1803) was an Irish Republican, orator and rebel leader. Following the suppression of the United Irish uprising in 1798, he sought to organise a renewed attempt to overthrow the British Crown and Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, and to establish a nationally representative government. Emmet entertained, but ultimately abandoned, hopes of immediate French assistance and of coordination with radical militants in Great Britain. In Ireland, many of the surviving veterans of '98 hesitated to lend their support, and his rising in Dublin in 1803 proved abortive. Emmet’s Proclamation of the Provisional Government to the People of Ireland, his Speech from the Dock, and his "sacrificial" end on the gallows inspired later generations of Irish republicans. Patrick Pearse, who in 1916 was again to proclaim a provisional government in Dublin, declared Emmet's attempt "not a failure, but a triumph for that deathless thing we call Irish Nationality". Early life Emmet was born at 109 St. Stephen's Green, in Dublin on 4 March 1778. He was the youngest son of Dr Robert Emmet (1729–1802), physician to the Lord Lieutenant, and his wife, Elizabeth Mason (1739–1803). The Emmets were financially comfortable, members of the Protestant Ascendancy with a house at St Stephen's Green and a country residence near Milltown. Dr. Emmet supported the cause of American independence and was a well-known figure on the fringes of the Irish patriot movement. Theobald Wolfe Tone, a friend of Emmet's elder brother, Thomas Addis Emmet, and an advocate of more radical reform, including Catholic Emancipation, was a visitor to the house. So too, as a friend of his father, was Dr William Drennan, the original proposer of the "benevolent conspiracy--a plot for the people" that was to call itself, at Tone's suggestion, the Society of United Irishmen.