27 Facts About Robert Emmet

Robert Emmet was an Irish Republican, orator and rebel leader.

Robert Emmet's memory was invoked by Patrick Pearse who in 1916 was again to proclaim a provisional government in Dublin.

Robert Emmet was the youngest son of Dr Robert Emmet, physician to the Lord Lieutenant, and his wife, Elizabeth Mason.

Dr Robert 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 Robert Emmet's elder brother, Thomas Addis Robert Emmet, and an advocate of more radical reform, including Catholic Emancipation, was a visitor to the house.

Robert Emmet is described by his contemporaries as slight in person; his features were regular, his forehead high, his eyes bright and full of expression, his nose sharp, thin, and straight, the lower part of his face slightly pock-marked, his complexion sallow.

Robert Emmet was persuaded that the First Consul was considering a Channel crossing for August 1803, but that in the contest with England there would be scant consideration for Ireland's interests.

Robert Emmet, according to Hope, realised that "the men of rank and fortune" who had urged him to head a new rising had had ulterior motives, but that, with Russell, he nonetheless placed his confidence in the great mass of the people to rise.

Landreth believes that Robert Emmet was their unwitting instrument, drawn home from Paris for the purpose of organising a premature rising by the calculated misrepresentations of William Putnam McCabe and Arthur O'Connor.

Robert Emmet's evidence is circumstantial, relying not least on Pitt's reputed cynicism in accepting the prospect of a rebellion in 1798 in order to frighten the Irish Parliament into dissolving itself.

Robert Emmet issued a proclamation in the name of the "Provisional Government".

At 11 on the morning of 23 July 1803, Robert Emmet showed men from Kildare an arsenal of pikes, grenades, rockets, and gunpowder-packed hollowed beams.

Unaware that John Allen was approaching with a band, according to one witness, of 300, and shaken by the sight of a lone dragoon being pulled from his horse and piked to death, Robert Emmet told the men to disperse.

Robert Emmet had already stood down sizeable insurgent groups straddling the main suburban roads by pre-arranged signal, a solitary rocket.

Robert Emmet was nonetheless reviled for the prosecution and hanging of William Orr in 1797 and, in the wake of 1798, of several Catholic Defenders.

Robert Emmet fled the city arriving in Rathfarnham with a party of 16 men.

Robert Emmet's instruction was not to offer a defence: he would not call any witnesses, "or to take up the time of the court".

Chief Justice Lord Norbury sentenced Robert Emmet to be hanged, drawn and quartered, as was customary for conviction of treason.

Wickham was persuaded that Robert Emmet had been attempting to save Ireland from "a state of depression and humiliation" and that, had he himself been an Irishman, he "should most unquestionably have joined him".

Robert Emmet's remains were first delivered to Newgate Prison and then back to Kilmainham Gaol, where the jailer was under instructions that if no one claimed them they were to be buried in a nearby hospital's burial grounds called Bully's Acre.

Family tradition has it that in 1804, under cover of the burial of his sister, Mary Anne Holmes, Robert Emmet's remains were removed from Bully's Acre and re-interred in the family vault at St Peter's Church in Aungier Street.

Robert Emmet's rebellion infuriated Lord Castlereagh because he "could not see the change that his own great measure the Union has effected in Ireland".

Robert Emmet eventually served as the New York State Attorney General.

Robert Emmet's descendants helped advance his standing among the Irish diaspora, which in turn may have been one factor in ensuring that he was one among the "ghosts" invoked in the run-up to 1916 Easter Rising.

Robert Emmet was a man unwilling to "surrender of one jot or shred of our claim to freedom even in return for all the blessings of the British peace".

Madden's 1844 Life and Time of Robert Emmet became the standard references.

In one scene, Robert Emmet enters a room as Devlin is holding up his splendid green uniform in front of a mirror.