Robert Emmet was born in Dublin in 1778 and was a playmate and schoolfellow of Thomas Moore, the poet. His brother, Thomas Addis Emmet, born in 1764, was involved in the revolution of 1798 and fled to America, where he became eminent at the bar of New York, serving at one time as attorney-general of that State. He left several sons and grandsons.
When Robert Emmet escaped, after the failure of his foolish attack upon the castle, he took refuge among friends in the Wicklow Hills, south of Dublin, to await an opportunity to cross over to France. Against their protests he went at night to say good-by to his sweetheart, Sarah Curran, daughter of the famous advocate, was arrested and tried for high treason. He conducted his own defense with extraordinary ability. His closing speech stands as one of the greatest examples of eloquence in the English language. He was condemned to death and hanged outside of St. Catherine's Church, upon the spot where Lord Kilwarden, an eminent judge of the highest integrity, was killed by some of Emmet's men while returning with his nephew and daughter from a visit to the country.
Emmet, in his farewell speech, asked that his epitaph should not be written until Ireland was free, and that undoubtedly suggested the popular belief that his burial place is known and will be disclosed in due time.
Sarah Curran died soon after in Sicily of a broken heart, and Tom Moore, one of Emmet's most beloved friends and also devoted to Miss Curran, enshrined the pathetic story in a touching ballad:
"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers are round her sighing; But coldly she turns from their gaze and weeps, For her heart on his grave is lying.
"She sings the wild songs of her native plains, Every note which he loved awaking; Ah! little they think, who delight in her strains, How the heart of the minstrel is breaking."
Near by the place where Emmet and his fellow conspirators planned the revolution of 1803, is No. 151 Thomas Street, the house in which Lord Edward Fitzgerald, leader of the insurrection of 1798, was captured after desperate struggle, and it is a curious coincidence that he and Emmet should both have been arrested by the same man, a certain Major Sirr, in command of a regiment at the castle. Lord Edward's refuge was the house of a tailor who sympathized with the insurrection, as almost every other artisan in Ireland did, and sheltered him for several days before the arrest. The house is marked with a tablet and an appropriate inscription. Lord Edward was wounded in the shoulder by Major Sirr and carried away to prison, where he died before he could be brought into court.