The Grave of Robert Emmet Robert Emmet was born on 4 March 1778 in Dublin, and was executed for high treason in that city on 20 September 1803. Emmet's corpse subsequently to all intents and purposes disappearted, and the whereabouts of his final resting place is one of the abiding mysteries of Irish history. The romantic and tragic features of Emmet's short life ensure that his story will live on in the popular imagination. Who can forget, for example, Emmet's grief-stricken fiancée, Sarah Curran, harshly treated by her father who opposed the match, and the subject of Moore's song, 'She is Far From the Land'? Or Emmet's loyal servant Anne Devlin, who endured torture in Kilmainham Gaol without giving information to the authorities? Interest in Emmet has of course quickened during 2003, the bicentenary of his Rising. Very few would be prepared to deny that Emmet's 1803 Rising was an ill-organised and chaotic affair, a tragic postscript to the more formidable Rebellion of 1798. When Emmet sallied forth on the evening of 23 July 1803 in military uniform, his follwers proved to be little more than a disorganised rabble, notwithstanding his grand military plans. Emmet quickly realised that he had inadequate support for a rising and attempted to disperse the rebels. Some ignored him and set off on what was in effect a Dublin mob riot, although one which was more serious than usual because of its scale, the use of arms and its political intent. The Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden, was brutally murdered in his coach, and after some hours the military managed to scatter the rebels still in arms, with a number of fatalities. Emmet was not the authorities' chief target, and having moved his hiding place from Rathfarnham to Harold's Cross, he was captured at a house there on 25 August. In Kilmainham Gaol Emmet endeavoured to plan an escape, but Dr Edward Trevor, nominally the prison physician but effectively the governor, was aware of the plan and effectively strung the unfortunate prisoner along. To add to Emmet's misfortunes, he chose as one of his lawyer Leonard McNally, a spy in the government service. It is facts such as these which are used to support the hypothesis that the whole of Emmet's Rising was a carefully orchestrated government plot to flush out the neutrailse the remnants of the United Irishmen, but it has to be said that his case it not proven. Emmet was tried at Green Street Courthouse in Dublin (still is use as the Special Criminal Court) on 19 September, the trial being presided over by Lord Norbury, the Chief Justice. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty of high treason, and before sentence of death was pronounced, Emmet was allowed deliever his justly celebrated speech from the dock, although not without some interruptions from Norbury. Emmet closed his remarkable speech with resounding words which have a direct bearing on the mystery of his burial place:  I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world: it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph, for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me rest in obscruity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, and my memory in oblivion, until other times and other men can do do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth,then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written I have done.
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