Wolfe Tone
Theobald Wolfe Tone, posthumously known as
Wolfe Tone (; 20 June 176319 November 1798), was a revolutionary exponent of Irish independence and is an iconic figure in
Irish republicanism. Convinced that, so long as his fellow
Protestants feared to make common cause with the
Catholic majority, the
British Crown would continue to govern
Ireland in the interest of
England and of its
client aristocracy, in 1791 Tone helped form the
Society of United Irishmen. Although received in the company of a
Catholic delegation by the
King and
his ministers in London, Tone, with other United Irish leaders, despaired of constitutional reform. Fuelled by the popular grievances of rents, tithes and taxes, and driven by
martial-law repression, the society developed as an insurrectionary movement. When, in the early summer of 1798, it broke into open
rebellion, Tone was in exile soliciting assistance from the
French Republic. In October 1798, on his second attempt to land in Ireland with French troops and supplies, he was taken prisoner. Sentenced to be hanged, he died from a reportedly self-inflicted wound.
Since the mid-nineteenth century, his name has been invoked, and his legacy disputed, by different factions of
Irish Republicanism. These have held annual, but separate, commemorations at his graveside in
Bodenstown,
County Kildare.
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