Life

Emmet, eldest son of Robert Emmet, M.D., and elder brother of Thomas Addis and Robert Emmet

Robert Emmet

Robert Emmet was an Irish nationalist and Republican, orator and rebel leader born in Dublin, Ireland...

, was born at Cork

Cork (city)

Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...

 in 1761. He entered the University of Dublin

University of Dublin

The University of Dublin , corporately designated the Chancellor, Doctors and Masters of the University of Dublin , located in Dublin, Ireland, was effectively founded when in 1592 Queen Elizabeth I issued a charter for Trinity College, Dublin, as "the mother of a university" – this date making it...

 in 1775, and obtained a scholarship there in 1778. He was called to the bar in Ireland in 1781, and in that year he married Anne Western Temple, daughter of Robert Temple, an American loyalist who had settled in Ireland. Emmet attained eminence as an advocate; he possessed a highly poetical imagination, remarkably retentive memory, and a vast amount of acquired knowledge of law, divinity, and literature. Under the chancellorship of Lord Lifford

James Hewitt, 1st Viscount Lifford

James Hewitt, 1st Viscount Lifford was an Irish lawyer and judge. He served as Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1767 to 1789.-Background:...

, Emmet was advanced to the rank of King's Counsel in 1787.

His death occurred in February 1788, while he was on circuit in the south of Ireland, and his widow died in the following November.

Works

Emmet's only known writings are a short poem on the myrtle and other trees, and an allegory of thirty-two stanzas of four lines each, entitled The Decree. The latter was written during the administration of, and inscribed to, the Earl of Buckinghamshire

John Hobart, 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire

John Hobart, 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire was an English nobleman and politician.The son of John Hobart, 1st Earl of Buckinghamshire by his first marriage, he was educated at Westminster School and Christ's College, Cambridge. He was Member of Parliament for Norwich from 1747–56, having also been...

, viceroy of Ireland from 1777 to 1780. In these verses Emmet predicted that England's future eminence would be endangered unless she acted justly towards Ireland by annulling harsh laws, and by removing the enactments prohibiting commerce between the Irish and America, which he styled ‘the growing western world.’