In the autumn of 1792 when Tone was working strenuously for the Catholic cause, Emmet gave him invaluable help. His pen was ever ready to assist Tone’s in preparing replies on the Catholic side to the bigotry of the Grand Juries, or drawing up addresses in which the Catholic position was admirably stated. But he did all this work in the shade, so to speak, neither seeking nor desiring any reward for it.

We have already learned from Tone how fully Emmet entered into the scheme for enlisting French aid towards Irish independence, which Tone carried with him on his departure for America in the early summer of 1795. The “charming villa” which Emmet occupied then at Rathfarnham and “the little study of an elliptical form” which he was building at the bottom of his lawn, and the “little triangular field” on the way between Rathfarnham and Dublin became, from the meeting of the three friends, Emmet and Russell and Tone, and the solemn pledge wherewith they bound themselves to each other, among the “holy places” of Irish history.

On March 12th, 1798, Government which had already been long in complete possession of the plans of the United Irishmen, through the treachery of Thomas Reynolds and others, and had allowed them to develop as suited its own purposes, suddenly swooped down on the leaders. The arrest of the country deputies at the house of Oliver Bond was followed the same day by the apprehension of Emmet, Dr. MacNevin, Jackson (Bond’s father-in-law) and John Sweetman at their several abodes.

Jane Emmet had just tucked her little ones into their cots and given them their good-night kiss, when Alderman Carletown and his escort of soldiers invaded the quiet house in Stephen’s Green to carry off her children’s father. The loud knocking at the door, the peremptory demand for admission “in the king’s name” which heralded the entrance of those unbidden guests heralded also the closing of the peaceful happy years of Jane Emmet’s young wifehood and maternity. A new life was opening up before her, full of sorrows, and hardships and privations, and the gently nurtured lady was to discover in the reserves of her character the unsuspected materials of a heroine.

The call which roused the heroine in her was brutal enough. In the search which the soldiers immediately instituted all through the house in quest of documents the nursery was not spared. The children were roughly roused from their sleep, and we may judge of the impression produced in them by the fact that as long as they lived they never forgot it. Thomas Addis Emmet, jun., was only a year-old baby when his father was arrested; he was an old man when Dr. Madden knew him, but he remembered, as if it had been but yesterday, how, waking suddenly, he saw a number of soldiers standing at the window with fixed bayonets presented at him and the little brother who was his bed fellow. Nor was this the only occasion on which the nursery was invaded by the gallant yeomanry. John Patten Emmet told his son, the present Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, that after his father’s arrest, the house was frequently searched by the military for the seal of the United Irishmen. During one of these searches he and his little brothers were wakened by a bright light in the nursery, and became greatly frightened on seeing a soldier stand guard within the door. “As soon as the man saw the child was awake, with the instinct of a brute he pointed his musket at him as if about to shoot. The children naturally got under the bed-clothing as quickly as possible, and in their terror did not dare to move, being more dead than alive, until the soldiers had left the house and their grandmother could come to them.”[[71]]

[71]. “The Emmet Family,” pp. 64-65. The seal, which was designed by Robert Emmet, and is still in the possession of the Emmet family, was carried by Mrs. T. A. Emmet on her person during the whole time Government was in search of it.

The poor grandmother had to take for the frightened children the place of both father and mother. The father after being brought to the Castle, was committed to Newgate where about twenty of the other leaders were confined. Here his wife managed to gain admission to him—“by stealth,” and “against the most positive orders,” as Lord Castlereagh told Lady Louisa Connolly when, a couple of months later, she sought permission for Pamela to see Lord Edward. “The cell in which Thomas Addis Emmet was confined,” we learn from Dr. Madden, was about twelve feet square. Jane Emmet managed to secrete herself in this wretched abode for some days, one of the turnkeys who had charge of Emmet’s cell being privy to her concealment. Her husband shared his scanty allowance with her; and there a lady, bred in the lap of luxury, accustomed to all the accommodations that are possessed by one in her sphere in life, used to all the comforts of a happy home, familiarised to the affectionate care and kind attentions of an amiable family, daily blessed with the smiling faces of her dear children—“one who had slept with full content about her bed, and never waked but to a joyful morning”—shared the dungeon of her husband: its gloom, its dreary walls, its narrow limits, its dismal aspect—things and subjects for contemplation which her imagination a few weeks before would have sickened at the thought of—were now endured as if they affected her not; her husband was there, and everything else in this world, except her fears for his safety and for separation from him, were forgotten; her acts said to him:

“Thou to me

Art all things under heaven, all places thou.”

“The gaoler at length discovered that Mrs. Emmet was an inmate of her husband’s cell. She was immediately ordered to quit the place; but to the astonishment of the officers of the prison who were not accustomed to have their orders disobeyed, she told them ‘her mind was made up’ to remain with her husband, and she would not leave the prison. The gaoler, whom Emmet speaks of as a man of unfeeling and ruffianly deportment, stood awestricken before a feeble, helpless creature whom he had only to order one of his myrmidons to tear from the arms of her husband, and his bidding would have been obeyed. The power of a brave-spirited woman is seldom put forth that it does not triumph.... The gaoler retired; and Emmet was given to understand that the man had orders from his superiors not to employ force, but the first time that Mrs. Emmet left the prison she was not to be permitted to return. No such opportunity for her exclusion was afforded by that lady. She continued to share her husband’s captivity for many months. But once in that time she left the prison and then only to visit her sick child, when she appealed to the wife of the gaoler ‘as the mother of a family’ to take pity on her wretchedness, struggling as she was between her duty to her husband and the yearnings of nature towards her sick child.... It cheers one to find that this appeal was not made in vain. At midnight this woman conducted Mrs. Emmet through the apartments of the gaoler to the street. The following night, after remaining with her child at the house of Dr. Emmet during the day, she returned to the gaol, gained admittance by the same means, and “was on the point of entering her husband’s cell when one of the keepers discovered her; but too late to exclude her from prison. From that time she availed herself no more of the same facility for leaving or entering prison. During her absence her room had been visited by one of the keepers, a not infrequent occurrence; the curtains had been drawn round the bed, some bundles of clothing placed under the coverlid, and the keeper was requested to tread lightly, as Mrs. Emmet was suffering from headache. Shortly after this occurrence Emmet and MacNevin were removed to Kilmainham, and Mrs. Emmet found means to gain access to her husband, and the authorities connived at her sojourn in his dungeon.”[[72]]