Wolfe Tone

Theobald Wolfe Tone, posthumously known as Wolfe Tone, 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.

20 June 1763

Born on the same birth day (20 June): Alexander Winton • Anne Murray • Bob King (athlete) • Daniel Sawyer • Gail Patrick • Ludwig Scotty • Luigi Amat di San Filippo e Sorso • Old Style and New Style dates • Saki Aibu • Terence Young (director)

Born in the same month (June 1763): Franz Danzi • José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva • Kobayashi Issa • Pierre Paul Royer-Collard • Étienne Méhul