The mortal remains of Theobald Wolfe Tone were discreetly committed to the earth in the family plot at Bodenstown, County Kildare, on Wednesday, June 21, 1798. As few as two and no more than a dozen or so individuals were present at the burial, reflecting the order of Lord Castlereagh, Chief Secretary for Ireland, who had released the body on the \u201cexpress condition that no assemblage of people shall be permitted and that it (the body) be interred in the most private manner.\u201d Castlereagh went to his own grave two decades later, presumably thinking he had succeeded in depriving the enemies of the Crown of the propaganda effect of a martyr\u2019s funeral for Tone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an immediate sense, the British had nothing to worry from Tone\u2019s resting place, as it, and to some extent he, remained in relative obscurity for decades following his death, until two things changed the visibility of Wolfe Tone and his final resting place at Bodenstown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first was the publication, in 1826, of the two-volume Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone<\/em>, a collection of Wolfe Tone\u2019s writing, both private and political, curated by his widow, Matilda, and edited by his son, William. In the aftermath of the failed Rebellion of 1798 and the follow-on effort of Robert Emmet in 1803, Irish Nationalism had been dominated by the charismatic Daniel O\u2019Connell and his successful campaign to pass the Roman Catholic Relief (Emancipation) Act of 1829. The Life of Tone<\/em> provided proponents of physical force Republicanism with a fresh look at the unquestioned brilliance and authenticity of Tone, the man, and a new appreciation for his profound distillations of Enlightenment principles, as applied to British rule in Ireland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second factor that transformed the significance of Bodenstown was another, much shorter but equally powerful literary publication, a poem, published by the Nationalist poet, Thomas Davis, following a visit to Bodenstown in 1843 by Davis and John Gray, proprietor of the Freeman\u2019s Journal. In Tone\u2019s Grave, Davis recounts his visit to the as-yet-unmarked grave of Tone and describes falling asleep on the gravesite, only to be awakened by an assemblage of people, young and old, intent on raising a proper monument to \u201cthe cause and the man so long vanquished and slain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Davis\u2019s poem found a ready audience in the Young Irelanders movement, members of which were chafing at the now-aged O\u2019Connell\u2019s constitutional methods and aversion to physical force. Shortly after the poem was published, Mathilda Tone wrote to Gray, from her home in Washington, D.C., asking him to assist in her \u201clast sad duty\u201d of raising a stone to mark the site where she thought she might soon make her \u201clong last home\u201d with Tone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bodenstown would never be the same. The first marker, commissioned by Davis and the Young Irelanders, was a simple slab. Tone\u2019s legacy subsequently found resonance with the Fenian movement, and Bodenstown began to be a place to be visited. A larger replacement stone was laid in 1873, and a protective iron railing soon followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the centennial of his death in 1898, Tone had come to be widely considered the Father of Irish Republicanism, and annual visits to Bodenstown by the Republican faithful, accompanied with fiery graveside orations, could aptly be called pilgrimages. In June 1913, Patrick Pearse stood at Bodenstown and declared it the \u201choliest place in Ireland\u201d and Tone \u201cthe greatest of Ireland\u2019s dead.\u201d Pilgrimages to Bodenstown and orations at the graveside of Tone continue to this day and in March, travelers on the Hibernian History trip will make their way to Bodenstown to reflect upon the significance of the man and of the place. Lord Castlereagh would surely be horrified.<\/p>\n