JOSEPH PLUNKETT

Description

JOSEPH PLUNKETT. IRISH REVOLUTIONARY. EXECUTED 1916.

Joseph Plunkett was one of the seven signatories of the Irish Proclamation.

Following the surrender, Plunkett was held in Kilmainham Gaol and faced a court-martial. Seven hours before his execution by firing squad at the age of 28, he was married in the prison chapel to his sweetheart Grace Gifford, a Protestant convert to Catholicism, whose sister, Muriel, had years before also converted and married his best friend Thomas MacDonagh, who was also executed for his role in the Easter Rising

Brief summery of Joseph Plunkett during the 1916 Easer Rising.
From the Wiki:
Plunkett was one of the original members of the IRB Military Committee that were responsible for planning the Easter Rising, and it was largely his plan that was followed. Shortly before the rising was to begin, Plunkett was hospitalized following a turn for the worse in his health. He had an operation on his neck glands days before Easter and had to struggle out of bed to take part in what was to follow. Still bandaged, he took his place in the General Post Office with several other of the rising’s leaders such as Patrick Pearse and Tom Clarke, though his health prevented him from being active. His energetic aide de camp was Michael Collins.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE EASTER RISING:

In 1916, in a rebellion known as the Easter Rising, a small group of uniformed and organized but poorly armed Irish patriots took on the might of the British Empire and sought to end 800 years of subjugation and oppression.
 Although outnumbered, for twelve extraordinary days in May 1916, they fought the British army to a standstill until finally forced to surrender as prisoners of war. 
Most were promptly executed without mercy and with their executions the Irish people, who initially had rejected them as hopeless dreamers and troublemakers, were so outraged by these brutal murders that they rose in huge numbers against the British and eventually succeeded, after years of armed struggle and massive help from the Irish diaspora in America, in ejecting the British and declaring independence.