On the 23rd of July all was confusion at the depots, and the leaders were divided as to the course to be pursued; orders were not obeyed; a trusted messenger despatched for arms absconded with the money committed to him to pay for them; treachery, quite unsuspected by Emmet, honeycombed the conspiracy; the Wicklow contingent failed to appear; the Kildare men turned back on hearing that the rising had been postponed; a signal expected by a contingent at the Broadstone was never given.
After hiding for some days in the Wicklow mountains Emmet repaired to the house of a Mrs Palmer at Harold's Cross, in order to be near the residence of John Philpot Curran, to whose daughter Sarah he had for some time been secretly attached, and with whom he had carried on a voluminous correspondence, afterwards seized by the authorities at her father's house.
He fled, in all probability to the coast of Wicklow, and encountered a vessel which was engaged in the export of Irish wolf-dogs.
Tradition associates his name with the mountains of Wicklow, and we are told that he retired to the land of the Picts in North Britain, where he died.
Patrick landed at Inverdea, the mouth of the river Vartry in Wicklow, but we are not informed as to any of his doings in Leinster at this period.