This is a handwritten copy of the last letter Patrick Pearse (1879-1916) wrote to his mother Margaret (1857-1932) before his execution. The letter is not in Pearse's handwriting. In the letter he says goodbye to his mother, siblings and friends, and refers to financial affairs and some poems he has written. He writes that he has received Holy Communion, that he is prepared to die and claims that 'people will say hard things of us now but later on they will praise us.'There is a second letter of Pearse's copied on to the sheet. This is to his brother Willie (1881-1916), whom Pearse had not realised was due to be executed himself. The third section of the sheet contains the text of the poem 'A Mother Speaks', a poem written by Pearse in Arbour Hill Barracks. Although the letter is a copy, it has the stamp of Kilmainham Detention Barracks upon it, and is dated (by the stamp) 3 May 1916. This suggests that the copy was made within the Barracks itself.Patrick Henry Pearse, writer, educationalist, and revolutionary, was born 10 November 1879 at the family home, 27 Great Brunswick Street (latterly Pearse St.) Dublin, the elder son and second of the four children of James Pearse, stone carver and monumental sculptor, originally of London, and his second wife, Margaret (qv), a shop assistant, daughter of Patrick Brady, coal factor, of Dublin. Pearse was a key member of the military council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and was one of the signatories of the proclamation of the Irish republic (largely his own writing), which he read outside the GPO after the outbreak of the Easter Rising. As president of the provisional government, it was Pearse who called the surrender. He was executed on 3 May 1916.