Tone, William Henry (1764–1802), East India Company and mercenary soldier, was born in August 1764, second son in the family of four sons and two daughters of Peter Tone (d. 1805), a coachmaker of Stafford St., Dublin, and his wife Margaret (d. 1818?), daughter of a ship's captain in the West India trade, probably James Lamport (d. 1748?) of Dublin. The eldest son was Theobald Wolfe Tone (qv). At 14 he was apprenticed to a bookseller, but reading travel accounts and military history increased his sense of adventure and so at sixteen he went to London and entered the East India Company's service as a private soldier. Embarking for Madras, he got no further than St Helena, where he remained until the period of his engagement expired, when he returned to Europe (1787). For the next few years he may have lived intermittently with his parents at Bodenstown, Co. Kildare, where Peter Tone by then was farming; in 1790 he was living nearby at Prosperous with his brother Mathew (d. 1798), who was working at the cotton manufactory started there by Robert Brooke (qv) in the late 1770s. (Brooke was connected with the East India Company and became governor of St Helena in 1787.)
On 20 February 1790 Tone again left Ireland in an unsuccessful attempt to reach India. Eventually, on 14 February 1792, he left for India never to return to Ireland. Disembarking at Madras, he served the company with such distinction – he quelled a sepoy mutiny – that he obtained an early discharge and recommendations, moved to Calcutta and got a commission in the artillery of the nizam of Hyderabad, which, however, he had to resign after the outbreak of war between England and France, the nizam's European officers being all French. He then entered the service of the peshwa of Poona, head of the Mahratta polity and under English influence. By January 1797 he was second in command of the infantry with a stipend of about £750 sterling a year. William Henry Tone made a reputation as an authority on the Mahrattas with his A letter to an officer on the Madras establishment, being an attempt to illustrate some particular institutions of the Mahratta people, principally relative to their system of war and finance (Bombay, 1798). It was reprinted in London (1799 and 1800), German and French translations followed (1801, 1820), and another edition was brought out in India (Calcutta, 1818).
After his brother Theobald's death, he undertook to provide for his widow and children, having already sent £233 sterling (December 1800), but his own death soon intervened. He assisted Lakwa Dáda in the defence of Sounda (3 May 1801), was captured and released, then retired to the territory of Jeswant Rao Holkar. Serving under Holkar he was killed in 1802 by a bullet in the right temple in the storming of a fort near Choli Mahéswur (now in Madhya Pradesh state). He was buried just outside Poona in a small Christian graveyard for officers in the peshwa's service.