592 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 62. mories, and bands of outlaws who had lost hope, but were mischievous and murderous in their despair. It was to the credit of the Irish, that deceived as they had been, their houses burnt, their wives and children massacred, they still spared Sanders, who had been the instrument of their ruin. Desmond was once more offered his own pardon if he would surrender him, but he honourably refused. Some other chiefs might ere long perhaps have been less scrupulous, had not death taken him under a more sure protection. The hard wild life, the exposure in all seasons to wet and cold and hunger, did their work upon a frame too old to en- counter so severe a trial. English rumour said that he was lost in a bog, and died of starvation. 1 O'Sullivan Bere, perhaps desirous of clearing Ireland of the stain of such neglect, says in his memoirs, that the Legate was attacked by dysentery in a peasant's cabin, that he received extreme unction from the Bishop of Killaloe, and was buried by O'Sullivan's own father and three other gentlemen. The embers of the rebellion smouldered for two years more. Desmond and his brothers continued rov- ing through the Munster forests ; while scores of young Irish gentlemen, in passionate hatred of the English dominion, preferred a wild life of outlawry at his side to submission to the oppressors, and one after the other 1 Mendoza confirms this version of Sanders's end, but mentions it con- fessedly only on English authority. 'Tienen aqui,' he wrote, 'por cosa assegurada ser muerto de frio y mal pasar en Irlanda, y que hall a - ron su cuerpo en un bosque con su breviario y Biblia de baxo su bra^o.' Don Bernardino al Rey, i Marzo, 1582 : MSS. Simancas.
