Three persons who had been treacherously given up to the Viceroy, were spared for special torments; those were—­a priest named Lawrence, an Englishman named William Willick, and Oliver Plunket.  They were offered liberty if they would renounce the faith; but on their resolute refusal, their legs and arms were broken in three places, and after they had been allowed to pass that night and the next day in torment, they were hanged and quartered.  The State Papers confirm the account given by Saunders of these barbarities.  The English officers now endeavoured to rival each other in acts of cruelty to obtain official commendation and royal favour.  Sir Walter Raleigh was especially active in Cork, and brought a charge of treason against the Barrys and Roches, old English settlers; but Barry set fire to his castle, and took to the woods, where he joined Lord Desmond.  Lord Roche was taken prisoner, but eventually escaped from his persecutors.  Pretended plots were rumoured in all directions, and numbers of innocent persons were executed.  William Burke was hanged in Galway, and forty-five persons were executed.  The Geraldine cause was reduced to the lowest ebb by the treachery of Jose.  The Earl of Desmond and his sons were fugitives in their own country.  The latter was offered pardon if he would surrender Dr. Saunders, the Papal Legate, but this he resolutely refused.  Saunders continued his spiritual ministrations until he was entirely worn out with fatigue, and he died, at the close of the year 1581, in a miserable hovel in the woods of Claenglass.  He was attended by the Bishop of Killaloe, from whom he received the last rites of the Church.

Immense rewards were now offered for the capture of the Geraldine leaders, but their faithful followers would not be bribed.  John was at length seized, through the intervention of a stranger.  He was wounded in the struggle, and died immediately after; but his enemies wreaked their vengeance on his remains, which were gibbeted at Cork.  The Earl of Desmond was assassinated on the 11th of November, 1583, and the hopeless struggle terminated with his death.  He had been hunted from place to place like a wild beast, and, according to Hooker, obliged to dress his meat in one place, to eat it in another, and to sleep in a third.  He was surprised, on one occasion, while his soldiers were cooking their mid-day meal, and five-and-twenty of his followers were put to the sword; but he escaped, and fled to Kerry, where he was apprehended ended and slain.  His head was sent to Elizabeth, and impaled on London-bridge, according to the barbarous practice of the time.  His body was interred in the little chapel of Kilnamaseagh, near Castleisland.  Complaints of the extreme severity of Lord Grey’s administration had been sent to the English court.  Even English subjects declared that he had “left her Majesty little to reign over but carcasses and ashes.”  He was therefore recalled.  The administration was confided to Loftus, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, and Sir Henry Wallope, and an amnesty was proclaimed.  Sir Thomas Norreys was appointed Governor of Munster, and Sir Richard Bingham, Governor of Connaught.  In 1584 Sir John Perrot was made Deputy, and commenced his career by executing Beg O’Brien, who had taken an active part in the late insurrections, at Limerick, with a refinement of cruelty, as “a warning to future evil-doers.”