Saunders, NICHOLAS

Saunders, NICHOLAS, polemical writer, was born in 1527 of a good old Surrey family at Charlwood Place near Reigate, and from Winchester passed to New College, Oxford, being admitted scholar in 1546, and fellow in 1548. Regius professor of Common Law (1558), in 1561 he resigned his fellowship and quitted England, at Rome was created D.D. and ordained priest, and thereafter accompanied Cardinal Hosius to the Council of Trent, 'where he showed himself to be a man of great parts by his several disputations and arguments.' He had lived at Louvain for some thirteen years as professor of Theology, and had paid two visits to Spain (1573-77), when in 1579 he landed in Ireland; and here in 1580, 1582, or 1583 (all three dates are given) he 'died,' says Lord Burghley, 'wandering in the mountains, and raving in a phrensy.' Saunders, who is to Protestants what Foxe is to Catholics, was the author of fourteen works (1565-1610), of which the best known are De Visibili Monarchia Ecclesiæ (1571) and De Origine ac Progressu Schismatis Anglicani, edited and completed by Edward Rishton (Cologne, 1585). See the translation of the latter by D. Lewis (1877).