SANDERS, NICHOLAS (c. 153o-1581), Roman Catholic agent and historian, born about 153o at Charlwood, Surrey, was a son of William Sanders, once sheriff of Surrey, who was de scended from the Sanders of Sanderstead. Educated at Win chester and New College, Oxford, he was elected fellow in 1548 and graduated B.C.L. in 1551. Soon after Elizabeth's accession he went to Rome where he was befriended by Pole's confidant, Cardinal Morone ; he also owed much to the generosity of Sir Francis Englefield (q.v.). He was ordained priest at Rome, and was, even before the end of 155o, mentioned as a likely candidate for the cardinal's hat. For the next few years he was employed by Cardinal Hosius, the learned Polish prelate, in his efforts to check the spread of heresy in Poland, Lithuania and Prussia. In 1565, like many other English exiles, he made his headquarters at Lou vain, and after a visit to the Imperial Diet at Augsburg in 1566, he threw himself into the literary controversy between Bishop Jewel (q.v.) and Harding.
His expectations of the cardinalate were disappointed by Pius V.'s death in 1572, and Sanders spent the next few years at Madrid trying to embroil Philip II., who gave him a pension of 30o ducats, in open war with Elizabeth. Sanders found his op
portunity in 1579, when a force of Spaniards and Italians was despatched to Smerwick to assist James Fitzmaurice and his Geraldines in stirring up an Irish rebellion. The Spaniards were, however, annihilated by Lord Grey in 158o, and after nearly two years of wandering in Irish woods and bogs Sanders died of cold and starvation in the spring of 1581.
The writings of Sanders have been the basis of all Roman Catholic histories of the English Reformation. The most impor tant was his De Origine ac Progressu schismatis Anglicani, which was continued after 1558 by Edward Rishton, and printed at Cologne in 1585; it has been often re-edited and translated, the best English edition being that by David Lewis (London, 1877).
See Lewis's Introduction (i877) ; Calendars of Irish, Foreign and Spanish State Papers, and of the Carew MSS.; Knox's Letters of Cardinal Allen; T. F. Kirby's Winchester Scholars; R. Bagwell's Ire land under the Tudors; A. 0. Meyer's England and die katholische Kirche enter Konigin Elisabeth (19Io) ; the Catholic Encyclopaedia; and T. G. Law in Dict. Nat. Biogr. i. 259-261 with bibl.