After his last overthrow by Sir Edmund Butler, Fitzmaurice no longer attempted to make head, but sued for pardon and leave to serve her Majesty in some other country, offering at the same time to disclose the chief instigators of his revolt. He had still eighty kerne with him, and found no difficulty in feeding his men either in Aherlow or in the wild district between Macroom and Glengariffe. Perrott, who wished to hunt out rather than pardon him, watched the ports so carefully as to frustrate many attempts at evasion. At least one important emissary fell into the Lord President's hands in the person of Edmond O'Donnell, a Jesuit, who brought letters from Gregory XIII. to Fitzmaurice, and who was afterwards hanged, drawn, and quartered at Cork. The pursuit of the arch-rebel himself failed for want of provisions. The President was very much against the established system of governing 'by intreaty,' and his object was to make people fear him, 'so that they be not kept in servile fear.' The Queen sent letters of thanks to Lords Clancare, Barrymore, Fermoy, and Lixnaw, to Sir Thomas of Desmond, and to Sir Donough and Sir Cormac MacTeige MacCarthy; and in the end, fearing lest he should escape to Spain, Perrott thought it desirable to accept the submission of Fitzmaurice. He appeared accordingly at Kilmallock, the town which had suffered so much and so lately at his hands, accompanied by the seneschal of Imokilly and other chief rebels. The suppliants knelt on both knees, or, according to one account, even lay prostrate, and the President held the point of his naked sword at Fitzmaurice's breast. 'Holding their hands joined and cast upwards, and with countenances bewraying their great sorrow and fervent repentance for their former life,' they confessed their sins in Irish. Fitzmaurice repeated the confession in English, owning himself the rankest traitor alive, and vowing to use his sword for ever after only in her Majesty's service. As if to throw a shade of ridicule upon the whole thing, Fitzmaurice absurdly declared that he was allured by Clancare and Sir Edmund Butler. But Perrott was forced to be content, and had similar ceremonies performed in other towns, the inferior traitors wearing halters round their necks. Fitzmaurice gave up one of his sons as a hostage, but it was arranged that he himself should be set at liberty in case the Queen refused to accept his submission. She was glad to find an excuse for saving money in Munster, or anywhere else; and Perrott, with the strange inconsistency he sometimes showed, soon persuaded himself that Fitzmaurice had really seen the error of his ways, and would prove 'a second St. Paul.'[236] [Sidenote: Desmond and his brother in the Tower, and harshly treated, 1568.]