Regardless of his actual name, on 22 June 1580, a widower calling himself “John Amias” entered the English College at Rheims to study for the priesthood. He was ordained a priest in Rheims Cathedral on 25 March 1581. On 5 June of that year Amias, set out for Paris and then England, as a missionary, in the company of another priest, Edmund Sykes. Of his missionary life we know little. Towards the end of 1588 he was seized at the house of a Mr Murton at Melling in Lancashire and imprisoned in York Castle. Given the 1585 Act making it a capital offence to be a Catholic priest in England the sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering was inevitable. It was carried out outside the city of York on 16 March 1589. Amias was beginning to address the assembled people, and explain that it was for religion, and not treason, that he suffered, but was not allowed to proceed.[2]
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Regarding freedom of religion: John Amias and the other British martyrs suffered horribly for practicing their Faith. May they intercede for individuals who are persecuted for their religion. All military members’ exemptions from the COVID vaccines have been denied.