Blds John Amias & Robert Dalby, Martyrs

From Fr Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints:

John Amias (or Anne) and Robert Dalby were two Yorkshire men who, after being educated in the Douai College at Rheims, were ordained priests, were sent on the English mission, and suffered death together in 1589. Amias, a widower and formerly a clothmonger at Wakefield, had ministered for seven or eight years in England before he was captured, whereas Dalby, who had been a Protestant minister, had only come back to England the year before he was apprehended. Not much detail as to their labours seems to be extant, but we have a graphic description of their death in Dr Champney's manuscript history as quoted by Challoner. He says : " This year on March 16, John Amias and Robert Dalby, priests of the College of Doway, suffered in York as in cases of high treason, for no other cause but that they were priests ordained by the authority of the See of Rome, and had returned into England and exercised there their priestly functions for the benefit of the souls of their neighbours. I was myself an eye-witness of the glorious combat of these holy men, being at that time a young man in the twentieth year of my age ; and I returned home confirmed by the sight of their constancy and meekness in the Catholic faith, which by God's grace I then followed. For there visibly appeared in those holy servants of God so much meekness, joined with a singular constancy, that you would easily say that they were lambs led to the slaughter."

After describing the execution Dr Champney adds : " The sheriff's men were very watchful to prevent the standers by from gathering any of their blood or carrying off anything that had belonged to them. Yet one, who appeared to me to be a gentlewoman, going up to the place where their bodies were in quartering, and not without difficulty making her wray through the crowd, fell down upon her knees before the multitude, and with her hands joined and eyes lifted up to heaven, declared an extraordinary motion and affection of soul. She spoke also some words, which I could not hear for the tumult and noise. Immediately a clamour was raised against her as an idolatress, and she was drove away ; but whether or no she was carried to prison, I could not certainly understand."

See MMP., pp. 152-153, and J. II. Pollen, Acts of English Martyrs, pp. 329-331.