This week’s Monday Martyr is Catholic martyr John Cornelius, who was executed for treason, for being a priest and returning to England as a priest, on 3rd or 4th July 1594, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

John Cornelius, who had Irish parents, was born in Bodmin in Cornwall in around 1557. Under the patronage of Sir John Arundell of Lanherne, Cornelius was educated at Oxford University, but was expelled due to his Catholic faith in August 1578. In 1579, he travelled to the English College at Rheims, in France, and then on to the English College in Rome, where he was ordained in 1583.