Blessed John Felton

John Felton (fl. before 1566 - died 8 August 1570) was an English Catholic martyr, executed during the reign of Elizabeth I. Felton was arrested for fixing a copy of Pope Pius V's bull Regnans in Excelsis excommunicating Queen Elizabeth, to the gates of the Bishop of London's palace near St. Paul's. Almost all of what is known about Felton's background comes from the narrative of his daughter, Frances Salisbury. The manuscript that holds her story has a blank where his age should be, but it does say that he was a wealthy man of Norfolk ancestry, who lived at Bermondsey Abbey near Southwark. Bermondsey was a mansion built the generation before on the site of and out of the materials of a great Cluniac monastery. He "was a man of stature little and of complexion black". His wife had been a playmate of Elizabeth I, a maid-of-honour to Queen Mary and the widow of one of Mary's auditors (a legal official of the papal court). John Felton was a well-known Catholic, and the father of Thomas Felton (born 1566). Felton was arrested for fixing a copy of Pope Pius V's bull Regnans in Excelsis ("reigning on high"), excommunicating Queen Elizabeth, to the gates of the Bishop of London's palace near St. Paul's. Elizabeth and her ministers were by no means indifferent to the potential political effects of the papal bull. In the Europe of the sixteenth century there were still Catholic powers who might be ready to execute the sentence of deposition that was in those days the corollary of excommunication. Posting the copy of the bull was a significant act of treason as the document, which released Elizabeth's subjects from their allegiance, needed to be promulgated in England before it could take legal effect. The deed brought about the end of the previous policy of tolerance towards those Catholics who were content occasionally to attend their parish church while keeping their true beliefs to themselves.