John Felton (assassin)

John Felton (assassin)

John Felton (c. 1595 - 28 October 1628) was a lieutenant in the English army who stabbed George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham to death in Portsmouth on 23 August 1628.

Felton had been wounded in the duke's disastrously managed military expedition of 1627 against the French at La Rochelle and he held a personal grudge against his victim who, he believed, had corruptly withheld some of his pay and deprived him advancement.

Buckingham was hugely unpopular in the land for the national disgrace of defeat by the French although, with the help of the king, Charles I, he had avoided legal moves against him by Parliament for corruption and incompetence. Shortly after the murder Felton presented himself before the crowd that had gathered and, expecting to be well received, announced his guilt. He was immediately arrested and taken before magistrates, who sent him to London for interrogation.

The privy council attempted to have Felton questioned under torture on the rack, but the judges resisted, unanimously declaring its use to be contrary to the laws of England. [cite book|last=Jardine|first=David|title=A Reading on the Use of Torture in the Criminal Law of England|publisher=Baldwin and Cradock|location=London|date=1837|pages=pp 10-12] While awaiting trial his actions were widely celebrated in poems and pamphlets, but the process of law took its course and he was hanged at Tyburn on 28 October 1628. In a miscalculation by authorities, his body was sent back to Portsmouth for exhibition where, rather than becoming a lesson in disgrace, it was made an object of veneration.

Fictionalizations

Felton's assassination of the Duke was fictionalized in Alexandre Dumas, père's "The Three Musketeers". In Dumas's novel, Felton is a young soldier under Lord de Winter's command who is entrusted to guard the fictional Milady de Winter. Milady's master, Cardinal Richelieu, has ordered her to murder Buckingham so that he will not aid the Huguenot cause in the Protestant city of La Rochelle. As they question each other she puts on a façade of sorrow and broken innocence, even pretending to be a Puritan like Felton, and making up stories and anecdotes that demonise the duke. Milady manages to seduce Felton in a matter of days. They finally escape together and Felton is sent to stab the duke, which he still justifies on the grounds of his lack of promotion. Felton realizes that he has been deceived when Milady sails away without him and he is left to be hanged for his crime.

The Duke's assassination features in Philippa Gregory's novel "Earthly Joys".

References

*Alastair Bellany, "John Felton", in the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography".
*Alastair Bellany, "Libel in Action: Ritual, Subversion and the English Literary Underground, 1603-1642" in Tim Harris, "The Politics of the Excluded, c. 1500-1800" (2001), contains a section about public responses to the assassination.
* [http://www.memorials.inportsmouth.co.uk/churches/cathedral/buckingham.htm Memorials & Monuments in Portsmouth Cathedral: The Duke of Buckingham]

External links

* D'Israeli, Isaac. [http://www.spamula.net/col/archives/2005/11/felton_the_poli.html "Felton, the Political Assassin"] , "Curiosities of Literature"


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