Though hardly anything is known about the life of 'Blessed' John Felton, a fair amount is known about his death, by execution carried out on August 8th, 1570. His crime was posting a Papal Bull that excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I and released her subjects from any fealty to her. This is because Queen Elizabeth took up the anti-papal baton that Henry VIII had passed (even though it was dropped in the interim by 'Bloody Mary' who'd reverted England to traditional catholicism and murdered hundreds of heretics). Henry's reason for splitting from Roman Catholicism was that the Pope forbade him to divorce his wife or remarry, but Elizabeth's reasons were more complex. Wars were being fought over these matters at this time; when you get down to it having a Church of England not beholden to the Pope made a lot of sense if you wanted to keep more power and funds for your own lands.
Anyway, in the context of the time what John Felton did was indeed seditious. And they had some pretty gruesome ways of doing away with traitors, jesuits and the like, that threatened the new Church and the monarch that stood behind it. Felton was hanged for 'six turns', then beheaded, then 'parboiled' and dismembered. Elizabeth I was not a soft touch!
In 1886 John Felton was beatified by Pope Leo XIII. This means that Catholics are allowed to revere him, but not required to -- he's not a saint, just a local Catholic hero. Even though we know almost nothing about him, except that he was short, of dark complexion, and seemed by turns defiant and freaked out when he faced his executioners, as documented in this free Googlebook, 'A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes..." (http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC01904713&id=1gIKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PP594&lpg=PP594&dq=cobbett%27s+john+Felton)
Pictured is Bermondsey Abbey in Southwark, near where John Felton lived in the dead center of London -- briefly excavated before being paved over again by developers in early 2006.
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