Lieutenant John Felton (c. 1595 – 29 November 1628) was an English army officer who assassinated George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham by stabbing him to death in the Greyhound Pub at Portsmouth on 23 August 1628.

Charles I of England trusted Buckingham, who made himself rich in the process but proved a failure at foreign and military policy.

His father, Thomas Felton, prospered as a pursuivant, one appointed to the task of hunting down those who refused to attend Anglican church services.

Thomas died around 1611, while he was imprisoned in the Fleet Prison for debt, although his widow was later able to secure a £100 per annum pension from the crown.

He served in the Cádiz Expedition of 1625, an attempt to capture the Spanish city of Cadiz that was backed by Buckingham.

[3] In May or June 1627 Felton petitioned to be appointed a captain on Buckingham's military expedition of 1627, part of the Anglo-French War of 1627 to 1629.

[3] The expedition was a disaster for the English; the troops were ill-supplied and lacked the large artillery needed for the siege they laid at Saint-Martin-de-Ré.

[citation needed] 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.

By August 1628 Felton had come to believe that his personal grievances against Buckingham were part of a larger picture of treacherous and wicked governance of England by the Duke.

He missed a chance of escape in the ensuing chaos and shortly after the murder he presented himself before the crowd that had gathered and, expecting to be well received, announced his guilt.

[3] 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.

[3] A poem by the Oxford scholar and cleric Zouch Townley claimed that Felton had saved England and King Charles from the corruption of Buckingham's politicking.

[13] A rotten member, that can have no cure, Must be cut off to save the body sureOther works contrasted the Duke, who was claimed to be popish, cowardly, effeminate and corrupt, with Felton, who was described as Protestant, brave, manly and virtuous.

[14] The son of Alexander Gill the Elder was sentenced to a fine of £2,000 and the removal of his ears after being overheard drinking to the health of Felton and stating that Buckingham had joined King James I in hell.

[3] 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.

[19] Felton's assassination of the Duke was fictionalised in Alexandre Dumas, père's The Three Musketeers (1844) and features in several film adaptations of the novel.

[citation needed] The 2024 television miniseries Mary and George depicts the Duke's assassination at the climax of the final episode; Felton is portrayed by Robert Lonsdale.