John Southworth (c. 1592, Lancashire, England - 28 June 1654, Tyburn, London) was an English Catholic martyr.

In 1585 a law had been passed branding as treasonable any priest who dared to come back to England.

Southworth was ordained priest before he returned to England 13 October 1619,[2] where he remained until 1624,[1] when he was then recalled to serve as chaplain to Benedictine nuns in Brussels.

[3] After about a year, he returned to Lancashire, where he was arrested in 1627 and imprisoned in Lancaster Castle along with Edmund Arrowsmith.

He was sentenced to death for professing the Catholic faith, but in 1630, at the insistence of Queen Henrietta Maria, he and seventeen others were delivered to the French ambassador and deported to France.

He and Henry Morse ministered to the sick in Westminster,[5] and raised money for the families of victims.

Southworth was arrested again in November 1637 and sent to the Gatehouse Prison and again transferred to The Clink, where he remained for three years.