Sutton was born in Burton-on-Trent sometime between 1543 and 1545,[1] and baptised in St Modwen's Parish Church on 11 September 1545.

With his younger brother Abraham, who matriculated from Hart Hall in 1576, aged 25, he arrived at Douai, 23 March 1576.

[4] He is celebrated in the Roman Catholic diocese of Nottingham with an optional memorial on October 5, alongside Anthony Turner and George Douglas and the martyrs of Leicestershire[5] After the lapse of a year Catholics, wishing to have some relics of the martyr, carried off one night he theft of a shoulder and an arm.

After the parts of his body being exposed to the birds of the air for a year, all were bones except the thumb and forefinger, relatively intact, which came into the possession of his brother Abraham.

Abraham Sutton gave John Gerard the thumb, later presented in a reliquary to Stonyhurst College.