Education
University of Cambridge.
University of Cambridge.
Born around 1486, he was (according to one of his fellow Carthusians) educated at Cambridge, but cannot be identified among surviving records. Similarly, no certain records can be found of his ordination. He joined the London Charterhouse in 1515, progressed to be sacristan in 1523, and procurator in 1526.
In 1531, he became Prior of the Charterhouse of Beauvale in Nottinghamshire.
However, in November of that year, he was elected Prior of the London house, to which he returned. In 1534, he asked that he and his community be exempted from the oaths required under the new Acting of Succession, which resulted in both him and his procurator, Humphrey Middlemore, being arrested and taken to the Tower of London.
However, in 1535, the community was called upon to make the new oath as prescribed by the 1534 Acting of Supremacy, which recognised Henry as the head of the Church in England. They were called before a special commission in April 1535, and sentenced to death, along with Richard Reynolds, O.Ss.S., a monk from Syon Abbey.
Houghton, along with the other two Carthusians, French
Reynolds, and John Haile of Isleworth, was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 4 May 1535. The three priors were taken to Tyburn in their religious habits and were not previously laicised from the priesthood and religious state as was the custom of the day. After he was hung, he was taken down alive, and the process of quartering him began.
In the Chapter house of Saint Hugh"s Charterhouse, Parkminster, in England, there is a painting depicting the martyrdom of the three priors.
After his death, his body was chopped to pieces and hung in different parts of London. He was beatified on 9 December 1886 and canonized on 25 October 1970.
He was also the first member of his Order to die as a martyr.