Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/428

 sex, suffered death. Houghton, in a touching and simple address to the people from the scaffold, said: ‘Our holy mother the Church has decreed otherwise than the king and parliament have decreed, and therefore, rather than disobey the Church, we are ready to suffer.’ One of his quarters, with an arm, was hung over the gate of the Charterhouse to awe the remaining monks into submission, but they were firm in their refusal of the oath.

Houghton was beatified by a decree of Pope Leo XIII, dated 29 Dec. 1886. He is said to have written: 1. ‘Conciones,’ lib. i. 2. ‘Epistolæ maxime ad Theodoricum Loerum Carthusianum.’ 3. An account of all the questions proposed to him in his different examinations, and of the answers which he made. The manuscript of the last work he sent to Father William Exmew, from whom it passed to Maurice Chauncy, who entrusted it to a learned Spaniard, named Peter de Bahis, for presentation, with a portion of Houghton's hair-shirt, either to the pope or to the president at the Grande Chartreuse (, Dict. of English Catholics, iii. 416). 

HOUGHTON, JOHN (d. 1705), writer on agriculture and trade, studied for a time at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (, Memorials of Cambridge, i. 154). He subsequently became an apothecary and dealer in tea, coffee, chocolate, and other luxuries, first ‘against the Ship Tavern in St. Bartholomew Lane, behind the Royal Exchange,’ but by 14 Dec. 1703 at the ‘Golden Fleece at the corner of Little Eastcheap in Gracechurch Street,’ London. He constituted himself a kind of agent for advertisers, and his advertisements appended to his ‘Collections’ are newspaper curiosities. He died in 1705. In the letters of administration, P. C. C., granted on 10 Nov. 1705 to his widow Elizabeth, Houghton is described as late of the parish of St. Leonard, Eastcheap, London. He was elected F.R.S. on 29 Jan. 1680, and served on the society's committee for agriculture.

Houghton edited an entertaining periodical work entitled ‘A Collection of Letters for the Improvement of Husbandry & Trade,’ two vols. 4to, London, 1681–3. The letters treat of miscellaneous subjects, and were written by eminent authorities, Evelyn and Worlidge included. The editor excuses the want of arrangement, preferring a ‘libertine way of handling’ subjects before the ‘severest rules.’ An index accompanies each volume. Houghton first noticed the potato plant as an agricultural vegetable (ed. 1728, ii. 468), and that turnips were eaten by sheep (ib. i. 213, iv. 142–144). His ideas of improving trade are obsolete. In November 1691 he issued, with the approbation of the more distinguished fellows of the Royal Society, ‘A Proposal for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade,’ which ultimately took the shape of another ‘Collection’ published in weekly folio numbers, of which the first appeared on 30 March 1692, and the last (No. 583) on 24 Sept. 1703, forming, according to the editor's design, nineteen volumes. A selection from these miscellanies in four octavo volumes was published by Richard Bradley in 1727–8, with the title ‘A Catalogue of all sorts of Earths, the Art of Draining, of Brewing, of all sorts of Husbandry,’ and Houghton also published in 1693 a sixpenny sheet, containing ‘An Account of the Acres and Houses, with the proportional tax … of each county in England and Wales’ (reprinted in ‘Somers Tracts,’ ed. Scott, x. 596). To the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ he contributed in 1699 ‘A Discourse of Coffee’ (xxi. 311–17), and ‘The Conclusion of the Protestant States of the Empire, of the 23d of Sept. 1699 concerning the Calendar’ (xxii. 459–63). 

HOUGHTON, ROBERT (1548–1624), judge, son of John Houghton of Gunthorpe, Norfolk, was born at Gunthorpe on 3 Aug. 1548, entered Lincoln's Inn on 11 March 1569, where he was called to the bar on 10 Feb. 1577, was Lent reader in 1591 and 1600, and one of the governors from 1588 to 1603. He was returned to parliament in 1592–3 for Norwich, of which city he was elected recorder in 1595. On 17 May 1603 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law. In 1612 he resigned the