Saint John Houghton

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Saint John Houghton was an English Catholic martyr.

Born sometime 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 abbot 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 house be exempted from the oaths required under the new Act of Succession, which resulted in both him and his procurator being arrested and taken to the Tower of London. However, by the end of May, they had been persuaded that the oath was consistent with their Catholicism, and they returned to the Charterhouse, where (in the presence of a large armed force) the whole community made the required professions.

However, in 1535, the community was called upon to make the new oath as prescribed by the 1534 Act of Supremacy, which recognised Henry as the head of the Church in England. Again, Houghton, this time accompanied by the heads of the other two English Carthusian houses (Robert Lawrence, Prior of Beauvale, and ?), pleaded for an exemption, but were this time arrested by Thomas Cromwell. They were called before a special commission in April 1534, and sentenced to death, along with Richard Reynolds, a monk from Syon Abbey.

Houghton, along with the other 2 Carthusians, Reynolds, and another priest, John Hale, were all hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on May 4, 1535.

Catholic tradition relates that as Houghton was about to be quartered, as the executioner tore open his chest to remove his heart he prayed, "O Jesu, what wouldst thou do with my heart?" A contemporary source records his last words as: "Our holy mother the Church has decreed otherwise than the king and parliament have decreed. I am therefore bound in conscience and am ready and willing to suffer every kind of torture rather than deny a doctrine of the Church." (Hendriks)

After his death, his body was chopped to pieces and hung in different parts of London. A painting of the martyr by Zurbaran depicts him with a noose around his neck and his heart in his hand.