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Some of the Amazing
History of The Houghton Tower
and the Houghtons Surrounding it.
.
Where do I start? I will start at the beginning, but first I want to explain the link that the immigrants John and Ralph Houghton have the Houghton Tower. (Hoghton is an old way of spelling Houghton)
Thomas Hoghton, ower of Hoghton Tower (b. 1540 England) is John Houghton the immigrant’s (b. 1624) Great Grandfather. Many people believe that it is Ralph who was related to the Thomas who lived there. I believe that too. They say that John and Ralph were distant cousins. Wouldn’t it then make them 3rd cousins? Also, John’s Grandparents are related by blood. They are Thomas Houghton and Catharine Houghton (maiden name) That makes it more complicated. In a nut shell, it both doubles the chances that John and Ralph are cousins and makes it harder to figure out how. They later sailed together to Lancaster Mass. on the Ship Abigail.
Now at the beginning
Houghton/Hoghton Tower, also called Ho(u)ghton Castle has been well known in Lancashire for several centuries. The Houghton family is an old one of Norman descent, with a history dating from 1065. That is when documents show that the earliest Houghton came over on the same ship with William the Conqueror. The Houghton coat of arms is the oldest Cheshire coat of arms and the second oldest in England. It’s mainly a shield with horizontal strips going across it and an animal standing above the shield with intricate detail all around it. The latin motto means - "In spite of wrong."
In the 1500s, the Catholic Houghtons of Lancashire England were underground supporters of Catholicism. These were the days when the Catholic Faith was outlawed.
They formed a secret underground society called The Gunpowder Plot. William Shakespeare, Thomas Houghton his brother Alexander Houghton, their cousin Richard Houghton his brother in law Barthotomew Hesketh John Cottom's, Cottom’s cousin, Thomas Jenkins, Father Edmund Compain , John Finch, Debdale, Hunt, Robert Catesby were some the recruited members of this secret society of gunpowder plotters who’s base was Houghton Tower. Many were Lancastrians. All roads lead to Houghton Tower.
In his book Shakespeare: The "lost years", Ernst Honigmann revealed to the public a theory - first proposed in 1937. That the dramatist William Shakespeare spent some early years in Lancashire, as a servant in a chain of Catholic households; and that he is identifiable with William Shakeshafte, a player kept by the Hoghton family of Hoghton Tower near Preston. The theory now appears to be substantiated by the discovery that John Cottom, Stratford schoolmaster from 1579 to 1581, who was William’s teacher, belonged to the secret Lancashire gentry who were relatives and clients of the Hoghtons.
But no one has been able to explain is what tied Hoghton Tower to Stratford (a little midland town where Shakespeare was from) and why, if Shakespeare was Shakeshafte, it should have become such a secret. The reason they were not able to do so is that no one explored the Catholic context. 10 years age, Ernst Honigmann, did in his book. It is infact a famous Jesuit mission in the winter of 1580-1 which connects the two places. It provides the answers for Shakespeare's "lost years", and suggests a solution to the mystery of Shakeshafte's vanishing. Above all, it is the dramatic story of the Jesuits' doomed children's crusade which confirms, beyond reasonable doubt, the identification of the Stratford boy with the servant at Hoghton Tower.
Cottom and Shakeshafte were legatees when Alexander Hoghton, who was either a play writer or actor and the head of the family, made his will on August 3, 1581, bequeathing his stock of theater costumes and musical instruments to his brother, and enjoining his neighbor, Sir Thomas Hesketh (related to a Houghton’s brother in law), "to be friendly unto Fulke Gillam and William Shakeshafte now dwelling with me, and either take them into his service or help them to some good master". Hesketh retained Gillam, a player from Chester, but recommended Shakeshafte began his career in London, where his earliest admirers included the Lancashire poet John Wever (aka R. Wever), a cousin of the Hoghtons. The questions it begs are why an ambitious and talented young Midlander should have beaten a path and gone to the remote Lancashire instead. Why under the name of William Shakeshafte? Shakeshafte had been his grandfather’s name.
It has been established, by various writers, that the Houghton family was directly responsible for the establishment of the English Colony in Douai, France which was a Jesuit educational facility on profits from their alum mines. Biographers agree that one of their first recruits was the master who taught Shakespeare from the ages of seven to eleven
Thomas Cottom, who, having been freed on bail, a martyr, having been tortured and releases, was carried to Houghton Tower by Lord Cobham, bringing with him a secret letter from Rome, written by a school friend, Robert Debdale. This was a net that was to accidentally entangle them both.
In 1586, Debdale would follow Cottom to the gallows
Shakespeare rode north at exactly the same time as another journey linked Stratford to Hoghton, when Edward (later became a Saint) Campion departed Lapworth Park, leaving behind a knot of Midland gentry who would seal the Gunpowder Plot.
This was the moment when the politics crossed the Channel (to Douai in France), with the swearing of a Sodality of "young gentlemen of forwardness and zeal", whose "joy and alacrity" in vowing poverty and chastity, "and ardour to fly overseas to seminaries", mimicked the Catholic League. With both Shakespeare’s father and teacher so close to this secret society, it would be odd if the star of Stratford Grammar School were not pressed to join the "boys who for this cause have separated from their parents" and who "give up their names", Campion exulted "as veterans offer their blood". Historians interpret this phrase to mean that the Sodality adopted aliases taking the names of their grandfathers. Which explains Shakeshafte.
William Shakespeare stayed with the Hoghtons and their neighbors until May 15, 1581, when he was 17.
At Hoghton Tower, Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Father, Thomas Houghton, and others in the secret society were equipped with all the "scriptures, fathers, councils, histories, and works of natural and moral reason" needed to prepare for a public debate. "The day is too short, and the sun must run a greater circumference", (St.) Edmund Campion boasted, before he could "number all the Epistles, Homilies, Volumes and Disputations" amassed at Hoghton.
In 1582, a priest informer noted, to Cardinal Allen many of the members.
It was no accident, then that nine of the tw
Twenty-one Catholic executed under Elizabeth were Lancastrians. The county was a springboard for missionaries like Thomas Hoghton and Thomas Cottom, who both taught there before sailing to Douai; or the Hoghton protégé, John Finch, hanged at Lancaster in 1584 for operating a Jesuit liaison chain disguised as a tutor. The son of the Stratford recusant had models for such a vocation in his master, Hunt, and school fellow, Debdale; Shakespeare had run between the two most active cells in Catholic England. Like the Gunpowder Plotter Robert Catesby, his route ought to have taken him from Stratford to Douai via the Jesuit clearing-house at Hoghton Tower.
Peter Levi demurs said
"In fact, far from obscurity, the aristocratic Catholicism harbored behind the walls of the Renaissance palace at Hoghton was much like the culture of Shakespeare's early plays in flitting between England and Europe, and the oaths and aliases. subscribed by the Sodality had the arrogance of those assumed by the "little academe" of students in Love's Labor’s Lost who "war against the huge army" of the world.
In her study of the Gunpowder Plot, Antonia Fraser describes this "small world" of "perpetual aliases", in which "everyone was related to everyone else", as "schizophrenic" in its oscillation between the glittering light where prizes were won and the spectral darkness of a forbidden religion; but to the brightest and the best who signed up for Campion's mission, the prospect would have seemed like that of Shakespeare's two gentlemen of Verona, who would rather "see the wonders of the world abroad" than "Wear out youth in shapeless idleness". Cottom, who carried letters from Italy to Shottery like some Valentine or Proteus, had lodged in Rome with the composer Victoria;"
On August 4, 1581, the day after Alexander Hoghton commanded Shakeshafte to Thomas Hesketh in his will, the Privy Council commanded a search for "certain books and papers which (St) Edmund Campion has confessed he left at the house of one Richard Hoghton of Lancashire"
The Gunpowder Plotters were never able to follower through with what they were planing.
Campion had been hurrying north to safeguard his library when he had been persuaded to say mass at Lyford in Berkshire, where on July 16 he was, ambushed
One of those arrested with him was another relative of Shakespeare's schoolmaster, his namesake, John Cottom, who was to suffer months of interrogation for names. (Which was the Houghtons) So it cannot be chance that by the end of the year the master had left his post and himself retired to Lancashire (to be replaced by yet another Hoghton nominee, Alexander Aspinall from Clitheroe). His brother had been tortured in December to divulge the Catholic network; and on July 31 Campion was racked to discover "At whose houses had he been received? Who assisted him? Whom had he reconciled? Where did they live, and what had they talked about?" (Which was the Houghtons.)
Very soon, Burghley could crow that "We have gotten from Campion knowledge of all his peregrinations and have sent for his hosts". As Edmund Campion’s biographer admits, "By August 2 the government had suddenly acquired a flood of light about his doings. They knew where he had lodged in Lancashire and where he had hidden his library"; The entire Catholic Houghton family was arrested. Why they were let free instead of executed is a mystery. Also arrested was Bartholomew Hesketh (brother in law of a Houghton), the sister of a priest, and everyone suspected of concealing Campion or his books. Honigmann deduced that when he wrote his will, Alexander Hoghton "may have hoped to disperse family property to forestall confiscation", but even he does not seem to have grasped the dire emergency in which, among more desperate measures, William Shakespeare was protected: on the very day between Campion's confession and the raids on the Hoghton estates. Even as Thomas Houghton, the master of Hoghton Tower helped his servants to new identities, in the Tower of London Campion was being tortured for their names.
Meanwhile at Houghton Hall, located in Norwich in eastern England. Henry Walpole, having connections with the Houghtons, was also arrested for harboring priests in his travels.
Thomas Cottom (Shakespeare’s teacher) yelled from his cell:
"Indeed they are searchers of secrets, for they would needs know of me-what mysins were for which penance was enjoined me. Where upon they sore tormented me, but I persisted that I would not answer, though they tormented me to death."
Shakespeare’s father hid his Spiritual Testament beneath the tiles of his house, where it was to remain, a dusty secret from his son's admirers. Some time after the raids on Hoghton, Shakespeare wandered out of his so called "lost years."
In 1617, King James I while staying at the tower, was so impressed with the loin of beef he was served here, that after a few drinks he took his sword and knighted the meat thereby giving the name to sirloin steak! To remember the event the local pub was renamed "The Sirloin" and still goes by that name today. Sir Richard de Hoghton was forced to entertain the King for three days at great expense. Unfortunately this left him penniless and he was sent to prison due to his debts.
Back to the Immigrants
The voyage sailed in may of 1635. John was born in 1624 and Ralph was born in 1623. That would make them 11 and 12. I immediately thought that I had the date of the voyage wrong but I didn’t. Here’s a web site that names all of Abigail’s voyages http://www.primenet.com/~langford/ships/shp-a01.htm.
From ship records, it shows that it was only to two of them together. Why would the parents of John and Ralph, let two boys sail to Wild America all alone forever? John Houghton lived on Dean’s Brook but moved due to the Indian massacre of 1676 to Woburn Mass. His house there is describe as an extending estate. Which meant that he had money so my theory is that the boys had some sort of care taker that came with them. Weather it was a family friend or someone else, the persons name on the ship records probably didn’t seem to link him or her to the boys. It appears that Ralph and John were Protestant yet their parents were such devoted Catholics?
Abigail Houghton was born a generation after John and Ralph sail the Mass on the Abigail.
BACK IN LANCASTER
And Protestant vs Catholic ended, Royalist vs Parliamentarian began
Sir Gilbert Houghton
taken from Regimental Newsletters
At age 51 in 1642, Sir Gilbert Houghton, as a army officer and a Lancashire Royalists, living in The Houghton Tower, was just beginning his conflict as the Lancashire Civil war began.
Sir Gilbert was famous for not only marching with the troops assigned to him, but with clubman, trained bands, and his own tenants! That is why the uniforms they wore was never confirmed. Some say they wore all black, red coats, regular clothes or white and yellow, which were the Houghton colors. Maybe a little of each.
Gilbert and his royalist regiment seized Manchester, yet it still remain Parliamentarian
Near the end of November 1642 Sir Gilbert led the first skirmishes in the Blackburn area. In order to raise his troops from the Fylde a beacon was flared at the top of Hoghton Tower and having gathered his troops he marched against Whalley, where there was a large store of arms as a result of the disarming of Roman Catholics in 1641. Whalley fell without a struggle and then his forces moved onto Blackburn. Hearing of Hoghton's activities Colonels Shuttleworth and Starkie (the name that has plagued Houghton's down the centuries) raised a force of 8,000 men and attacked Sir Gilbert's force by night. After a hard fought defense, Sir Gilbert Houghton and his men fled leaving behind all their arms.
Having lost Blackburn , Sir Gilbert Houghton had no other choice but to retake it because of the fact that Blackburn was so close to Houghton Tower, his home. He brought his force, on Christmas Eve, to the outskirts of Blackburn. Probably feeling uncertain of his men after their last defeat Sir Gilbert failed to close on the Blackburn garrison and the one small canon that they possessed did no damage. At nightfall they retreated so that "they myght eet theyr Chrystmas pyes at home" as the records have it. The only damage that Blackburn sustained was when a bullet entered a house and shot out the bottom of a frying pan. Thus Sir Gilberts only campaign ended somewhat ignominiously, but worse was to follow.
Preston, near Lancaster was the center of the Royalist cause. This was where Sir Gilbert Houghton and his family were staying. In February 1642-3 the Manchester garrison led by Sir John Seaton and the force commanded by Col. Shuttleworth attacked. After two hours of hard fighting the defense collapsed.
Sir Gilbert managed to escape to Wigan but his wife, Margaret, was captured and his brother, Radcliffe, who had command of the Preston garrison along with Capt. Farrington, was killed.
Following the capture of Preston an expeditionary force under the command of none other but Starkie was sent out to take Hoghton Tower.
Seeing that the odds were against them the garrison at Houghton Tower Surrendered.
As Starkie was sieging the tower an accidental explosion of gunpowder destroyed an inner tower and killed Starkie, whose ghost haunts Houghton Tower to this day, and 60 of his troopers.
The last act of Sir Gilbert in the Civil War was at Chester in October 1643. He had been sent there to await the arrival of the King's Irish army. With this force he was probably engaged, with Lord Byron, in the surprise attack on Col. Ashton's. Of his other two sons involved in the war, Gilbert was a Captain in a company of Col. Gerards regiment and later became the governor of Worcester and Henry was a Captain of Horse under Derby.
Unfortunately Sir Gilbert does not appear to have been on very good terms with Byron and after a quarrel he appears not to have taken any further part. His unwillingness to continue the fight was probably also compounded by the loss of his son, Roger, at Hessam Moor in 1643 as well as by the fact that his eldest son and heir, Richard, was fighting on the side of Parliament.
Sir Gilbert Hoghton died in 1647. The Baronetcy was inherited by his son Sir Richard, who was unlike his father, a Parliamentarian.
In the late 1960's about twenty shoe boxes of documents were deposited in the County Records from Downham Hall. In the boxes were muster rolls, color details, regimental order books etc. making it possibly the best recorded regiment. The documents were seen and then sent to London but soon after were lost.
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