recordership of Norwich, and on 21 April 1613 he was appointed to a puisne judgeship in the king's bench and knighted. When required in January 1614-15 to give a separate extra-judicial opinion for the guidance of the crown in the case of the puritan Peacham [q. v.], he at first demurred on the ground of his inexperience of business of that nature, but being, as Bacon said, 'a soft man,' ultimately consented; he also acted with the majority of the judges in the celebrated commendam case in 1616 [see Coke, Sir Edward, 1552–1634]. Houghton died in February 1623–4 at his chambers in Serjeants' Inn, and was buried on the 6th in the church of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, where his widow, Mary, daughter of Robert Rychers of Wrotham, Kent, caused a splendid monument to be erected to his memory. He is described by Croke as 'a most reverend, prudent, learned, and temperate judge and inferior to none in his time' (Croke, Rep. James I, p. 685). Several manors which he held in Norfolk descended to his heir, Francis, and remained long in his posterity. His sister Cecilia married Richard Thurlow of Burnham Ulph, Norfolk, a lineal ancestor of Lord Thurlow.
[Blomefield's Norfolk, ed. 1805, iii. 359, 370, v. 272., xi. 113; Dugdale's Orig, 254, 261–2; Nichols's Progr. James I, i. 157, ii. 627; Burke's Peerage, 'Thurlow;' Foss's Lives of the Judges.]
HOUGHTON or HOGHTON, WILLIAM HYACINTH (1736–1823), Roman catholic divine, born in 1736 in the hundred of West Derby, Lancashire, was descended from the Hoghtons of Hoghton Tower in the same county. He was educated at the Dominican College at Bornhem in the Low Countries, studied also for some time at Louvain, was ordained priest on 25 Feb. 1760, and from 1758 to 1762 held the office of prefect in the Bornhem College. Joining the English mission, he returned to this country, and held private chaplaincies until 1775, when he went back to Bornhem, and became successively prior, subprior, and procurator of the convent. He removed in 1779 to the English Dominican College, Louvain, where he acted as professor of philosophy. A controversy regarding his acceptance of the philosophical views of Newton and Descartes led him to return to England. He died at Fairhurst, the Lancashire seat of the Nelson family, on 3 Jan. 1823, and was buried at Windlesham, in the same county. Houghton edited and wrote articles in the 'Catholic Magazine and Reflector' (January to July 1801), the first catholic magazine that had appeared in England. He also published 'These ex Universa Philosophia, ...&c.,' Louvain, 1780.
[Gillow's Dict. of Cath. Bibl. iii. 416; Cath. Times, 8 June 1883.]
HOULING, JOHN (1539?–1599), Irish Jesuit, was born in Wexford about 1539, and entered the Society of Jesus in 1571, being professed of the four vows. He seems to have been at Alcalá de Henares in 1578, at Rome in 1580, and at Lisbon in 1583. At Lisbon he laboured successfully for many years in the conversion and edification of such of his countrymen as either commerce or persecution brought to that port. In 1593, with the aid of Father Peter Fonseca, he established in that city a college dedicated to St. Patrick and the education of young Irish Roman catholics. In 1599 Lisbon was visited by the plague, and, while administering to the physical and spiritual wants of its inhabitants, he fell a victim to its ravages, and died on 31 Dec. 1599. He was highly esteemed by Fitzsimon and Coppinger.
Houling wrote 'Perbreve compendiium in quocontinentur nonnulli eorum qui Hybernia regnante impia Regina Elizabeth, vincula, exilium et martyrium perpessi sunt,' printed from a manuscript at Salamanca by Cardinal Moran in 'Spicilegium Ossoriense,' i. 82–109. The work is valuable, from the personal acquaintance of the writer with many of those whose lives he records.
[Hogan's Ibernia Ignatiana; Foley's Records of the Society of Jesus, i, 253, vii. pt. i. p. 376, and Hogan's Irish Cat. Ib. vii, pt. ii p. 4, Fitzsimon's Justification of the Mass; Moran's Spicilegium Ossoriense.]
HOULTON, ROBERT (d. 1801), dramatist and journalist, born about 1739, was the son of the Rev. Robert Houlton of Milton, Clevedon, Somerset (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886, ii. 697). On 24 July 1755 he matriculated at Oxford from Corpus Christi College, but in 1757 he was chosen as a demy of Magdalen College. He graduated B.A. on 27 April 1759, M.A. on 21 April 1762. He resigned his demyship in 1765, and shortly afterwards married. In 1767 his father published a sermon on 'The Practice of Inoculation justified,' dedicated to Daniel Sutton, a surgeon who had improved the method of inoculation, and announced in the appendix 'A Volume of Miscellaneous Poetry,' to be issued by his son, but nothing further is known of the volume. Sutton the surgeon and his family seem to have confided to the younger Houlton the secrets of their method of inoculation, and the latter eventually went to Ireland to practice it. By way of adver-
