HOGHTON, Sir Gilbert (1591-1646), of Hoghton Tower, Leyland, and Walton-le-Dale, Lancs.

One of Lancashire’s oldest gentry families, the Hoghtons could trace their descent back to the Conquest.27Foster, Lancs. Peds.; Blackwood, Lancs. 55. Hoghton’s ancestors had been returned for the county on several occasions since the fourteenth century; and his father, Sir Richard Hoghton†, had been knight of the shire in the 1601 and 1604 Parliaments.28‘Sir Richard Hoghton’, HP Commons 1386-1421, HP Commons 1509-58; HP Commons 1604-29. The family’s main residence was at Hoghton Tower, lying half way between Preston and Blackburn, but their entire estate by the 1590s comprised at least six other manors, 800 messuages, 400 cottages, 1,000 orchards and over 16,000 acres of land.29G. C. Miller, Hoghton Tower (Preston, 1948), 162; HP Commons 1558-1603.

Although Hoghton’s father was a suspected crypto-Catholic, he managed to augment his considerable standing in Lancashire with a successful career at the court of James I.30Assheton Jnl. ed. Raines, 7. Sir Richard’s court connections brought – or, more accurately perhaps, bought – his eldest son Gilbert a knighthood in 1604 at the age of only 13, the favour of Prince Charles (the future Charles I), several court offices and perquisites and the hand in marriage of a daughter and co-heir of the master of the wardrobe, Sir Roger Aston†, thereby making Gilbert a brother-in-law of the future royal favourite George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham.31Hoghton Deeds ed. Lumby, 268; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 299; Long, ‘Lancs.’, 166-7; ‘Sir Gilbert Houghton’, ‘Sir Richard Houghton’, HP Commons 1604-29. It was the Hoghtons’ local influence, however, that secured Gilbert’s return for the Lancashire borough of Clitheroe to the 1614 Parliament.

Life at court put severe pressure on the family’s finances, which were dealt a crippling blow as a result of Sir Richard’s lavish – indeed, legendary – entertainment of James I at Hoghton Tower in 1617.32J. Sylvester, Panthea, or Divine Wishes and Meditations (1630), epistle dedicatory, sig. A3v; VCH Lancs. vi. 36; Long, ‘Lancs.’, 107, 166, 167, 229-31; HP Commons 1604-29. Such were Sir Richard’s debts that in about 1619 he was sent to the Fleet prison, where he spent most of the last decade of his life.33HP Commons 1604-29. The task of paying off Sir Richard’s creditors and unmortgaging those of his estates he had not already sold fell upon Hoghton, and through good management he seems to have been largely successful.34Long, ‘Lancs.’, 231-2; Blackwood, ‘Lancs. gentry’, 78; ‘Sir Gilbert Houghton’, HP Commons 1604-29. Yet despite Sir Richard’s parlous finances and absence from the county, the family retained enough standing in Lancashire to see Hoghton returned as a knight of the shire to the 1621 and 1626 Parliaments.35HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Sir Gilbert Houghton’.

Hoghton retained his court office as carver in the royal household after the accession of Charles I. However, from the late 1620s he seems to have devoted more time and energy to his work as a Lancashire magistrate and deputy lieutenant than to his career at court.36SP16/337/81i, ff. 165, 168; Lancs. RO, DDN/1/64, ff. 1, 178; DDKE/acc.7840/HMC/125; D.J. Wilkinson, ‘Performance and motivation amongst the justices of the peace’, Trans. Historic Soc. Lancs. and Cheshire, cxxxviii. 48; ‘Sir Gilbert Houghton’, HP Commons 1604-29. In contrast to his father, Hoghton was a committed Protestant, and in the 1620s he collaborated with an allegedly ‘puritan’ faction in Preston in ousting the town’s vicar, James Martin. Martin claimed that he had been picked upon by the ‘schismatics’ because of his conformity to the Church of England. Nevertheless, the fact that his chief opponent was the bishop of Chester, John Bridgeman, suggests that the quarrel went beyond theological or liturgical differences between Martin and members of his congregation.37SP16/236/42, ff. 60, 62; SP16/244/13, f. 25; CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 11; Richardson, Puritanism, 100, 103, 143-4; B.W. Quintrell, ‘Lancs. ills. the king’s will and the troubling of Bishop Bridgeman’, in Seventeenth-Century Lancs. ed. Kermode, Phillips, 75-6. Where exactly Hoghton stood on the religious spectrum between Bridgeman and the local puritans is not clear, although his wife apparently had some affinity with the Preston godly, for it was said that she was the moving spirit behind the preferment of the future Presbyterian minister Isaac Ambrose as the town’s vicar in 1640.38I. Ambrose, Redeeming the Time (1658), 30 (E.945.3); Calamy Revised, 9.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Hoghton and William Farington were returned for Lancashire. There are signs that the two men may have had the backing, or at least the blessing, of the county’s lord lieutenant, James Stanley†, Lord Strange.39Supra, ‘Lancashire’. Admittedly, Lord Strange had brought a law suit against Hoghton in the early 1630s over money matters, but it is clear from the case that the two men and their families were close.40DL5/31, ff. 442-4. Moreover, Hoghton seems to have served Lord Strange loyally as a deputy lieutenant, even at some risk to his own standing in the county. He made no recorded impression upon the proceedings of the Short Parliament, and it is not certain that he took his seat.

In the summer of 1640, Hoghton supported Lord Strange’s efforts to raise ‘many and great taxes’ upon Lancashire for the king’s doomed and controversial attempt to mobilise another army against his rebellious Scottish subjects. As late as 7 September, Lord Strange and several of his deputy lieutenants, including Hoghton and Farington, were trying to impose a levy of £3,000 upon Lancashire for the king’s service. According to the future parliamentarian John Holcrofte*, Lord Strange and his ‘agents’ justified their proceedings ‘by virtue of his Majesty’s prerogative and a commission granted from his Majesty to tax and levy any and what sums of money he pleased and as often and upon whom he pleased, without giving an accompt to any how he disposed of the same’.41Lancs. RO, DDN/1/64, f. 176v; PA, Main Pprs. 14 Sept. 1642 (depositions of Sir Thomas Stanley, John Holcrofte).

In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Hoghton and Farington were replaced by the future royalist Roger Kirkbye and the future parliamentarian Raphe Assheton II. It is not known whether Hoghton had decided not to stand or had been so compromised by his close association with the court and its policies that retaining his seat had proved impossible. Nevertheless, he seems to have retained the trust of the House – or at least of the Lancashire Members in the Long Parliament – for he was nominated on 14 July 1641 to a Commons commission for ecclesiastical causes (i.e. removing ‘scandalous’ ministers) for the county – although there is no evidence that this commission was approved by the Lords.42Procs. LP v. 642. Similarly, he was involved early in 1642 in tendering the Protestation to the people of Lancashire.43Bodl. Tanner 66, f. 284. In June of that year, he was appointed both as a Lancashire commissioner of array and as a deputy lieutenant by Parliament’s recently-appointed lord lieutenant for the county, Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton.44Lancs. Lieutenancy ed. Harland, 280. But true to his livery as a member of the royal household, he sided with the king during the civil war, as did two of his sons, who became royalist officers.45Abram, Hist. of Blackburn, 718-19; Newman, Royalist Officers, 198.

During the summer and autumn of 1642, Hoghton played a leading role in helping to raise forces for the king in Lancashire, and in September he was involved in the royalist siege of Manchester.46Cheshire RO, DCC/47/42; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 23, 51; Abram, Hist. of Blackburn, 114. On 21 September, the Commons voted that he be sent for as a delinquent.47CJ ii. 775b. Having raised ‘great multitudes’ of troops – including, it was alleged, Catholics – by late 1642, he attempted to take Blackburn and several other local parliamentarian strongholds, but without success.48Lancs. RO, DDHO/352; Lancs. Lieutenancy ed. Harland, 305-6, 309, 311; Warr in Lancs. 11-12, 21; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 65-6; Abram, Hist. of Blackburn, 114-16, 118-20; Newman, Royalist Officers, 198. He had no better fortune in retaining garrisons, being driven out of Preston in February 1643 and, shortly afterwards, of his own residence of Hoghton Tower, which was partially destroyed in the process.49Warr in Lancs. 24, 109; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 66, 74-5, 79-81; Abram, Hist. of Blackburn, 122-5. He seems to have remained active in royalist civil administration until at least late 1644.50Add. 18981, f. 266; Newman, Royalist Officers, 198.

Hoghton died in the spring of 1646 – not in May 1645 or April 1647, as is generally stated – and was buried at Preston on 8 May.51Preston par. reg.; T. Smith, Recs. of Preston Parish Church (Preston, 1892), 228; St John Preston Burials ed. Worthington, iii. p. 6. No will is recorded. He was succeeded by his son Sir Richard Houghton, 3rd bt., who had sided with Parliament during the civil war and had been returned as a recruiter for Lancashire in 1646.52Infra, ‘Richard Hoghton’.