, they
refused. Froude, who gives them an extended notice, says: "In general,
the house was perhaps the best ordered in England. The hospitality
was well sustained, the charities were profuse. Among many good, the
prior, John Haughton, was the best. He was of an old English family,
and had been educated at Cambridge. He had been twenty years a
Carthusian at the opening of the troubles of the Reformation. He is
described as small of stature, in figure graceful, in countenance
dignified: in manner he was most modest, in eloquence most sweet, in
chastity without stain."
On the 4th of May, 1535, Haughton was executed with all the horrors
attending the punishment of death for high treason in those barbarous
times. He and his companions, certain monks of Sion Priory, died
without a murmur, and Haughton's arm was hung up under the archway of
the Charter-House beneath which the visitor drives to-day, to awe his
brethren. The remnant never gave in. Some were executed; ten died of
filth and fever in Newgate; and thus the noblest band of monks in the
country was broken up by Henry's ruthless hand.
The Charter-House was then granted to two men, by name Bridges and
Hall, for their lives, after which it was bestowed in 1545 on Sir E.
North. North's son sold it to the duke of Norfolk, who resided there,
on and off, until decapitated in 1572.
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