In his own time, he was notorious as a flamboyant preacher against Puritan and sectarian dissent in the Church of England, and was remembered for the riot that accompanied the 1632 debut of his play The Rival Friends.
As part of the entertainment, the University scheduled a performance of Hausted's The Rival Friends, a seven-hour-long play filled with anti-Puritan and anti-sectarian satire.
[4] In preparation for the event, the University authorities issued an edict, warning the student body not to indulge in "...any rude or immodest exclamations...nor any humming, hawking, whistling, hissing, or laughing...or any stamping or knocking, nor any such uncivil or unscholarlike or boyish behavior...." And above all, "no tobacco.
Reacting to the disgrace, the University's vice-chancellor Henry Butts committed suicide by hanging himself[4] on Easter Sunday, which was also April Fool's Day.
When The Rival Friends was published later in the year, the title page stated that the play was "Cried down by boys, faction, envy, and confident ignorance, approv'd by the judicious, and now exposed to the public censure, by the author," which gives a taste of Hausted's style.