John Pitts, a contemporary, says that he "gathered a most abundant harvest of souls into the granary of Christ" and eulogizes his attainments in being "no less familiar with literature than learned in Greek and Hebrew".
Broughton became an assistant to the archpriest, a canon of the chapter, and vicar-general to Richard Smith, Bishop of Chalcedon.
In The ecclesiasticall historie of Great Britaine, Broughton sought to rehabilitate Joseph of Arimathea for the Catholic cause.
Catholic polemicists such as Robert Persons attempted to deal with the Arimathean problem by diminishing its importance, even hinting that the story of Joseph's journey to Glastonbury may have been completely false.
Amongst which was the ‘miraculous testimonie’ given annually by the Christmas-flowering Holy Thorn of Glastonbury; not, at this stage in the legend’s development, described as Joseph’s flowering staff but nonetheless growing ‘in the very place where S. Joseph with two others of his holy company first rested their weary bodies'.