HAMMOND, Henry, one of the most learned English divines of the seventeenth century, was born in 1605. He studied at Oxford, in 1629 entered into holy orders, and in 1633 was inducted into the rectory of Penshurst in Kent. In 1643 he was made archdeacon of Chichester; and in the beginning of 1645 he was appointed one of the canons of Christ Church, Oxford, and chaplain in ordinary to King Charles I. who was then in that city. He was also chosen public orator of the university. In 1647 he attended the king in his confinement at Woodburn, Cavesham, Hampton-Court, and the Isle of Wight, where he continued till his majesty’s attendants were again dismissed. He then returned to Oxford, where he was chosen sub-dean; and continued there till the parliamentary visitors first ejected him, and then imprisoned him for several weeks in a private house in Oxford. During this confinement he began his Annotations on the New Testament. At the beginning of the year 1660, when every thing visibly tended towards the restoration of the royal family, Dr Hammond was desired by the bishops to repair to London to assist there in composing the breaches of the church, his station in which was designed to be that of Bishop of Worcester; but on the 4th of April he was seized with a fit of the stone, ol which he died on the 25th of that month, at the age of fifty-five. Besides the above work, he wrote main others; all of which have been published together in four volumes folio.

Hammond, Anthony, an English poet, descended from a good family of Somersham Place, in Huntingdonshire, was born in 1668. After having received a liberal education at St John’s College, Cambridge, he was chosen member of parliament, soon distinguished himself as a fine speaker, and became a commissioner of the royal navy, which place, however, he quitted in 1712. He published a miscellany of original poems by the most eminent hands, in which himself, as appears by the poems marked with his own name, had no inconsiderable share. He also wrote the life of Walter Moyle, prefixed to his works, and died about the year 1726.

Hammond, James, known to the world by the Love-Elegies, which, some years after his death, were published by the Earl of Chesterfield, was the son of Anthony Hammond above mentioned, and was preferred to a place about the person of the late Prince of Wales, which he held til an unfortunate accident deprived him of his senses. The cause of this calamity was a passion he entertained for ε lady, who did not return it; upon which he wrote those love-elegies that have been so much celebrated for theiι tenderness. The editor observes, that he composed them before he was twenty-one years of age; a period when fancy and imagination are apt to run riot at the expense of judgment and correctness. He was as sincere in his love as in his friendship; and wrote to his mistress, as he spoke to his friends, nothing but the genuine sentiments of his heart. Tibullus seems to have been the model our author judiciously preferred to Ovid; the former wrote directly from the heart to the heart, the latter too often addressed himself to the imagination. Mr Hammond died in the year 1743, at Stow, the seat of Lord Cobham, who, as well as [7:11:128]the Earl of Chesterfield, honoured him with a particular intimacy.

Hammond’s Islands, several small islands in the South Pacific Ocean, forming part of Solomon’s Islands. Long. 157. 5. E. Lat. 8. 46. S.