Henry Hammond

Henry Hammond (August 18, 1605 - April 25, 1660), was an English churchman.

He was born at Chertsey in Surrey, and was educated at Eton College and at Magdalen College, Oxford, becoming demy or scholar in 1619, and fellow in 1625. He took Holy Orders in 1629, and in 1633 in preaching before the court he won the approval of the Earl of Leicester and was presented with the living of Penshurst in Kent. In 1643 he was made archdeacon of Chichester. He was a member of the convocation of 1640, and was nominated one of the Westminster Assembly of divines. Instead of sitting in parliament, he took part in the unsuccessful rising at Tonbridge in favour of King Charles I, and was obliged to flee in disguise to Oxford, then the royal headquarters.

There he spent much of his time writing, though he accompanied the king's commissioners to London, and afterwards to the ineffectual convention at Uxbridge in 1645, where he disputed with Richard Vines, one of the parliamentary envoys. In his absence he was appointed canon of Christ Church, Oxford and public orator of the university. These dignities he relinquished for a time in order to attend the king as chaplain during his captivity in the hands of the parliament. When Charles was deprived of all his loyal attendants at Christmas 1647, Hammond returned to Oxford and was made subdean of Christ Church, only, however, to be removed from all his offices by the parliamentary visitors, who imprisoned him for ten weeks.

Afterwards he was permitted, though still under quasi-confinement, to live at the house of Philip Warwick at Clapham in Bedfordshire. In 1650, now free, Hammond betook himself to the friendly mansion of Sir John Pakington, at Westwood, in Worcestershire, where he died on the eve of his promotion to Bishop of Worcester. Hammond was held in high esteem even by his opponents. He was an excellent preacher; Charles I pronounced him the most natural orator he had ever heard. He read widely, and was a diligent scholar. He translated Blaise Pascal's "Provincial Letters" in 1657, under the title of "Les Provinciales, or the Mystery of Jesuitisme, discovered in certain letters written upon occasion of the present differences at Sorbonne between the jansenists and the molinists", London, Royston, 1657) [See Louis Cognet's introduction (in French) to the "Lettres Provinciales", of 1965; re-published in Sellier's edition of Pascal, "Les Provinciales, Pensées et Opuscules divers", Classique Garnier 1991-1992 or Librairie Générale Française, Paris, 2004 (Pochotèque, p. 218). Cognet says that Henry Hammond had worked on exemplaries of the original edition, and had the text established by a professional translator, John Davies (Cognet quotes here Paule Jansen, "De Blaise Pascal à Henry Hammond: "Les Provinciales" en Angleterre", Paris, 1954). This translation was re-published in 1658 and completed in 1659).] .

His writings, published in 4 volumes. fol. (1674 - 1684), consist mostly of controversial sermons and tracts. The "Anglo-Catholic Library" contains four volumes of his "Miscellaneous Theological Works" (1847 - 1850). The best of them are his Practical Catechism, first published in 1644; his "Paraphrase and Annotations on the New Testament"; and an incomplete work of a similar nature on the Old Testament. His "Life", a delightful piece of biography, written by Bishop John Fell, and prefixed to the collected Works, was reprinted in vol. iv. of Wordsworth's "Ecclesiastical Biography".

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References

*1911