HENRY HAMMOND 1605 - 1660
The leading light amongst the faithful clergy during the Interregnum was undoubtedly Henry Hammond. “He was a man of great learning, and of most eminent merit, he having been the person that during the bad times had maintained the cause of the church in a very singular manner.” Almost single-handedly through his own deep faith, theological writings, extensive correspondence, charitable nature and his insight in exploiting a weakness in the Cromwellian system, he laid the foundation towards the uncompromising terms for the restored Anglicana Ecclesia in 1662. Unfortunately, at the critical moment with the imminent return of Charles II in May, 1660, the Church was robbed not only of his presence but also of his learning and charity by his untimely death a month previously on 25th April, 1660.
By encouraging sequestered clergy (i.e. those who had been deprived of their parishes) to be chaplains to Royal gentry families it enabled their sons to be instructed in Anglicana Ecclesia’s faith to ensure a continuity of the historic English Church.. He also encouraged his fellow clergy with the means to support and encourage university students.
For Hammond education was not sufficient for his goal. Needed too was continuous communication between the faithful members of Anglicana Ecclesia and the exiled Royal Court and clergy. Hence a regular courier service was maintained across the Channel. Frequent contact was necessary at home too with Hammond having regular correspondence with the like-minded such as Sheldon, Bishops Duppa and the imprisoned Wren, and the layman, Robert Shirley, a staunch royalist. (Sheldon had been Shirley’s chaplain until just prior to his death).
Hammond as the youngest son of Sir John Hammond, physician to Prince Henry, was born on 18th August, 1605. His mother was a descendant of a former dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Alexander Nowell. The young Hammond began his education at Eton where he learnt Latin, Greek and a little Hebrew before going to Magdalen College, Oxford where he became fluent in Greek, supposedly helped immensely by the completion of Savile’s eight volumes of John Chrysostom’s Works in 1613.
Hammond received his B.A. in 1622, after which he began his theological studies by reading Vedelius’ edition of St. Ignatius’ epistles that convinced him that the three-fold ministry of the church was established in Apostolic times. This conviction shone through the most trying times for the English Church during 1640 – 1662. Hence on 7th March 1638/39 he received his doctorate in Divinity, having previously received his M. A. in 1625 and B. D. in 1634.
In 1629 he was ordained deacon in the parish of Bladon by the bishop of Oxford, Richard Corbett and four months later to the priesthood at the church of Agulius (Aegidius, in English St. Giles). Through the patronage of the Earl of Leicester he became the incumbent of Penshurst in July,1633 where he served for ten years, diligently praying in the church, often with family and parishioners, preaching, administering the sacraments, caring for the poor and sick, catechizing the youth and living an exemplary life. After ten years he left this parish in disguise, such were the times in 1643 and took refuge in the house of his former tutor, Dr. Buckner. Here he soon met Dr. Oliver, also taking refuge when the latter learned he had been elected as President of Magdalen College. He thus returned to Magdalen College with Oliver. In that same year Hammond had been appointed Archdeacon of Chichester by Bishop Duppa. Also in Oxford after the Battle of Edgehill was King Charle who made this university city his headquarters during the Civil War. This divine would soon become a chaplain to the King.
As chaplain also to the Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Southampton Hammond was present at the Treaty of Uxbridge in 1644/45 to find a solution to end the Civil War. No agreement was reached but where Hammond debated very wisely with the Presbyterian parliamentarian, Stephen Vines. In that same year he received from the King a canonry to Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford to which was attached the position of university orator.
After Charles surrendered to Parliament he left Oxford in June, 1646, disguised and made his way to Newcastle where he surrendered to the Scots. In February, 1647 the Scots brought Charles to Holdenby House and handed him over to the Long Parliament but the king’s request to have his chaplains was denied. When the Army took over in June, 1647 the King was placed under house arrest when both Hammond and Sheldon joined him at Royston and accompanied him to Hampton Court. However, the King escaped to the Isle of Wight on 11th November, 1647 hoping that Colonel Robert Hammond, a nephew of his chaplain, would be sympathetic towards him. This proved not to be the case and the King arrived at Carisbrooke Castle not as a welcome visitor but as a prisoner.
For a while Hammond joined him where he preached at least on St. Andrew’s Day and the Third Sunday in Advent, 1647 but he must have left before Christmas. Afterwards Charles requested a copy of his Advent sermon, titled “The Christian’s Obligation to Peace and Charity” based on the text, “They shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks” (Isa. ii. 4). For Hammond this was an appropriate text for the season of Advent preparing for Christmas but acknowledging too that Christ’s coming has not yet ushered in peace, unity and charity. The world is still so distant from Christ’s teaching as the metals of war are still heard. Yet “the swords and spears” can be beaten into peaceful and practical instruments as plough-shares and pruning-hooks but yet not fulfilled “in our ears” because Christ has been not “throughly born amongst us”, obvious with no glimmers of His charity, unity and peace being fulfilled in our land. This caused Hammond to plead for a proper Advent keeping, not only in its meaning but also in its observing to return sooner than later to Christ.
In December, 1647 Charles while still at Carisbrooke entered into a secret negotiation with the Scots to accept Presbyterianism if they regained his throne. The second Civil War began in February between the Scots and Royalists against the English. Both were defeated by August under Cromwell and Fairfax commands. The next month Charles was removed from Carisbrooke.to Hurst castle opposite side of the Solent until late December when he was moved to Windsor Castle prior to his unlawful on trial on the 20th January, 1648/49 before the Rump Parliament that found the Sovereign ruler guilty of treason. Parliament had been previously purged of members who supported the King by Colonel Pride and his soldiers.
Prior to Charles’ trial Hammond submitted to Lord Fairfax and the Council of War his Humble Addresse against a form of trial contrary to the laws of this kingdom for the King. Previously the Army under Colonel Pride had taken matters into its own hand and purged the Long Parliament of members sympathetic to Charles. Those permitted to stay formed the Rump Parliament and voted for the King’s execution. Hammond had pleaded for them “in the presence of that God to whose directions and Spirit you pretend” to consider “what safe ground you have for so doing” and warned of “evill Spirits that come in the world … from without” as well as that “evill spirit within,” when examining the King’s life. He requested them to have charity, to consider “Scripture”, “Reason”, obedience to God’s covenant and the order of society in making a final decision. After all the country had seen enough blood spilt. His plea fell on deaf ears as Charles was executed on the 30th January, 1648/49.
After Charles surrendered Oxford to Parliament in June, 1646 it forbade the University to make appointments or grant leases. Hammond as Orator of Oxford University had penned yet another appeal to Fairfax to re-consider but again in vain.
Shortly afterwards Parliament announced its Visitation to the University, officially launched in May, 1647. This was fiercely denounced by the University led by its Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Fell who was also Dean of Christ Church Cathedral. Christ Church’s Chapter with almost the entire University were strong Royalist supporters and undermined as much as it could the presence of these Visitors in their midst.
After Parliament announced its Visitation to Oxford University, Hammond was elected to the University delegacy that drew up its case against this Visitation. As with some of the other canons of Christ Church Cathedral such as Morley and its Dean, Fell, Hammond bravely defended both the University and the Cathedral against the Visitors by refusing to co-operate with them and remained at Christ Church. When the Dean of Christ Church was imprisoned by Parliament, Hammond was elected sub-dean, making him responsible for the running of the College.
A strong, determined resistance resulted and possibly if it had not been for the outbreak of the second Civil War in February, 1648 the University of Oxford may have been successful in their effort to maintain its autonomy.
As it was, any more resistance could not be tolerated by Parliament that sent in the troops. Accompanying them was the previous Chancellor the Earl of Pembroke. When reinforcements reached Oxford during Holy Week, 1648, Hammond and all Canons were summoned to appear before the Parliamentary Visitors. They refused. Having been left in peace during the Triduum, the Visitors and troops acted. Mrs. Fell and family were simply carried out of their home and dumped on the lawn and the Canons were expelled. Hammond was placed under house arrest for the time being. Here he began his Annotations on the New Testament.
When sentenced to Wallingford prison its governor, Colonel Arthur Evelyn refused to accept him as a prisoner but only as a friend. Hammond thus remained in Oxford for his imprisoned time, but not for long as the rest of his sentence was in Clapham. His brother-in-law, Sir John Temple was permitted to move him to a friend’s home, Sir Philip Warwick. He stayed in Clapham for two years, often preaching and “observing the orders of the Church”
When his mother was dying in 1650, Hammond could not visit her because of a Parliamentary Order restraining those of the King's party within five miles of their homes
It was while in Oxford Hammond began his attacks on the defects of The Directory Hammond especially highlighted of what it did not have. There were sixteen of these that included the lack of a proper Christian burial for dead, administering the Sacrament to the Sick, omission of the sacrament of Confirmation and Catechetical teaching, Baptism was administered irregularly with no signing of the cross in the name of the Trinity and at the font, the omission of the Lord’s Prayers and set-prayers. More than a thousand years of worshipped thought to be no longer valid.
Not long after Parliament legislated The Directory to replace the Prayer Book for official worship. Hammond penned another tract, Of Idolatry. One of the Puritan/Calvinist consequences in the early years of the Long Parliament was dismantling anything in churches that was considered superstitious and/or idolatrous. Consequently, crosses, crucifixes, saints, angels came tumbling down as well as holy pictures, even those of Christ. Under the Parliamentary Visitation to Cambridge, once Cromwell had taken control of that region in 1643, the notorious iconoclast, William Dowsing had a field day of dismantling so many sacred objects in chapel and churches . When Hammond wrote Of Idolatry in 1646, he undoubtedly would have been very much aware of all this loss of beauty and devotional art in Cambridge.
Another very important book Hammond wrote was in Oxford too. This was his Practicall Catechisme. When finished in 1644, he was advised to publish it anonymously. This he did but when it was reprinted in 1646 and subsequently to the fourteenth edition in 1700 his name was attached.
This massive work proved to be very popular, probably because as its title suggested, it was a practical approach to knowing and living the Christian faith but clearly in the tradition of the Patristic teaching, so distinctive from Presbyterianism. Another far-sighted motivation for Hammond was to keep this faith alive as catechising was much neglected in parish churches at the time of publishing, when before it was often available on Sunday afternoons. Evelyn, in his diary commented that during the Interregnum he often stayed home on Sunday afternoons to catechize his children.
The Prayer Book Catechism had been revised in 1604 and so Hammond’s Practical Catechism acted as a supplement. Part of its attraction was surely its conversational style between a Catechist (Hammond) and an imaginary Scholar who by his various questions or need of further explanation on some subjects enhanced discussion and knowledge on many aspects of the Orthodox faith.
In 1650 Hammond moved to Westwood, the home of Sir John Packington, where he would spend the remainder of his life. Both were with Charles II at the battle of Worcester in 1651 but afterwards were permitted to return to Westwood. As the resident chaplain for ten years he preached regularly on Sundays. Many of his published Thirty-one Sermons were preached whilst here that reflected his pastoral concerns. He approached his preaching methodically on Sundays, first on the Articles of the Apostles’ Creed, followed by “the Superstructures of Good Workes, in the Commandments of Both Tables” but also encouraging his congregation to live out the Christian life in charity, faithfully and morally to Christ’s precepts.
When he entered the pulpit Hammond was not only conscious of the faithful but also of the indifferent and even hardened sinners. He always tried to reach out to them not only on doctrine but equally on moral matters.
As a faithful member of the historic Anglicana Ecclesia he defended this church against both doctrinal and ecclesiastic teachings that differed from the historic church that had existed in Britain since c. first century A. D.
In turn his writings such as Practicall Catechisme were constantly attacked by his Calvinist/Puritan opponents. Before Christmas was abolished by Parliament in 1644 Hammond was also defending why this feast was so significant. The Incarnation began the whole process of salvation for all creation. Why would anyone not want to be grateful for a Saviour who ushered in a renewed creation?
Hammond’s works also responded to the various attacks made on the English Church by the Church of Rome. After the Henrician reformation Rome constantly criticized the English Church as being in schism and was no longer a true Church. Hammond set out to prove how untrue this was in his works. The true English Church was still a true member of the Catholic Church, even though at present it was operating underground just as the early Christians had. After all beforehand Augustine arrived at the end of the sixth century A. D. there had been a church in Britain from the earliest time of Christianity.
Amongst his many scholastic writings were his biblical ones. This included Annotations upon all the books of The New Testament. It was at last published in 1653. He began this in Oxford, continued in Clapham and finished at Westwood. The one thousand folio manuscript modelled on the commentaries of Grotius and Ussher was Hammond's response to the popular demand for English expositions that was a little later imitated by Richard Baxter amongst others. Hammond's painstaking work began with a Latin interpretation, in two large manuscript volumes, and a new English translation based on his collation of Greek manuscripts. When choosing a text, he took Sheldon's advice and chose the Authorized version with his own variants in the margin. When completed Paraphrase was printed in parallel columns, and the extensive annotations at the end of each chapter. Probably this divine hoped that his Annotations would encourage other to consult his rather than the Genevan Annotations still in circulation.
A year before he died, his Commentary on the Psalms was published. Afterwards he began a similar work on Proverbs but he had only completed the first ten chapters before his death. These were later published posthumously in 1663.
Not only did Hammond publish his own biblical achievements but he also encouraged other biblical works to be undertaken and published. One of those works was of course Brian Walton’s project, The Polyglot Bible to which he gave both scholarly and financial help that was discussed in the previous chapter.
Towards the end of 1655 Cromwell issued an edict to be introduced at the beginning of the following year that forbade any sequestered clergy to provide any chaplaincy and tutoring positions. That of course affected Hammond.
As well as encouraging the sequestered clergy to be chaplains Hammond had also urged clergy to send “hopeful persons” to university or “to maintain a seminary of youth instituted in piety, upon the sober principles and old establishment of the Anglican Church” if they could afford to do so.
At Westwood, in obedience to this edict Hammond concluded his last sermon of 1655, Sunday 23rd December, the Fourth Sunday in Advent, two days before Christmas, with these words, “‘And now, if I should never speak a word more to you from God, yet have I declared unto you the whole Counsel from God concerning your Salvation; the Credenda and Facienda, all that is needful for you to believe or to doe.’”
His own personal reaction to Cromwell's restraint on the clergy was Paraenesis. Or, Seasonable Exhortatory to all true Sons of the Church of England. In this treatise Hammond was hoping to instruct and encourage the faithful clergy after they had been “solemnly forbidden all public discharge … and all other branches of sacred functions”, as intimated. This most charitable divine aimed “to supply those wants and remove those pressures” that may be too heavy for “our weak Brethren’s souls”. At this perilous time too, he reminded his fellow clergy we must never forget “our precious dear persecuted mother, the Church of England and remain still constant to that faith which from her breast we have sucked and are not yet scandalized in her”. This is our deepest grief.
By September 1657 Hammond was preaching again, but in failing health, afflicted by gout, colic, stone, and cramp. Later, in May, 1659 Charles II had been sent a list of priests to fill the vacant sees at the hands of Allestree for his approval. Unfortunately on re-crossing the channel he was arrested but having sensed danger had destroyed the dispatch after memorising its content. One of those priests selected was Hammond for the see of Worcester. With his failing health, Hammond worried about his imminent responsibilities: “‘I must confess I never saw that time in all my life wherein I could so cheerfully say my Nunc dimittis as now. I do dread prosperity, I do really dread it.’” He reflected on ways of doing good in this diocese, in particular the repair of Worcester Cathedral that had been extensively damaged, including St. Wulfstan’s crypt during the Civil War and afterwards it became a preaching church. His last written words were two prayers in preparation for this see. Shortly before he died, he was summoned to London “to assist in the great work of the composure of breaches in the Church”. No doubt he would have brought his scholarship, charity and wisdom with him.
By Good Friday, 20th April, 1660 he was seriously ill with stones and he received viaticum in preparation for death but being still alive on Easter Day he received his Easter Communion, dying on Easter Wednesday, the 25th, the same day the Convention Parliament assembled that soon approved the return of Charles II. Hammond was buried according to the Book of Common Prayer in St. Mary and All Saints Church, Hampton Lovett, the Pakington church. Before being buried in the Packington family Vault, his trusted friend, Richard Allestree arrived after his imprisonment and was thus present for the final commitment of his beloved mentor. It was he who inherited Hammond’s library, now housed in Christ Church, Oxford where they probably first met and when after the Restoration Allestree was appointed a Canon. his trusted friend, Richard Allestree after his imprisonment and was thus present for the final commitment of his beloved mentor. It was he who inherited Hammond’s library, now housed in Christ Church, Oxford where they probably first met and when after the Restoration Allestree was appointed a Canon. A monument to him was placed on the south wall of the nave. In the following year John Fell, the son of Samuel who had led the opposition to the Parliament’s Visitation, published a biography, The Life of the Most Learned Reverend and Pious Dr. H. Hammond.
Although Baxter disliked his theology, he in his Reliquiae Baxterianae, declared how Hammond’s death “was a very great loss” and that his “piety and wisdom” would have made a vast difference to the atmosphere in the religious debates prior to the Act of Uniformity in 1662.
Undoubtedly as mentioned at the beginning, so much is owed to this charitable, holy and hard-working priest for better days ahead, that somehow, I think, he knew would come. What a shame for Anglicana Ecclesia that the one who had devoted those many years after the disestablishing of his Church in the mid-1640’s, died just prior to the Restoration. He would have tempered the political-churchman, Gilbert Sheldon, in the ecclesiastical negotiations at the Savoy Conference. Through Hammond’s scholarship, preaching, teaching, encouraging ejected clergy to minister as chaplains and enabling students to attend university, I think allowed the restoration of the true Anglicana Ecclesia to be achieved. The English Church owes so much to this saintly Caroline divine.
His other legacy to Classical Anglicanism has been his extensive writings on the Orthodox faith as taught by the Patristics. Hammond, I am sure, would recommend, “tolle, lege”. Although he was a most learned priest and pastor it is his charity that he was most admired for during his life, even by his opponents.
One contemporary appreciation of his life was through the eyes of Isaac Barlow, one of Hammond’s early protégés. On news of his death, Barlow sung his praises in his “Epitaph on Henry Hammond”.
Henry Hammond, at whose name all learned men rise to their feet (a name worthy to be written in gold, … but rather in steel), a most celebrated exponent of the Arts, a man absolutely without a peer, most enlightened of all theologians, at the same time the glory and pattern of learned piety. As an interpreter of sacred Scripture easily the most perspective of all men, as a hammer of error, the happiest man since the creation as a champion for Truth more vigorous than can be said; in whose writings there shine forth the dignity and shrewdness of his genius, the sublimity and accuracy of his judgement, the weight and skill of his sentiments of his teaching, his diligence that nowhere slumbered.
…
He so endured his labours for the Bride of God and for God Himself, that Heaven itself seemed to rest on his shoulders. Having surpassed all other claimants, he overcame the Romans, overthrew the Genevans; over each were Truth and Hammond triumphant.
It amazes me that for all his tireless, scholarly and charitable efforts to keep alive the underground Anglicana Ecclesia during the Interregnum he still has not been recognized in the Church of England’s Calendar. No Caroline divine worked harder and more devoutly than he during those most challenging years for the truly reformed Church in England.
