HAMMOND, John (1542-89), of Colman Street, London and Essex.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1584

Family and Education

b. 1542, yr. s. of Thomas Hammond of Pendleton, nr. Whalley, Lancs. by Beatrice, da. of John Nowell of Read, Lancs., sis. of Alexander Nowell, dean of St. Paul’s, and of Robert Nowell. educ. Trinity Hall, Camb., fellow 1557-77, LLB 1561, LLD 1569; adv. Doctors’ Commons 1569. m. Agnes, several ch. inc. 1s.

Offices Held

Commissary of arches, deaneries of Shoreham and Croydon 1570; commissary to dean and chapter of St. Paul’s, London 1573; master in Chancery 1574; chancellor, diocese of London 1575.

Biography

Hammond addressed the Queen in Latin when she visited his college on 9 Aug. 1564. From 1573 he was an active member of the high commission, and in or about 1578 was among the ‘lawyers temporal’ who conferred with the attorney-general as to how church attendance might be enforced upon recusants. In the 1580s he took part in the examination, sometimes by torture, of a number of Catholic priests, including Edmund Campion. He was more sympathetic towards the puritans than were others among his ecclesiastical colleagues, and wrote several tracts of a strongly puritan flavour. Only a year before he died, he wrote to Burghley attacking the authority of the bishops, and a few months later his views were quoted by Sir Francis Knollys, when writing to Burghley on the same matter. He was assessed at £20 in lands and fees for the 1589 subsidy.

Hammond probably obtained his return for Rye through the warden of the Cinque Ports. He is not known to have received wages. He was appointed to committees concerned with bills on religion on 16, 18, 19 Dec. No relationship has been established between him and the William Hammond who was returned at West Looe in 1572 and it is not know how either came in for that borough. John Hammond died at the end of 1589. In his will dated 21 Dec., and proved 12 Oct. 1590, he arranged that half his goods should go to his wife with a life interest in the residue. His son John, later physician to James I, was to have his father’s books. Hammond appointed his wife executrix and Sir Dru Drury, Sir William Bowes, Robert Beale and William Daniell overseers. The will was attested by Dean Nowell.

DNB; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. cix, cx), 155; The Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell, ed. Grosart, 21, n. 10; Suss. Arch. Colls. xiv. 25; Lansd. 42, f. 154; 43, f. 98; 63, f. 34; 155, f. 61; CSP Dom. 1547-80, p. 535; 1581-90, passim; APC, xiii. passim; Peel, Second Parte of a Register, i. 246, 294; HMC Hatfield, iii. 367, 412; D’Ewes, 340, 341, 343; PCC 62 Drury.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: J.E.M.

Notes