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, descended from a family long situated at Somersham-place, in Huntingdonshire, was born in 16u3, and educated at St. John’s college, Cambridge. He was a commissioner of the navy, a good speaker in parliament, had the name of “silver-tongued Hammond” given him by lord Bolingbroke, and was a man of note among the wits, poets, and parliamentary writers, in the beginning of the last century. A volume of “Miscellany Poems,” was inscribed to him, in 1694, by his friend Mr. Hopkins; and in 1720 he was the editor of “A new Miscellany of Original Poems,” in which he had himself no small share. His own pieces, he observes in his preface, “were written at very different times, and were owned by him, lest in a future day they should be ascribed to other persons to their prejudice, as the ‘ Ode on Solitude’ has been, in wrong, to the earl of Roscommon, and as some of the rest have been to others.” He was the intimate friend of Mr. Moyle, and wrote the “Account of his Life and Writings,” prefixed to his works in 1727. Their acquaintance began, through sir Robert Marsham, in the latter end of 1690, soon after Hammond’s return from a short tour into Holland and some parts of Flanders. The places of resort for wits at that period were May n waring' s coifee-house in Fleet-street, and the Grecian near the Temple; where Moyle, having taken a disgust against the clergy, had several friendly disputes with Hammond, and at the same place had a share with Trenchard in writing the argument against a standing army. In Moyle’s works are three valuable letters to Hammond; a copy of verses, by Hammond, to Moyle; another, by Hopkins, to the same; and a third, by Hopkins, to Hammond. Mr. Hammond is said to have married Susanna, a sister of Mr. Walpole, afterwards the celebrated minister of state; but that Mr. Hammond was a different person. Our author married a Miss Clarges, and died in 1738, as Winston informs us, in the Fleet-prison, where he was confined for debt, and so preserved what he had not spent of his estate for his eldest son. His second son is the subject of the following article.