He was educated at home under Mr Kay from 1675 to 1676, at Willingham, Cambridgeshire under Samuel Saywell from 1676 to 1683 and at St Paul's School from 1684 to 1685.
Through Moyle he probably came into the circle of Tory and Whig ideologues and virtuosi who gathered at the Grecian Coffee House in the Strand, in London.
He was elected a Conservator to the Board of the Bedford Level Corporation, becoming a Bailiff of that company (in the place of Roger Jenyns, Surveyor General of the Fens, deceased) in 1693: he surrendered his bailiwick to James Fortrey in 1704, but resumed his place as a Conservator until 1712, when his duties of service in Spain prevented his further active participation upon the committee.
[1] Hammond was a regular guest at the Surrey home of Sir Walter Clarges, who was similarly acquainted with the Grecian Tavern set.
[14] At the 1695 English general election, Hammond was returned as Tory Member of Parliament for Huntingdonshire in a hard-fought contest.
He voted in March 1696 against fixing the price of guineas at 22 shillings, and refused to subscribe the Association which lost him his position on the commission of peace.
[1] After a quarrel that arose during a debate in the committee of privileges over the Cambridgeshire election, he fought a duel with Lord William Powlett on 27 January 1697/98, and was wounded in the thigh.
In September, however, when dining in a Haymarket tavern with Tory friends Charles Davenant and John Tredenham,[18][19] he was compromised when they were unexpectedly joined by the French chargé d'affaires Chevalier Jean-Baptiste de Poussin, upon which the Whigs built great political capital against him.
[20][21] At the November general election of 1701, he was defeated by Isaac Newton, although Edward Villiers, 1st Earl of Jersey, Lord Chamberlain, had written to the university in his favour.
Under Godolphin's administration he was made a Commissioner of the Navy in May 1702,[24] and again entered parliament as member for Huntingdon at the 1702 English general election.
James Brydges, however, upheld Hammond in a report to Lord Treasurer Dartmouth, dated 11 November 1712, justifying the payments made by him to Portuguese troops.
Prior, Mr. Pope, Mr. Hughes, Mr. Harcourt, Lady M[ary] W[ortley] M[ontagu], Mrs. Manley, &c., now first published from their respective manuscripts.
[33] Hammond contributed a 'character' of Edward Russell, 1st Earl of Orford to The Present State of the Republick of Letters for October 1730, from which Robert Samber drew his information for a verse eulogy on Orford in 1731:[34] also he wrote another financial pamphlet entitled The National Debt as it stood at Michaelmas 1730, stated and explained.