[2] Subsequently, Hammond was appointed chargé d'affaires at Vienna from 1788 to 1790,[1] spent part of 1790 in Copenhagen,[4] and in 1791 found himself Counsellor of Legation at Madrid.

The Articles of Confederation lacked both a fixed seat of government and single leader to accredit an envoy, and few qualified diplomats desired the post and its yearly salary of £2,500.

[5] Although Hammond described his situation as "new, critical and rather embarrassing", he also stated that "If I accepted a quarter of the invitations to dinner and tea parties which I receive I should have little time for business", and said of the leading families that "I have reason to think most of them are Tories at heart.

Hammond left his post on 14 August 1795, leaving the consul general at Philadelphia, Phineas Bond, in charge until Robert Liston arrived in America.

[1] Hammond would later be sent to one or two posts in continental Europe, and sometime in the 1810s he was appointed as a commissioner on the Arbitration of Revolutionary Indemnities, and as such spent many years living alternatively in London and Paris.