Anthony Hammond (1668–1738), of Somersham Place, Somersham, Huntingdonshire and Lidlington, Bedfordshire, was an English official and Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1695 and 1708. He was also known as a poet and pamphleteer.
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Early life
Hammond was born on 1 September 1668, the eldest son of Anthony Hammond, D.L., of Somersham Place, Somersham, Huntingdonshire, who was the third son of Anthony Hammond (1608–1661) of St Alban's Court, Nonington, Kent. His mother was Amy Browne (died 1693), daughter of Henry Browne of Hasfield House, Gloucestershire. 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. He succeeded his father, who died in 1680 and has a monument in Somersham church.
He was admitted at Gray's Inn in 1684 and at St John's College, Cambridge in 1685. It was told that he smuggled the actress and playwright Susanna Centlivre into his college, where she was disguised as a male cousin, "Jack". There (by this report) she remained hidden for some months studying grammar. He made many and varied friendships with political and literary figures. He entered the company of radical Whig theorists, including Walter Moyle. 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.