was initially with the army. On 1 April 1647 he appeared at the bar of the House of Commons to answer for his conduct in permitting the circulation of the army's petition in his regiment. Only four hundred of his regiment were willing to serve in Ireland, though Hammond himself had declared his conviction that were Philip Skippon commander-in-chief, the greater part of the army would follow him. He signed the vindication of the officers presented to parliament on 27 April 1647, and the letter of the officers to the city on 10 June. He was also one of those appointed to treat with the parliamentary commissioners on behalf of the army on 1 July 1647. Further on into the summer of 1647 Hammond apparently doubted whether the army was justified in using force against the parliament; he sought and obtained retirement from active military service. On 3 September 1647 Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, who since 1642 had been governor of the Isle of Wight, announced to the House of Lords that Thomas Fairfax, by his authority as commander-in-chief, had commissioned Colonel Hammond to be governor of that island, desired the lords to accept his own resignation, and asked them to pass an ordinance appointing Hammond (which was done on 6 September). In 1648 events rendered weighty the debating point whether Hammond derived his authority from army or parliament. It was then argued by Henry Ireton and the army leaders that the ordinance was a rubber-stamp. The office itself was at this time a sinecure. Hammond was succeeded by his lieutenant-colonel Isaac Ewer in 1647, who had transferred into the New Model Army in April 1645. Custodian to the King Charles I of England fled from Hampton Court on 11 November 1647, apparently with the intention of crossing to the Isle of Wight and Hammond, for safety and as a staging post to leaving the country. Hammond had been introduced to the King earlier, at an audience where he made such protestations of loyalty that Charles came to believe him sympathetic. According to Anthony Wood, it was Henry Hammond, Robert Hammond's uncle, who brought him to the king. The actual circumstances of the escape are known largely through the later accounts of the royalist proponents of the plan. John Ashburnham (on his own account) met Hammond as he was going down to his new post, and heard that