After an abortive attempt had been made by some Royalists in the neighbourhood of Tunbridge to help the King, Hammond, then living there, felt obliged to remove; and, upon visiting his old tutor, Dr. Buckner, "in such a habit as that exigence made necessary," he, under his friend's hospitable roof, though "no valuer of trifles," had so extraordinary a dream that he could not then despise or ever afterwards forget it. "He thought himself and a multitude of others to have been abroad in a bright and cheerful day, when on a sudden there seemed a separation to be made, and he, with the far less number, to be placed at a distance from the rest; and then, the clouds gathering, a most tempestuous storm arose, with thundering and lightnings, with spouts of impetuous rain, and violent gusts of wind, and whatever else might add unto a scene of horror, particularly balls of fire, that shot themselves amongst the ranks of those that stood in the lesser party; when a gentle whisper seemed to interrupt those other louder noises, saying: _Be still, and ye shall receive no harm_. Amidst these terrors, the doctor falling to his prayers, soon after the tempest ceased, and that well-known cathedral anthem begun, _Come, Lord Jesus, come away_, with which he awoke. The correspondent event of all which he found verified signally in the preservation both of himself and his friends in doing of their duties; the which with much content he was used to mention. Beside, being himself taken to the choir of angels at the close of that land-hurricane of ours, whereof that dismal apparition was only a faint emblem, he gave thereby too literal a completion to his dream, and the unhappy credit of bordering upon prophecy."[341] [Sidenote: _Sanderson._] Hammond went to see Sanderson at Boothby, when Hammond persuaded him to attempt the practice of _memoriter_ preaching. Early on a Sunday morning, they walked to a neighbouring church, where the minister requested the favour of a sermon. Sanderson entered the pulpit, having previously put the MS. of the discourse, which he had committed to memory, into his friend's hands. The effort to preach in this way turned out a humiliating failure. The preacher, before he had delivered the third part of what he meant to say, became very confused, and "so lost as to the matter," that his learned auditor was frightened, and many of the village congregation discovered that there was something wrong. "Good doctor," said Sanderson, as they were returning home, "give me my sermon, and know that neither you nor any man living, shall ever persuade me to preach again without my books." "Good doctor," returned the other, "be not angry; for if I persuade you to preach again without book, I will give you leave to burn all those that I am master of."[342]