In the Woody Allen movie Zelig, the running joke is that the main character pops up in the background of every major event of his time. John Hancock (1737–93) was the Zelig of American independence. From the first signs of resistance to imperial rule in the Royal Province of Massachusetts in the 1760s to the foundation of that state’s government in the 1780s, Hancock was everywhere. But, unlike the fictional Zelig, Hancock played a key role at every turn, through hard work, bonhomie, and judicious disposition of his considerable wealth. It was Hancock whose behind-the-scenes maneuvering was critical to the opposition to the Stamp Act; it was his ships that both carried the contraband that sparked protests against the British trade duties and subsequently brought news of their repeal; it was he who served as the president of the Massachusetts Provincial Assembly and concerns for whose safety sent Paul Revere on his fateful ride to Lexington; he was the president of the Second Continental Congress—the one that declared independence—and in 1780 became the first governor of Massachusetts, presiding over the commonwealth’s 1789 ratifying convention for the federal Constitution and shepherding that document past serious opposition. Yet, as Brooke Barbier observes in her genial new biography, King Hancock, he remains among the least known of the founders, remembered largely for an apocryphal tale about his signature on the Declaration of Independence. About that “John Hancock,” more later.

Hancock was born under a fortunate star. His minister father died when was seven, but of the three Hancock children, it was John who was chosen to be adopted by his childless uncle Thomas, a wealthy Boston merchant. Thomas’s mansion and its outbuildings and gardens occupied the crest of Beacon Hill, where the Massachusetts state house now stands, dominating Boston Common below. It was Hancock’s home for the rest of his life. Thomas ensured that his nephew was prepared to take his place in the colonial elite, educating him at Boston Latin School and Harvard, from which John graduated at the ripe age of seventeen. Hancock then apprenticed in his uncle’s merchant house, learning the ways of transatlantic commerce in an economy still dominated by the British Empire. When John was twenty-four, Thomas sent him to London to establish his footing among the local merchants, a sort of finishing school for cosmopolitan colonials. With his knack for being in the right place at the right time, Hancock was there to witness the death of George II and the coronation of George III. Then, in 1764, Thomas died, leaving his entire business to his adopted son. Hancock was now one of the richest men in the colonies.

Hancock was there to witness the death of George II and the coronation of George III.

He was also directly in the crosshairs of a change in British revenue policy that would limit his profits in an already slowing economy following the French and Indian War. The Sugar Act (1764), the Stamp Act (1765), and the Townshend Duties (1767) were all aimed at increasing Crown revenue from colonial trade. And while merchants like Hancock had been able to circumvent importation duties such as those imposed by the Molasses Act (1733) by the time-honored expedients of smuggling and bribery, the new acts carried with them more serious enforcement measures and a host of bureaucrats to ensure they worked. The city of Boston’s opposition was immediate and at times violent. Hancock was in the thick of it all, threading between the imperial government and the colonial mobs, always with an eye to preserving his property and business.

He was a key player in the merchants’ non-importation agreements, an early boycott of British goods. At the same time, he was central to the intimidating protests by the “lower orders,” plying Boston’s warring gangs with food and drink to win their allegiance and limit their penchant for property damage. It was fitting that news of the Stamp Act’s repeal reached Boston on one of Hancock’s ships. By then he was firmly established in the popular mind as a “worthy Patriot.”

By then he was firmly established in the popular mind as a “worthy Patriot.”

The year 1767 brought the much broader Townshend Duties and the attempted seizure of Hancock’s ship Lydia on the (probably justified) suspicion of smuggling. This time Hancock himself came to the dock and stood toe to toe with the customs agent. Bent on making their point, British agents next seized Hancock’s Liberty; a riot ensued. Attempting to reestablish control of the situation, the British tried Hancock for smuggling. For his defense, Hancock hired none other than his childhood friend John Adams as his attorney; the Crown dropped the case a year later. As a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1766–71), Hancock was one of the authors of a letter of protest nominally addressed to the King but circulated to the other colonies. Refusing the governor’s demand that they rescind the letter, the “Glorious Ninety-two” had their names engraved on Paul Revere’s famed commemorative silver punchbowl; Hancock’s was of course among them. Hancock was now at the forefront of the Patriot cause, “the Idol of the Mob,” as one customs officer put it. The Liberty did not fare as well; outfitted as a British warship, she was eventually burned at Newport.

Events moved quickly after that. It was Hancock who was named chairman of the meeting at Faneuil Hall to protest the Boston Massacre, Hancock who convinced the provincial governor of Massachusetts to withdraw British troops from Boston, Hancock who guaranteed their safety while they evacuated, and Hancock who announced their departure to a town meeting. It was also Hancock’s ship that brought news of Parliament’s repeal of the Townshend Duties, fatefully leaving only a tax on tea. In 1773, it was Hancock—as the leader and outfitter of a local militia (the Cadets)—who patrolled the wharf to make sure that a shipment of tea was not unloaded under cover of darkness. And, it was Hancock who recruited men from among his working-class contacts to dump the tea in the harbor, although he was by then far from the protest. It was also Hancock who gave a fiery speech on behalf of the Patriot cause on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Suggesting a colonies-wide assembly, the address was published and circulated widely, raising Hancock’s profile even further.

In 1774 Parliament passed the Coercive Acts to bring the unruly city of Boston to heel. While Hancock stayed out of public life that summer, by fall Massachusetts was creating its own parallel government. It was Hancock who was elected president of the Provincial Congress and was chosen to serve on the Committee of Safety. From his house, Hancock could watch British soldiers bivouacked on the common, soldiers who gave him the nickname “King Hancock” for his sway over the Patriot forces. When he and John Adams withdrew to Concord with the rest of the Congress, the stage was set for Paul Revere’s now-mythic ride.

He worked to mend diplomatic fences with the ever-prickly French by generous resort to his table and wine cellar.

By 1775, Hancock was fully a player on the national stage, elected as a Massachusetts delegate to the Second Continental Congress. Ever one to make a splash, he traveled to Philadelphia in a splendid coach; admirers regularly tried to unharness his horses and pull the vehicle themselves. Once in Philadelphia, he was elected president of the Second Continental Congress, as much for his knowledge of military and naval matters as for his embodiment of the Patriot spirit. In fact, some favored him over Washington as commander-in-chief. Perhaps surprisingly, Hancock was lukewarm toward independence; being part of the British Empire was still good for business. Then events overtook moderates like Hancock: King George rejected the aptly named Olive Branch Petition on the same day that Tom Paine’s Common Sense went on sale in the colonies. The die was cast. When an exhausted Hancock returned to Boston in October 1777, following the Patriot victory at Saratoga, he was the longest-serving president of the Continental Congress. Returned to private life, he worked to mend diplomatic fences with the ever-prickly French by generous resort to his table and wine cellar.

Although the war ground on until 1781, in October of 1780, with the Massachusetts state constitution in place, Hancock was inaugurated as the commonwealth’s first governor, breezing to victory with 91 percent of the statewide vote. In the following years, he weathered post-war economic strife, including Shays’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts, regularly siding with the poor and middling against his own class. He served as governor until 1785 and again from 1787 until 1793, when he died in office, having seen the Constitution through the 1788 Massachusetts ratifying convention by favoring the Bill of Rights. Fittingly, he lies buried in Boston’s Old Granary Burying Ground, not far from his lifelong home.

King Hancock is a vastly enjoyable work of popular history that wears its impressive scholarship lightly. It deftly explains the wider forces that unraveled the colonists’ close bonds with the mother country, ties that had been strengthened when the colonies sheltered under the British Empire during the French and Indian War and frayed when Parliament asked the colonists to help pay for that war. The book also features an almost tactile account of what it was like to live in Boston in the eighteenth century. The author pays careful attention to the role of taverns and the city’s drinking culture in cementing social and political ties, something to be expected from an independent historian who founded and operates Ye Olde Tavern Tours along Boston’s Freedom Trail. For example, having organized opposition to the Stamp Act with a generous party for the “lower orders” at the Green Dragon, a well-known watering hole, Hancock celebrated the act’s repeal by treating the same lower orders to a pipe of Madeira—more than one hundred twenty gallons—set up in a giant barrel in front of his mansion overlooking the common. This was in addition to a grand entertainment for “the genteel part of the town” that could be seen by those enjoying Hancock’s Madeira on the common below.

As the book amply demonstrates, even clothing played a political role in a society organized on hierarchy and deference, hence Hancock’s near-obsession with opulent dress: wigs; long, elaborately embroidered jackets; silver buckles; and elegant white linen. And there is the sheer prurient appeal of Hancock’s ostentation. What reader is not happier for learning that Paul Revere delivered his famous message to a casually attired Hancock resplendent not just in a faux-Turkish gown of blue damask lined with silk but also accoutered with a linen cap topped with a red velvet one and shoes to match. Or that, as a gesture of republican simplicity, Hancock wore a crimson velvet suit when sworn in as Massachusetts’s first governor?

John Hancock owned slaves, although, like many others, he freed them in the wake of the Revolution.

There is one cavil: the author understandably raises the subject of slavery and the status of free blacks in both Boston and the Hancock household itself. John Hancock owned slaves, although, like many others, he freed them in the wake of the Revolution and apparently kept them on as paid workers. Massachusetts itself effectively ended slavery in 1783 following a series of court decisions that held slavery incompatible with the Massachusetts constitution. Nonetheless, the author repeatedly says that only white men could vote, implicitly questioning the legitimacy of the new government. In fact, free black men were able to vote under the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 (which is still in effect to this day) as long as they, like white males, could meet the property qualification and paid their taxes. And, a not inconsiderable number of free blacks voted, forming a reliable bloc for the nascent Federalist party. This may well explain Governor Hancock’s 1792 ball for the free blacks of Boston, an event for which he was caricatured in the Boston press. Barbier treats the decision to entertain free blacks in his home as a sign of Hancock’s nascent egalitarianism; a more jaundiced eye might see it as enlightened electioneering. He was, after all, standing for reelection.

As to that famous signature: as the president of the Second Continental Congress, Hancock was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence, both the original document passed by Congress and the subsequent engrossed copy for circulation, the former on July 4, 1776, the latter on August 2, with members of Congress then also signing. But as Barbier observes, there is no contemporaneous source for Hancock’s remark that he was signing his name boldly enough to make sure King George could read it without his spectacles. Hancock’s ornate signature, like so much of his public persona, was intended to demonstrate that he was a gentleman. As a young boy, preparing for his role in the mercantile house, he had received calligraphy lessons from one of the finest instructors in the colonies; he knew how to use a quill pen, maximizing the downstrokes and avoiding ink blots. The ornate flourish under his name, called a paraph, was a further symbol of his status. Yet the joke that Hancock apparently never made captures something deep and true about the man, a retail politician before his time.