Of course Hancock was a good deal more than an artful calligrapher. As Brooke Barbier, an independent scholar, reminds us in “King Hancock,” a concise and highly readable biography, he was a leading merchant and public man whose place in colonial affairs was both consequential and singular.
Unlike his austere, if not scruffy, New England allies, Hancock had a taste for display and enjoyed elegance and fine living—though, as Ms. Barbier shows, he did not lack the common touch. At key moments, he showed a preference for moderation that was at odds with the pugnaciousness of his fellow Boston patriots, though he did not lack revolutionary ardor either. Hancock would lead Massachusetts’ resistance to British taxation in the 1760s and serve as president of the Second Continental Congress. He certainly earned the implied status of that prominent signature.
If Hancock’s style of life seemed patrician, his origins were not. Born in Braintree, a farming town 10 miles from Boston, to a Harvard-trained minister in 1737, Hancock lost his father to illness at age 7 and went to live with a paternal uncle in the city, a man who had made his way up from a humble start. In his early adulthood, Thomas Hancock had been apprenticed to a bookseller, since his family couldn’t pay for his education, and later opened his own shop. He turned the profits toward ventures in wholesaling and land speculation. War in North America in the 1740s—between the French and English in “King George’s War”—made him a supplier to British and colonial forces. He eventually married a partner’s daughter. Without children of their own, they welcomed young John into their home.
The boy had schooling beyond his uncle’s education, including Harvard, and enjoyed the privileges of the well-to-do. As Ms. Barbier notes, his uncle’s success (and wealth) gave John Hancock both confidence and a close look at running a business. An extended visit to London, when he was in his 20s, introduced him to metropolitan fashions and inspired what can only be called a lasting taste for shopping. The visit also exposed him, upon the accession of George III in 1760, to the imperial capital’s pomp and display. As he saw then, public spectacle could project authority while appealing to the crowd.
This was no negligible observation. As Ms. Barbier emphasizes, Hancock possessed an innate sociability—it was a core aspect of his identity: He wanted to be liked. Not for him the disciplined reserve of his fellow New Englanders, the aloof dignity of George Washington and the Virginia planter class, the intellectual ferocity of John Adams. He was, though hardly ordinary, never a grandee; for all his display, he radiated an affability that would appeal to social orders well below his own.