John Hancock’s Busy Spring and Silent Summer

On 5 Mar 1774, Bostonians applauded John Hancock as he delivered that year’s oration commemorating the Boston Massacre.

The next week, he led the Company of Cadets as an honor guard in the funeral procession of Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver.

Later that month, the town reelected Hancock as a selectman, and another town meeting in May sent him to the Massachusetts General Court once more.

On 17 May, Hancock was once again at the head of the Cadets, welcoming the new governor, Gen. Thomas Gage. As with the Oliver funeral, not all of Hancock’s political allies liked that, but he insisted he was obliged to respect royal offices even if he opposed the men who held them.

Hancock was present when the legislature convened in Boston on 25 May. The next day, he was named to a committee to consider Gov. Gage’s speech stating he would move the General Court to Salem.

But Hancock doesn’t appear to have gone to Salem himself. His name is nowhere in the assembly’s official record of that short session, and usually he was quite active on committees and in carrying news from the house to the Council and governor.

Furthermore, Hancock also didn’t attend meetings of the Boston selectmen between 9 March, right after his oration, through 8 September. In that period town clerk William Cooper usually recorded which selectmen were at each meeting.

The one possible exception was on 20 July, when Cooper’s notes say all seven selectmen had a special session on Deer Island. But those notes are strange, recording that the board approved paying certain men but leaving blanks for how much. So it’s conceivable that page isn’t accurate.

On 12 August, the Boston selectmen received “a Billet” from the governor, summoning them to the Province House the next day. Gen. Gage entered and, “without any ceremony of any kind,” told the men he’d just received the Massachusetts Government Act and Boston would need his approval before convening another town meeting.

The selectmen answered that “we had no need of calling a Town Meeting for we had two now alive by Adjournment, one of them to be some time this month, the other to be held in October.” This response made Gage look “serious” and say “he must think upon that.” The governor spoke, according to Cooper’s notes, “with some degree of temper.”

Hancock was the only selectmen not present for that important conversation.

TOMORROW: Where was John Hancock in the summer of 1774?