Hancock, John | "restraining persons dangerous to this State"

Hancock, John

Manuscript document signed ("John Hancock," with paraph) as governor of Massachusetts, one page (321 x 204 mm) on a bifolium of laid paper (Watermarked Britannia | JC) written in a neat clerical hand, 17 February 1781, being an authorization for "Aaron Wood, William Whetmore, & Amos Putnam Esquires Justices of the Peace for the County of Essex" to enforce the Massachusetts "Act intitled an Act in Addition to an Act intitled an Act for taking up and restraining persons dangerous to this State," countersigned by the secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ("John Avery Secy"), large embossed paper seal of Massachusetts; masterfully silked closing some fold separations. Accompanied by a "True Copy" of the referenced act, attested by John Avery, 1½ pages (376 x 232 mm) on a bifolium (watermarked posthorn | C Taylor), the address panel on the integral blank directing the document, on public service, to Wood, Whetmore, and Putnam; seal remnant and repair, masterfully silked.

The act referenced in Hancock's order gave Wood and the other justices of the peace the remarkably wide-ranging authority to have apprehended and committed to jail "any Person whom you shall deem the Safety of the Commonwealth requires, should be restrained of his personal Liberty or whose Enlargement within this Commonwealth is dangerous thereto.…"

PROVENANCE

James S. Copley (Sotheby's New York, 14 April 2010, lot 76)