1. After suffering through years of ill health, John Hancock died on 8 Oct. at the age of 57. Boston church bells tolled in memoriam, flags flew at half-mast, and shops briefly closed. An estimated 20,000 mourners attended his funeral. JA and Samuel Adams rode together in the procession. Reflecting at length on Hancock’s character and their tempestuous relationship, JA later wrote: “I can say with Truth that I profoundly admired him, and more profoundly loved him. If he had Vanity and Caprice; so had I. And if his [‘]Vanity and Caprice’ made me sometimes Sputter, as you know, they often did; mine, I well know had often a similar Effect upon him, But these little fleckerings of little passions determine nothing concerning essential Characters.— I knew Mr Hancock from his Cradle to his Grave. He was radically generous and benevolent” (AFC description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Richard Alan Ryerson, Margaret A. Hogan, Sara Martin, Hobson Woodward, and others, Cambridge, 1963– . description ends , 9:135, 450; to William Tudor Sr., 1 June 1817, LbC, APM Reel 123).