Charles Boycott

Charles Cunningham Boycott was born on 12 March 1832 in Burgh St Peter, Norfolk, England. He was the eldest surviving son of Reverend William Boycatt, an Anglican rector, and Elizabeth Georgiana Boycatt. Raised in a devout Anglican home, his family—of Huguenot origin—had lived in Norfolk for nearly 150 years, having fled France in 1685 after Louis XIV revoked civil and religious liberties for French Protestants. His baptismal records list him as Boycatt; the family changed the spelling to Boycott in 1841.

He attended a boarding school in Blackheath, London, and entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1848, hoping to serve in the Corps of Royal Sappers and Miners. After failing a periodic exam in 1849, he was discharged. The following year, his family bought him a commission in the 39th Foot regiment for £450. His regiment transferred to Belfast shortly after he joined, then moved to Newry, and later to Dublin, where it stayed for a year. On 5 June 1852, he married Anne Dunne at St Paul’s Church, a Church of Ireland church, in Dublin. He was ill from August 1851 to February 1852, sold his commission the next year, but chose to remain in Ireland, leasing a farm in County Tipperary and acting as a small-scale landlord.

After receiving an inheritance, his friend Murray McGregor Blacker, a local magistrate, persuaded him to move to Achill Island, off the coast of County Mayo. In 1854, McGregor Blacker sublet 2,000 acres of land belonging to the Irish Church Mission Society to Boycott. Life on the island was initially difficult; Boycott later said it took “a long struggle against adverse circumstances” to become prosperous. Using money from another inheritance and farming profits, he built a large house near Dooagh.

Boycott was involved in several disputes on Achill. Two years after arriving, he was unsuccessfully sued for assault by a local man, Thomas Clarke. Clarke claimed he went to Boycott’s house because Boycott owed him money, and that Boycott refused to pay and told him to leave. When Clarke refused, Boycott allegedly said, “If you do not be off, I will make you.” Clarke later withdrew the allegations and admitted Boycott did not owe him money. Boycott and McGregor Blacker also had a protracted dispute with Mr. Carr, agent for the Achill Church Mission Estate, and Carr’s bailiff, Mr. O’Donnell. The dispute began when Boycott and Carr backed different candidates for the Board of Guardians to the Church Mission Estate; Boycott’s candidates won. Carr was also the local receiver of wrecks, entitled to collect marine salvage from shipwrecks and keep unsold items. In 1860, Carr wrote to the Receiver of Wreck accusing Boycott and his men of illegally breaking up a wreck and moving salvage to Boycott’s property. Boycott sued Carr for libel, claiming £500 in damages.

In 1873, Boycott moved to Lough Mask House, four miles from Ballinrobe in County Mayo, owned by Lord Erne. John Crichton, 3rd Earl Erne, was a wealthy Ulster landowner living at Crom Castle in County Fermanagh, owning 40,386 acres of land in Ireland—31,389 in County Fermanagh, 4,826 in County Donegal, and 1,996 elsewhere.

Boycott had served in the British Army’s 39th Foot, which brought him to Ireland. After retiring from the army, he worked as a land agent for Lord Erne in the Lough Mask area. In 1880, as part of a campaign for free sale, fixity of tenure, and fair rent—and specifically to resist proposed evictions on the estate—local activists of the Irish National Land League encouraged Boycott’s employees, including seasonal workers needed to harvest crops on Lord Erne’s estate, to withdraw their labour. They began a campaign of isolation against Boycott in the local community. Shops in nearby Ballinrobe refused to serve him, and some were threatened with violence to ensure compliance.

Opposition to the campaign became a cause célèbre in the British press after Boycott wrote a letter to *The Times*. Newspapers sent correspondents to County Mayo to highlight what they saw as the victimisation of a peer’s servant by Irish nationalists. Fifty Orangemen from County Cavan and County Monaghan travelled to Lord Erne’s estate to harvest the crops, while a regiment of the 19th Royal Hussars and more than 1,000 men of the Royal Irish Constabulary were deployed to protect the harvesters. The episode cost the British government and others at least £10,000 to harvest about £500 worth of crops.

Boycott left Ireland on 1 December 1880. In 1886, he became land agent for Hugh Adair’s Flixton estate in Suffolk. He died at age 65 on 19 June 1897 at his home in Flixton, following an illness earlier that year. His ostracism by his local community in Ireland gave the English language the term boycott.