Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott (12 March 1832 – 19 June 1897) was an English land agent whose ostracism by his local community in Ireland gave the English language the term boycott. He had served in the British Army 39th Foot, which brought him to Ireland. After retiring from the army, Boycott worked as a land agent for Lord Erne, a landowner in the Lough Mask area of County Mayo.
In 1880, as part of a campaign for free sale, fixity of tenure, and fair rent, and specifically in resistance to proposed evictions on the estate, local activists of the Irish National Land League encouraged Boycott's employees, including the seasonal workers required to harvest the crops on Lord Erne's estate, to withdraw their labour, and began a campaign of isolation against Boycott in the local community. Shops in nearby Ballinrobe refused to serve him. Some were threatened with violence to ensure compliance.
Opposition to the campaign against Boycott became a cause célèbre in the British press after he wrote a letter to The Times. Newspapers sent correspondents to County Mayo to highlight what they viewed as the victimisation of a servant of a peer of the realm 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 (RIC) were deployed to protect the harvesters. The episode was estimated to have cost the British government and others at least £10,000 to harvest about £500 worth of crops.
Boycott left Ireland on 1 December 1880, and in 1886, became land agent for Hugh Adair's Flixton estate in Suffolk. He died at the age of 65 on 19 June 1897 in his home in Flixton, after an illness earlier that year.
Charles Cunningham Boycott was born on 12 March 1832 in Burgh St Peter, in Norfolk, England, as the eldest surviving son of Reverend William Boycatt, an Anglican rector, and Elizabeth Georgiana Boycatt (née Beevor). He grew up in a devout Anglican household. The Boycatt family had lived in Norfolk for almost 150 years. They were of Huguenot origin, and had fled from France in 1685 when Louis XIV revoked civil and religious liberties to French Protestants. Charles Boycott was named Boycatt in his baptismal records. The family changed the spelling of its name from Boycatt to Boycott in 1841.
Boycott was educated at a boarding school in Blackheath, London. He was interested in the military—and in 1848, entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in hopes of serving in the Corps of Royal Sappers and Miners. He was discharged from the academy in 1849 after failing a periodic exam, and the following year his family bought him a commission in the 39th Foot regiment for £450 (equivalent to £71,000 in 2024).
Boycott's regiment transferred to Belfast shortly after his arrival. Six months later, it was sent to Newry before marching to Dublin, where it remained for a year. On 5 June 1852, Boycott married Anne Dunne in St Paul's Church, a Church of Ireland church, in Dublin. He was ill between August 1851 and February 1852 and sold his commission the following year, but decided to remain in Ireland. He leased a farm in County Tipperary, where he acted as a landlord on a small scale.
After receiving an inheritance, Boycott was persuaded by his friend, Murray McGregor Blacker, a local magistrate, to move to Achill Island, a large island off the coast of County Mayo. McGregor Blacker agreed to sublet 2,000 acres (809 ha) of land belonging to the Irish Church Mission Society on Achill to Boycott, who moved there in 1854. According to Joyce Marlow in the book Captain Boycott and the Irish, Boycott's life on the island was difficult initially, and in Boycott's own words it was only after "a long struggle against adverse circumstances" that he became prosperous. With money from another inheritance and profits from farming, he built a large house near Dooagh.
Boycott was involved several disputes on Achill Island. Two years after his arrival, he was unsuccessfully sued for assault by Thomas Clarke, a local man. Clarke said that he had gone to Boycott's house because Boycott owed him money. He said that he had asked for repayment of the debt, and that Boycott had refused to pay him and told him to go away, which Clarke refused to do. Clarke alleged that Boycott approached him and said: "If you do not be off, I will make you." Clarke later withdrew his allegations, and said that Boycott did not actually owe him any money.
Both Boycott and McGregor Blacker were involved in a protracted dispute with Mr. Carr, the agent for the Achill Church Mission Estate, from whom McGregor Blacker leased the lands, and Mr. O'Donnell, Carr's bailiff. The dispute began when Boycott and Carr supported different sets of candidates in elections for the Board of Guardians to the Church Mission Estate, and Boycott's candidates won. Carr was also the local receiver of wrecks, which meant that he was entitled to collect the marine salvage from all shipwrecks in the area, and guard it until it was sold in a public auction. The local receiver had a right to a percentage of the sale and to keep whatever did not sell. In 1860, Carr wrote a letter to the Receiver of Wreck stating that Boycott and his men had illegally broken up a wreck and moved the salvage to Boycott's property. In response to this accusation, Boycott sued Carr for libel and claimed damages of £500 (equivalent to £70,000 in 2024).
Life in Lough Mask before controversy
In 1873, Boycott moved to Lough Mask House, owned by Lord Erne, four miles (6 km) from Ballinrobe in County Mayo. John Crichton, 3rd Earl Erne, was a wealthy Ulster landowner who lived at Crom Castle, a country house near Newtownbutler in the south-east of County Fermanagh. He owned 40,386 acres (163.44 km2) of land in Ireland, of which 31,389 were in County Fermanagh, 4,826 in County Donegal, 1,996 in County Sligo, and 2,184 in County Mayo. Lord Erne also owned properties in Dublin.
Boycott agreed to be Lord Erne's agent for 1,500 acres (6.1 km2) he owned in County Mayo. One of Boycott's responsibilities was to collect rents from tenant farmers on the land, for which he earned 10% of the total rent due to Lord Erne, which was £500 each year. In his roles as farmer and agent, Boycott employed numerous local people as labourers, grooms, coachmen, and house-servants. Joyce Marlow wrote that Boycott had become set in his mode of thought, and that his twenty years on Achill had "...strengthened his innate belief in the divine right of the masters, and the tendency to behave as he saw fit, without regard to other people's point of view or feelings."
During his time in Lough Mask before the controversy began, Boycott had become unpopular with the tenants. He had become a magistrate and was an Englishman, which may have contributed to his unpopularity, but according to Marlow it was due more to his personal temperament. While Boycott himself maintained that he was on good terms with his tenants, they said that he had laid down many petty restrictions, such as not allowing gates to be left open and not allowing hens to trespass on his property, and that he fined anyone who transgressed these restrictions. He had also withdrawn privileges from the tenants, such as collecting wood from the estate. In August 1880, his labourers went on strike in a dispute over a wage increase.
In the 19th century, agriculture was the biggest industry in Ireland. In 1876, the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland commissioned a survey to find who owned the land in Ireland. The survey found that almost all land was the property of just 10,000 people, or 0.2% of the population. The majority were small landlords, but the 750 richest landlords collectively owned half of the country. Many of the richest were absentee landlords who lived in Britain or elsewhere in Ireland, and paid agents like Charles Boycott to manage their estates.
Landlords generally divided their estates into smaller farms that they rented to tenant farmers. Tenant farmers were generally on one-year leases, and could be evicted even if they paid their rents. Some of the tenants were large farmers who farmed over 100 acres (0.40 km2), but the majority were much smaller—on average between 15 and 50 acres (0.061 and 0.202 km2). Many small farmers worked as labourers on the larger farms. The poorest agricultural workers were the landless labourers, who worked on the land of other farmers. Farmers were an important group politically, having more votes than any other sector of society.