History: Captain Boycott, The Story of the Land League Revolution *********************************************** Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives Mayo Index Copyright ************************************************ File contributed by: Mary Heaphy Captain Boycott, The Story of the Land League Revolution "The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland or The Story of the Land League Revolution." Michael Davitt. 1904. Father John O'Malley P.P., of The Neale, County Mayo was the chief organizer of the struggle that brought Captain Boycott to his knees, and which won a noted victory for the Land League. He was the parish priest of a small village called The Neale, between Ballinrobe and Cong, in the County Mayo, and deservedly enjoyed great popularity for his kindly nature, his devotion to the poor, and jovial disposition. No good cause could fail in winning his whole-hearted advocacy, while he was one with the people in all their trials and hopes, a loyal counsellor and a faithful friend. Captain Boycott, an Englishman, resided at Lough Mask House as agent for Lord Erne, a landlord who owned some of the land over which Father John's parish extended. The captain had been Lord Erne's land agent for some fifteen years, and was considered a domineering individual very exacting in his dealings with tenants and workers, and devoid of all sympathy towards the people generally. He farmed a considerable quantity of land on the estate managed by him, and employed a number of laborers in sowing and in harvest time. With these the captain had a dispute about wages in the summer months, and discovering also that they had changed in their manner were more independent and less obsequious, owing, of course, to the "demoralizing" Land League they were dismissed. This began the conflict be- tween him and the surrounding community. No other laborers would be allowed to work for him. The league and Father John secured this. It was now the Captain's turn to strike back. He was a courageous and resourceful man, and fought his corner with the true spirit of a plucky Englishman. He resolved, as a land agent, to hit back at those who had interfered with his workmen. He did this by refusing to listen to demands for abatement of rents when the tenants, following the general example, put before him the claims for concession based upon the previous bad seasons. The rents must be paid when due or out the tenants should go. To this stand an equally reso- lute reply was made without a reduction in the rent, nothing at all should be paid. And thus the issue was knit. Processes of ejectment were obtained in due course from the court, but no one could be got to serve them. The law was made powerless where agents could not be got to execute its decrees. The league now became the aggressor. It carried the war into the captain's own country. The local black- smith refused to shoe any of his horses the herds who looked after his cattle left him; the baker in the nearest town refused to serve Lough Mask House with bread; the postman most reluctantly delivered his letters, and, finally, all his domestic servants declared they could no longer stay "the people were ag'inst it." To make matters worse, his root and other crops were ripe for gathering. The harvest had been plentiful, but there were no hands to reap it. Not a soul in the county could be got for love or money to do an hour's work for the man who had undertaken the big job of fighting the Land League. Hemmed in on all sides, protected by police day and night, in his walks and in his home (though not a soul dreamed of doing him any physical harm), the resolute old man wrote to the London press depicting his position and representing himself as being in the midst of a community of Irish rebels, a besieged, injured, and insulted Englishman. England resounded with cries of indignation. Gentle ladies of the Boycott household were represented in the picture papers of London as working in the garden under the protec- tion of armed police, while stories of visits paid to the neigh- boring cottages those of the tenants on the estate by these educated ladies, seeking in vain for household help, went the round of the British press, and created intense feeling against the "barbarous" Irish who had taken leave of their humanity under the vile teachings of the Land League. The government was denounced for not grappling with these "local tyrants," while students in English colleges sent messages of sympathy and of encouragement to Lough Mask House. But Captain Boycott, the land agent of the landlord, the Earl of Erne, and the former "master" of the tenants under his power, was reduced to a condition of absolute helplessness by the combination of the very people who had trembled before him and had dreaded his very frown only two short years before. And yet they only left him severely alone. At last outside help was forthcoming. Orange laborers in Ulster were organized to rescue the captain's crops before the December frosts should destroy them in the ground. Fifty of these volunteers, under the lead of a Mr. Goddard, were to proceed to Lough Mask farm under a powerful escort of sol- diers. It was to be an invasion of the league territory. An armed force was to save the land agent's potatoes from the perils of the approaching winter. The fifty volunteer Orange laborers from Ulster were es- corted by a force of two thousand troops to Claremorris, in Mayo, where the railway journey ended, and the tramp to Lough Mask House, over a distance of fifteen miles, was to begin. The league resorted to wise tactics under this direct provocation to disorder. A manifesto was issued calling on the people of Mayo to follow the same course adopted towards Captain Boycott to let the Orangemen and soldiers severely alone. They were not to be hooted or molested or supplied with anything. Cars were not to be let or lent for their use, nor food of any kind to be given or sold to them. They were to be looked at and laughed at; that was all. This advice was implicitly obeyed. "The Lough Mask Expedition," as it was called, was left to the tender mercies of a Connaught rainy season, and never in all the climatic records of that prov- ince did the Celtic Pluvius indulge more copiously in a pitiless downpour than during "the famous diggin' of Boycott's pray- ties," as the delighted peasantry named the costly and ridicu- lous proceeding. The troops and the Orangemen reached their destination drenched to the skin. Their welcome was not of the most hospitable kind, even at the hands of the man whom they had come to relieve and support. They encamped upon his grounds in tents. Soldiers have a habit of "looking round" when on expeditions, and it was soon discovered in foraging searches that chickens, ducks, geese, young pigs, and many other things tempting to a Tommy Atkins appetite were to be found in abundance in the captain's well-stocked yards. It soon became a question to him of being saved from his friends, when he saw his lawns trampled over, his ornamental grounds spoiled, and the military helping themselves to anything and everything which could militate to some extent against their doubly cold reception and the sufferings inflicted upon them by the continuous rains, not omitting the public laughter which the whole business and meaning of the expedition meant to them. Some £350 worth of potatoes and other crops were event- ually harvested by the "volunteers" during their stay at Lough Mask. This was the captain's own estimate of their value, and according to calculations made at the time it cost the sum of £3500 to the state and to the supporters of the expedition to have Boycott's potatoes dug. On the day when the soldiers and their Orange charges were to leave Lough Mask Father John O'Malley was astir early. He visited the houses past which the troops were to march and he ordered the people to remain in-doors. The roads and the streets of the villages were to be deserted, while shops and business places in Ballinrobe were to be closed. These orders were loyally adhered to; Father John, with his portly form and his big, kindly face, and his umbrella carried across his shoulder, marching in advance of the military column to see that the way of retreat was quite clear. At one point of the route where the troops were halted Father John's eye de- tected a poor old woman leaning against a wall, intent on gaz- ing with all the curiosity of her sex at the military. Not an- other human being except soldiers and Orangemen was in sight. Father John advanced upon her, his umbrella held in a most threatening manner, exclaiming: "Did I not warn you to let the British army alone? How dare you come out here to intimidate her Majesty's troops? For shame! Be off now, and if you dare to molest these two thousand heroes after their glorious campaign I'll make an example of you. Be off!" All this, in a loud voice, was heard by the potato warriors, while the jovial old soggarth, in mock wrath, shouldered his umbrella again and resumed his lead of the expedition until it disappeared beyond the boundary of his parish into the records of history and of ridicule.