Cancel culture, the practice of denying somebody a platform for their views or boycotting their work, is seen as a modern phenomenon, the product of the social-media age, but archaeologists and historians might disagree. The word ‘boycott’ is itself an indication that the practice is not new. Meaning to ostracise somebody as a protest against their values for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons, the term was first used in the 1880s and refers to Charles Cunningham Boycott (1832-1897). He suffered the wrath of the community in County Mayo in the north-west of Ireland as part of a campaign against the exploitation of tenants by landlords organised by the Irish National Land League. Pubs refused to serve him, shops to supply goods, farm labourers to obey his instructions.
Older still is the practice of sending somebody to Coventry. Why Coventry, a prosperous cathedral town in the English Midlands that, until it was flattened during bombing raids in 1940 to 1941, was a maze of narrow streets lined with flamboyant medieval timber-framed buildings and fine churches? Popular culture links it to ‘Peeping Tom’, a Coventry tailor who was ostracised by the community because he alone of all Coventry’s citizens spied on Lady Godiva when she rode naked through the city’s streets in protest against the oppressive taxes levied on tenants by her own husband, Leofric, Earl of Mercia (d. 1057).
The problem with this attribution is that the earliest recorded use of the phrase dates from 1647, so it is much more likely to have a Civil War origin – perhaps, suggests one commentator, it was a form of discipline exercised by Cromwell’s New Model Army to punish anti-social behaviour, but the choice of Coventry remains a mystery.
Sherds: The good, the bad and the ugly