Series 28 - William Coyne letter

6pp

Kerby A. Miller received the photocopied Coyne letter and typed transcript in 1987 from Roger Haydon, then editor of Cornell University Press, with no restrictions on use. Haydon purchased the original manuscript from a postal history dealer.

Typed transcript of an 1816 letter written by William Coyne. William Coyne was a Protestant manufacturer in Belfast and he is writing to his brother, Henry Coyne, in Duchess County, New York on St Patrick's Day, 1817. Miller based his essays, 'Forging a Protestant Way of Life': Class Conflict and the Origins of Unionist Hegemony in Early Nineteenth-Century Ulster' and 'Belfast's First Bomb, 28 February 1816: Class Conflict and the Origins of Unionist Hegemony' on the letter and found it to be of great historical significance due to its descriptions of violent class conflict between Belfast's cotton manufacturers and their illegally-unionised Protestant cotton weavers following the Napoleonic wars, the conditions of which, according to Miller, 'were instrumental in generating mass migration by the Irish poor to America and Britain.'

The reference copy of the letter, including a reproduction of the original, and Kerby A. Miller's research and writings on Coyne, are located in P155/6/1.