Kirk Party

Common card · No. 444556

The Kirk Party were a radical Presbyterian faction of the Scottish Covenanters during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. They came to the fore after the defeat of the Engagers faction in 1648 at the hands of Oliver Cromwell and the English Parliament. At this time Scottish opinion became divided between the Kirk Party, a religious group led by Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, and a political group led by James Hamilton. Kirk is a Scottish word meaning a church, or more specifically, the Church of Scotland. The Kirk Party intended to run Scotland as a theocracy, and ensure moral reform. They purged the Covenanters' General Assembly and army of "ungodly elements" and crowned Charles II as King of Scotland in 1651, in return for his explicit endorsement of their religious and political agenda in the Treaty of Breda (1650). The Kirk party's religious zeal did not help their cause militarily. In the month before the Battle of Dunbar they chose to institute a searching three-day examination...

Read on Wikipedia