The Kirk Party were a radical Presbyterian faction of the

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

Covenanters Covenanters ( gd, Cùmhnantaich) were members of a 17th-century Scottish religious and political movement, who supported a Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and the primacy of its leaders in religious affairs. The name is derived from ''Covenan ...

during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. They came to the fore after the defeat of the

Engagers The Engagers were a faction of the Scottish Covenanters, who made "The Engagement" with King Charles I in December 1647 while he was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle by the English Parliamentarians after his defeat in the First Civil War. Bac ...

faction in 1648 at the hands of Oliver Cromwell and the English Parliament. They purged the Covenanter's 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). Kirk is a Scottish word meaning a church, or more specifically, the Church of Scotland. 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 of the political and religious sentiments of the Scottish army. The result was that the army was purged of "Malignants", 80 officers and 3000 experienced soldiers, while it lay within musket shot of the enemy. Their ranks were to some extent made up with replacements with strong spiritual beliefs but little military experience. The Kirk party were therefore discredited when their army was routed by Cromwell's

New Model Army The New Model Army was a standing army formed in 1645 by the Parliamentarians during the First English Civil War, then disbanded after the Stuart Restoration in 1660. It differed from other armies employed in the 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Th ...

at the Battle of Dunbar, in September 1650. Thereafter, a more representative faction came to the fore in Scottish politics, which tried to reconcile (at least temporarily) the different factions of the Covenanters and Scottish Royalists to resist the English Parliamentarian invasion of Scotland. However, they in turn were defeated at the battle of Worcester in 1651, leading eventually to Scotland's annexation into the

English Commonwealth The Commonwealth was the political structure during the period from 1649 to 1660 when England and Wales, later along with Ireland and Scotland, were governed as a republic after the end of the Second English Civil War and the trial and execut ...

. The Kirk party were disparagingly called "whiggamores" or " whigs" by their Scottish opponents (See the Whiggamore Raid). The nickname was later applied (equally offensively) to those, headed by Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, calling for the exclusion of

James, Duke of York James VII and II (14 October 1633 16 September 1701) was King of England and King of Ireland as James II, and King of Scotland as James VII from the death of his elder brother, Charles II, on 6 February 1685. He was deposed in the Glorious Re ...

from the English throne on the grounds of his Catholicism.

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