Battle of Mauchline Muir

Part of Scotland in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms

Date	12 June 1648
Location	Mauchline, Ayrshire, Scotland
Result	Inconclusive

Belligerents

Scottish Engagers Party

Scottish Kirk Party

Commanders and leaders

John Middleton, 1st Earl of Middleton
James Livingstone, Earl of Callender

John Campbell, 1st Earl of Loudoun

Strength

800 foot soldiers
1200 cavalry

850 cavalry

The Battle of Mauchline Muir was an engagement fought on 12 June 1648 between two rival factions of the Covenanters of Scotland. On one side where those who favoured the Engagement, known as Engagers, and those who were opposed to the Engagement, and known as the Kirk party.

By 1646, the Presbyterian Covenanter movement had defeated the Scottish Royalists, who favoured unconditional loyalty to King Charles I. In 1646 at the end of the First English Civil War, Charles I had surrendered to the Scottish army which was in England fighting as an ally of the English Parliament. As part of the negotiated agreement for their payment and withdrawal back to Scotland, the Scots handed Charles over to the English Parliament and returned to Scotland in 1647.

In the negotiations over what constitutional settlement should be implemented the Scottish Covenanters were one of four parties to the negotiations. The other three parties were Charles, the English Parliament dominated Presbyterians, and the Independents in the New Model Army. Charles stalled for time hoping that either his supporters in alliance with one or more of the other parties would succeed in restoring him to his throne with little or no change to his constitutional position.

In December 1647 a faction in the Coveneters agreed to a secret agreement with King Charles known as The Engagement, in which he promised that if the Covenanters would support him militarily he would support the establishment of Presbyterianism, in England for a period of three years. The faction known as the Kirk Party, strongly influenced by Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll were opposed, because Charles refused to take the National Covenant personally and they feared he would not honour the agreement if he were restored to power in England.

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