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Why did Gavin Hamilton face trouble with the kirk session?

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Engraved portrait of Robert Burns, shown from the waist up wearing a dark jacket and cravat, facing slightly to the left. — Robert Burns Robert Burns, engraving from *A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen*, 1870.

Gavin Hamilton, a local gentleman and friend of the poet Robert Burns, faced disciplinary action from the kirk session—the local Church of Scotland court—primarily for Sabbath breaking.1

Burns, who was a vocal critic of the extreme Calvinist wing of the church in Ayrshire, actively championed Hamilton during this dispute.1