Percy Kirke

Lieutenant-General Percy Kirke ( – 31 October 1691) was an English Army officer, courtier and Tory politician who represented West Looe in the House of Commons of England from 1689 to 1690. He served in the Franco-Dutch War, Monmouth Rebellion, Williamite War in Ireland and Nine Years' War.

Life

Percy Kirke was born in . He was commissioned into the English Army's Duke of York and Albany's Maritime Regiment of Foot in 1666, and subsequently transferred to the Royal Horse Guards. In 1673 Kirke joined the British brigade which was sent to fight in French service as part of the during the Franco-Dutch War, and served under the Duke of Monmouth at the siege of Maastricht along with serving under Turenne in two of the latter's campaigns on the Rhine. In 1680 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and soon afterwards was made colonel of the 2nd Tangier Regiment. In 1682 Kirke was appointed as the governor of Tangier and colonel of the Tangier Regiment.

In the view of the English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, Kirke was "a military adventurer whose vices had been developed by the worst of all schools, Tangier... Within the ramparts of his fortress he was a despotic prince. The only check on his tyranny was the fear of being called to account by a distant and a careless government. He might therefore safely proceed to the most audacious excesses of rapacity, licentiousness, and cruelty. He lived with boundless dissoluteness, and procured by extortion the means of indulgence."

Kirke commanded his regiment at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685 during the Monmouth Rebellion before ruthlessly hunting down rebels after the battle. Kirke died at the rank of lieutenant-general in Brussels on 31 October 1691. His eldest son, Percy Kirke, following his father into a career of military service.