Lieutenant-General Percy Kirke ( – 31 October 1691) was an English Army officer who was the son of George Kirke, a court official to Charles I and Charles II.
Career
In 1666 Kirke obtained his first Army commission in Lord Admiral's regiment, and subsequently served in the Blues. In 1673 he was with Monmouth at Maastricht during the Franco-Dutch War and was present during two campaigns with Turenne on the Rhine. In 1680 he was promoted lieutenant-colonel, and soon afterwards colonel of the 2nd Tangier Regiment (afterwards the King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment). In 1682 he became Governor of Tangier
thumb|[[A View of Tangier by Hendrick Danckerts, 1669]]
In the view of the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, he 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 in July 1685 during the Monmouth Rebellion and then ruthlessly hunted down the fugitives after the battle.
He died, with the rank of lieutenant general, at Brussels on 31 October 1691.