Percy Kirk / Kirke is best known to history for his involvement in the 1689 Siege of Derry. However, given his past brutalities during the 1685 "Bloody Assizes" of King James II, many were utterly incredulous that William of Orange had recruited Kirk / Kirke. Here's why:
"... Nor was Judge Jeffreys the only person who was thought to execute the King's orders ; but Colonel Kirk, a soldier of fortune, a man of boldness and looseness, did also act a considerable part in these unhappy tragedies:
after the Duke (of Monmouth)'s defeat, he caused ninety wounded men to be hang'd at Taunton, not only without permitting their relations to speak with them, but with pipes playing, drums beating, trumpets founding, and all other military pomp and joy.
At another town he invited his officers to dinner, near the place where some of the condemned rebels were to be executed, and order 'd ten of them to be turn'd off with a health to the King, ten in a health to the Queen, and ten more in a health to the Lord Jeffreys. These Cruelties he afterwards endeavour'd to palliate, by pretending, that he did nothing but by express order from the King, and his General.
But he was charged with one action that could proceed only from his own brutal inclination to lust and blood, and that was, the drawing in a poor maiden to prostitute her self to him, with the promise of saving her brother's life, and nevertheless causing him to be hang'd on the sign-post of the same house, and out of the window presenting the credulous abused damsel with that barbarous spectacle of his treachery and cruelty..."
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