Governor Percy Kirke’s Out-Letter Book, here transcribed verbatim and annotated, covers the terminal decline of English Tangier, ending just before the arrival of Lord Dartmouth’s expedition charged with demolishing the town and evacuating all personnel. It contains 152 official letters mostly addressed to the Tangier Committee, the subcommittee of the Privy Council responsible for Tangerine affairs, and Sir Leoline Jenkins, secretary of state for the south. Although all matters of civilian and military administration, from the essential to the trivial, came within the governor’s purview - there was little delegation - the weight of Kirke’s correspondence traces the decay of both the town’s military fabric and the soldiers’ morale and effectiveness, and the impossibility of reaching a satisfactory modus vivendi with the leaders of the besieging Moroccan armed forces. The text is supported by a comprehensive biographical dictionary and histories of the rival armed forces.
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