He was admitted into the English College, Rome on 5 June 1773, a few months before the suppression of the Society of Jesus by Pope Clement XIV.
[1] In July 1797, he left Sedgley to become chaplain and private secretary to Charles Berington, Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District.
Following the bishop's sudden death on 8 June 1798, Kirk stayed at the episcopal residence at Longbirch until the appointment of Dr Gregory Stapleton to the vicariate in 1801.
He then moved to Lichfield, where a chapel built by him was opened on 11 November 1803; afterwards enlarged, it was converted in 1834 into the little Norman-style church of St Cross.
[1] Kirk collected materials for a continuation of Charles Dodd's Church History of England: letters, tracts, annals, records, diaries, and papers.
In 1909 was published Biographies of English Catholics in the Eighteenth Century, edited from Kirk by John Hungerford Pollen and Edwin Hubert Burton.
[3] About 1794 Kirk undertook the task of preparing for publication the State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler, ambassador to Scotland in the time of Elizabeth I.
Joseph Berington, The Faith of Catholics confirmed by Scripture and attested by the Fathers of the first five centuries of the Church, London, 1813 and 1830; 3rd edit.
Richard Thomas Pembroke Pope published Roman Misquotation; or, Certain Passages from the Fathers adduced in Kirk's work brought to the test of their originals, London, 1840.