Lieutenant-General Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin GCH KCB FRS FRGS (1772 – 1 May 1841), was a British Army officer of the Napoleonic era and later Member of Parliament.

Young Rufane was baptised at St David's Church, Exeter, on 9 October 1772 with the name Rusaw Shaw Donkin..

At the age of twenty-five he became a lieutenant colonel and in 1798 led a light battalion with distinction in Popham's expedition to Ostend.

He served with Cathcart in Denmark in 1807 and two years later won command of a brigade of three regiments in the army in Portugal, which he led in victory at the Second Battle of Porto (May 1809).

The death of his young wife Elizabeth Frances née Markham[2][3] seriously affected him, after that he went to the Cape of Good Hope on extended sick leave.