Sir James Percy, often known as Percy FitzPatrick, was a South African novelist, politician, mining investor, and pioneer in the fruit industry. He wrote the classic children's tale, Jock of the Bushveld (1907). As a politician, he advocated British imperial interests prior to and during the Anglo-Boer War. FitzPatrick is responsible for establishing the two-minute quiet on Armistice Day. Percy FitzPatrick was born in King William's Town as the eldest son of James Coleman FitzPatrick, a Supreme Court judge in the Cape Colony, and Jenny FitzGerald. Both were originally from Ireland. James Percy FitzPatrick began his education at Downside School near Bath, Somerset, and later attended St. Aidan's College in Grahamstown. Following his father's death in 1880, James Peter FitzPatrick (later self-selected Percy) left college to assist his mother and her family. After a stint as a clerk at Cape Town's Standard Bank, he moved to the Eastern Transvaal goldfields in 1884, where he worked as a storeman, prospector's assistant, journalist, and ox-wagon transport rider from the former Louren o Marques to Lydenburg and Barberton. He then became the editor of the Gold Fields News in Barberton. Jock of the Bushveld, an account of FitzPatrick's activities at the time, was published in 1907.