Samuel Birch (Lord Mayor of London) advocacy of the Protestant ascendency in Ireland. In 1811, he was appointed one of the sheriffs of London, and on 9 November 1814 Birch entered on his duties as lord mayor. Tory though he was, he opposed the Corn Bill of 1815, and presided at a meeting of the livery in common hall on 23 February 1815, when he made a vigorous attack upon the intended prohibition of the free importation of foreign corn. The course he took on this occasion is commemorated by a medal struck in his honour on the obverse side of which is the bust of
Thomas Skinner (Lord Mayor of London, 1596) Skinner informing him of Her Majesty's desire that Mr. Alderman Billingsley should not be elected to the office of Lord Mayor for the following year, and requesting him to repair to London not later than the 7th or 9th of September to confer with them touching his election to that office", which he accordingly did, and was elected Lord Mayor, but died in office on 30 December of the same year. During Skinner's year of office the City was threatened with a famine. The citizens generally were in a poverty-stricken state, so much so that many who had been well