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
William Laxton (Lord Mayor of London) Thomas Cromwell and of Dr Robert Barnes and his Lutheran companions, and the King's marriage to Catherine Howard, were all completed before Laxton took office. At Easter 1541 the Mayor, Aldermen and Crafts, greeted the river procession of the King and Queen from Westminster between the Tower and London Bridge 'in barges goodlie behanged and sett with banners', and accompanied them to Greenwich. It is particularly recorded that Bowes and Laxton as Sheriffs attended Lord Dacre of the South at the Tower of London on 29 July 1541 and accompanied him on foot to Tyburn where he was to be