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 Craven (Lord Mayor of London) Balmes Manor, Hackney, haberdasher and alderman of London. Her second brother was Sir George Whitmore (d.1654), Lord Mayor of London. They had five children: Elizabeth, Mary, William (Baron Craven of Hampstead Marshall, Berkshire and 1st Earl of Craven), John (Baron Craven of Ryton) and Thomas. In 1622 his eldest surviving daughter Elizabeth married Percy Herbert, 2nd Baron Powis. Her sister Mary married Thomas Coventry, 2nd Baron Coventry. His will was openly read in court on 29 July 1618. The second son, John Craven, founder of the Craven scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge, was commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, 1626–8. Charles