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
John Gayer (Lord Mayor of London) Abdy, Alderman and Sheriff. Another daughter Mary married Sir Andrew Henley, 1st Baronet. His nephew was Sir John Gayer, Governor of Bombay. John Gayer (Lord Mayor of London) John Gayer or Gayre (died 20 July 1649) was an English merchant who was Lord Mayor of London in 1646. He was born in Plymouth, eldest son of John Gayer senior, a merchsnt, and Margaret Trelawney. Both his parents were Cornish by birth: the Gayer family came originally from Liskeard. Gayer moved to London, and at one stage of his career spent some years in Syria, where a strange event later led