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) hanged. As the summer approached the executions of the Countess of Salisbury and of Lord Leonard Gray took place at the Tower. In 1541–42, and in 1543–44, he was again Master of the Grocers' Company: and, having transferred as Alderman to the Langbourn ward in 1543, late in 1544 he was elected Lord Mayor. Before May 1539 he had married Joan Kirkeby, daughter of William Kirkeby and his wife the heiress Alice Whetthill, and widow of Henry Loddington, who had died in 1531 leaving Joan with at least three children. According to heraldic Visitations Luddington, a London Grocer and Merchant