Thomas Birch

Life

Birch was the son of Joseph Birch, a maker of coffee mills, and was born in Clerkenwell, London.

Birch preferred study to business but, as his parents were Quakers, did not go to the university. Notwithstanding this circumstance, he was ordained deacon in the Church of England in 1730 and priest in 1731. As a strong supporter of the Whigs, he gained the favour of Philip Yorke, later Lord Chancellor and first Earl of Hardwicke, and his subsequent preferments were largely due to this friendship. He held successively a number of benefices in different counties, and finally in London.

Birch was noted as a keen fisherman during the course of his lifetime, and devised an unusual method of disguising his intentions from fish. He would stand dressed as a tree by the side of a stream in an outfit designed to make his arms seem like branches and the rod and line seem like a spray of blossom. He argued that any movement would be taken by a fish to be the consequences of a mild breeze.

In 1735, Birch became a member of the Society of Antiquaries and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, for the latter of which he was secretary from 1752 to 1765. In 1728, he married Hannah Cox, who died in the following year. He was killed on 9 January 1766 by a fall from his horse and was buried in the church of St Margaret Pattens, London, of which he was then rector. He died, according to his will, "in a full confidence in the Mercy and Goodness of almighty God and with a firm persuasion of a blessed Immortality discoverable by the Light of Nature and confirmed for us Christians by that of Revelation", leaving his books and manuscripts to the British Museum, and a sum of about £500 to increase the salaries of the three assistant librarians.