BIRCHE, Thomas (1608-78), of Birch Hall, Manchester, Lancs.

Birche’s ancestors had settled in the hamlet of Birch, near Manchester, by the early fourteenth century.35Booker, Birch, 71-2; VCH Lancs. iv. 305; Vis. Lancs. 1664-5 ed. F.R. Raines (Chetham Soc. o.s. lxxxiv), 32-3. His great-great uncle had been a chaplain to the most enthusiastically Protestant of the Tudor monarchs, Edward VI, and the Birches had been accounted one of the Manchester area’s leading puritan families since the Elizabethan period (Birche was a cousin of another godly parliamentarian from the Manchester area, John Birch*).36Coll. of Arms, Cheshire and Lancs. Vis. Pprs. 1663, unfol.; Booker, Birch, 81; Halley, Lancs. 64, 153, 160, 161.

Very little is known about Birche’s upbringing and education; there is certainly no evidence that he attended any of the inns or court or the universities. He was among the organisers of a subscription in 1640 to create an endowment fund for a minister to serve in the chapel of ease that his grandfather had established at Birch. But although Birche and other leading subscribers – who included the father of the future major-general Charles Worsley* – were, or would become, zealous puritans, they do not appear to have fallen foul of the church authorities in the years preceding the civil war.37Booker, Birch, 137-8.

Commissioned in June 1642 by the parliamentarian lord lieutenant of Lancashire, Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, as a captain of foot, Birche was among those nominated by the Commons (and subsequently approved by Lords) on 4 July as Wharton’s deputy lieutenants.38CJ ii. 649a; LJ v. 178b. Later that month, Birche, John Holcrofte* and their soldiers were prominent in defying the attempt of the leader of the royalist party in the north-west, James Stanley†, Lord Strange (who was shortly to succeed as the 7th earl of Derby), to take control of Manchester and its magazine.39PA, Main Pprs. 14 Sept. 1642 (depositions of Sir Thomas Stanley, John Holcrofte, Thomas Birche); Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 30-4; HMC 5th Rep. 48. On 26 July, Birche appeared before the Commons to give an account of Lord Strange’s proceedings in the region.40CJ ii. 690b. The Lancashire royalists did not take the affront that they had received at Manchester lightly, for the Commons was obliged to pass an order in August preventing the commencement of legal proceedings against Birche and Holcrofte.41CJ ii. 714b.

Following the failure of attempts in October 1642 to broker a treaty of neutrality between the county’s parliamentarians and royalists, Birche joined Richard Holland*, Richard Radclyffe* and other Manchester parliamentarians in proposing measures to defend the area from further royalist encroachment: ‘the time is upon us to put the most zealous resolutions in present execution’.42Lancs. Lieutenancy under the Tudors and Stuarts ed. J. Harland (Chetham Soc. o.s. l), 301-2, 305, 307. Birche and his troops served in Lancashire and, possibly, in Yorkshire, under the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), during the first 18 months of the civil war.43Lancs. Lieutenancy ed. Harland, 308; Farington Pprs. ed. S.M. Farington (Chetham Soc. o.s. xxxix), 96; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 74, 77, 84; Gratton, Lancs. 91, 191, 217; ‘Thomas Birch’, Oxford DNB. Birche’s rapid promotion to colonel, in March 1643, suggests that he was a capable officer, although there is no evidence to support the assertion that he replaced Colonel John Moore* as governor of Liverpool in 1644.44CJ vi. 503b; ‘Thomas Birch’, Oxford DNB.

Birche’s decision to fight for Parliament probably owed much to his religious convictions, which were of a strongly puritan stamp. In the mid-1640s, he joined Charles Worsley and his father in signing several petitions to Parliament from Manchester requesting the ‘planting of a godly and constant ministry’ in the parish’s chapels, that each chapelry be made into a parish in its own right and that the inhabitants of each ‘have liberty to elect their own ministers’.45Greater Manchester Co. RO, E7/28/5/8a-b. Birche was closely involved in attracting a number of godly divines to serve in the chapel during the 1640s and 1650s, among them the Independent minister John Wigan, who was at Birch from about 1646 to 1650 and persuaded his flock to adopt ‘Congregational principles’.46The Life of Adam Martindale ed. R. Parkinson (Chetham Soc. o.s. iv), 61-2, 74, 129; Booker, Birch, 145-7; Halley, Lancs. 291, 321; Calamy Revised, 56, 529; ‘Thomas Birch, Oxford DNB’.

Birche was a prominent member of the Lancashire county committee and its Manchester subsidiary during the mid-1640s.47SP28/211, ff. 667, 761, 788; Add. 59661, f. 16; Bodl. Nalson VIII, f. 295; Tanner 60, f. 17v; Belvoir, QZ.24, ff. 1, 45; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 104, 105, 431, 461, 466, 481, 495, 496; ii. 146, 159, 161, 183, 206, 343, 452, 460, 484; HMC 10th Rep IV. 68, 73, 75, 79; Gratton, Lancs. 83, 85, 116, 117. He was also at the centre of a bitter dispute among Lancashire’s parliamentarian leaders that pitted him against his confederates in resisting Lord Strange in 1642 – namely, Holcrofte, Holland and Sir Thomas Stanley. Their falling out seems to have originated with Birche’s opposition to an assessment levied by Holcrofte and other Lancashire deputy lieutenants in the spring of 1644 for the maintenance of the troops besieging Lathom House. In May 1645, Birche publicly denounced the order authorising this assessment as ‘illegal’ and ‘arbitrary’ and urged the county to disobey it. He had serious misgivings about the way the siege was being managed. But at the root of his objections, it seems, was the fact that the assessment had been imposed without express authority from Parliament.

Birche’s attack stung a group of Lancashire parliamentarian officers into petitioning the county committee in July 1645, claiming that, from the beginning of the civil war, Birche had been ‘a common sower of dissension’, and that now he was intent on frustrating the siege of Lathom and causing havoc among the soldiery, ‘to the utter ruin and overthrow of this county’. They further accused him of having sequestered ‘sundry persons well-affected to the Parliament, maliciously and without cause’, while having ‘spared others disaffected’. The petitioners concluded by urging the committee to imprison Birche until his case could be investigated by Parliament.48SP16/507/115, f. 166; SP24/77 (case of Stanley v. Birche); Belvoir, QZ.25, f. 42; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 568-9; Gratton, Lancs. 92-3. Determined to ensure supply for their troops besieging Lathom, Holcrofte and his allies on the county committee duly had Birche imprisoned in Lancaster gaol – although their proceedings against him drew fierce criticism from the de facto commander-in-chief of Lancashire’s parliamentarian forces, Raphe Assheton II*.49Supra, ‘Raphe Assheton II’; SP24/6, f. 84; Whitaker, Whalley, ii. 153-4; Gratton, Lancs. 95. Birche also received support from his brother-in-law Peter Brooke* and from John Moore.50Belvoir, PZ.2, f. 14; QZ.25, f. 42.

Although Birche was detained for no more than a couple of months and Parliament did not act upon the allegations against him, he would not let the matter rest. In the autumn of 1645, he hit back at his enemies, accusing Holcrofte, Stanley, Gilbert Irelande* and other members of the county committee of showing leniency to sequestered royalists – notably, the earl and countess of Derby. Birche also submitted charges against Holcrofte to the Committee for Examinations* of (among other things) colluding with royalists, protecting Catholics and delinquents, communicating with the royalist headquarters at Oxford, and of likening ‘this parliamentary government to the tyrants of Athens, and that whoever perused Sir Walter Ralegh’s† book on that subject would find that tyranny run [sic] parallel with these times of ours’.51Cal. of Deeds and Pprs. of the Moore Fam. ed. J. Brownbill (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. lxvii), 167-8, 207; Whitaker, Whalley, ii. 153-4; Gratton, Lancs. 94-5.

This feud among Lancashire’s parliamentarian grandees seems to have reflected deeper tensions than simply disagreement over the management of the siege of Lathom. Birche was apparently less mindful of local priorities than were his enemies, who resented his willingness to send troops out of the county – to the detriment of the siege of Lathom – in order to assist Sir William Brereton* in prosecuting the wider war effort. Birche’s enemies also included men such as Holcrofte, Irelande and Stanley who were either lukewarm or hostile towards the zealous puritanism favoured by Birche.52Infra, ‘John Holcrofte’; ‘Gilbert Irelande’; Gratton, Lancs. 94, 96, 104-5, 206-7.

Birche joined Alexander Rigby I*, Holland and other leading Lancashire parliamentarians in the summer of 1648 in raising forces to defend the county against the Engagers.53Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 41. Reputedly ‘a bitter enemy to the king’, he emerged in the aftermath of Pride’s Purge as the most prominent figure in Lancashire’s parliamentarian establishment.54CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 461. He attended the quarter sessions regularly under the Rump (having been added to the bench in September 1647), was a leading figure in tendering the Engagement in the county, was prominent on its 1650 militia commission and was also very closely involved in settling and maintaining a ‘godly and orthodox’ ministry in Lancashire during the early 1650s.55SP28/211, ff. 629, 659, 660, 662, 669, 672, 690; SP46/108, f. 387; Bodl. Nalson VIII, f. 65; Lancs. RO, QSC/47-61; Lancs. and Cheshire Church Surveys ed. Fishwick, 4, 18, 28, 45-6, 65, 80, 88, 96-7, 107, 117; Gratton, Lancs. 125, 128-9; Blackwood, ‘Lancs. Gentry’, 198; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 26, 28, 30, 39, 71, 106, 129-30, 193-5, 228; Craven, ‘”For the better uniting of this nation”’, HR lxxxiii. 88, 89, 90. Chief among his local allies was apparently Thomas Fell*, who may well have been behind the appointment by John Bradshawe* of Birche’s son Thomas as receiver of revenues in the county palatine of Lancaster. Bradshawe was chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster under the Rump; Fell – his close friend – was vice-chancellor.56Infra, ‘Thomas Fell’; PRO30/26/21, pp. 37-9; CCC 478, 481. At least six of Birche’s purchases of former crown property in Lancashire during the early 1650s were in partnership with Fell.57SP28/288, ff. 56, 58, 61, 62, 63; C54/3674/1; C54/3774/15; Lancs. RO, QDD/50/19; PR/51; Gentles, ‘Debentures Market’, 254, 280; Blackwood, ‘Lancs. Gentry’, 362. It was probably to help pay for these acquisitions that Birche borrowed £1,000 by statute staple in 1652.58LC4/203, f. 193v.

Appointed governor of Liverpool by the spring of 1649, Birche became a freeman of the borough on 7 September and was elected as the town’s MP on 10 (or possibly 17) September – not in October, as is often stated – in place of the deceased Sir Richard Wynne.59Supra, ‘Liverpool’; CCAM 891; Perfect Diurnall no. 311 (9-16 July 1649), 2654; no. 321 (17-24 Sept. 1649), 2798 (E.533.8); Chandler, Liverpool, 410, 421; CJ vi. 311a; Gratton, Lancs. 127; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 23. He clearly owed his return to the strength of his interest as governor. The least prominent of the four ‘recruiters’ elected to the House after Pride’s Purge, he was nominated to 20 committees in the Rump – mostly between October 1649 and February 1650 and between November 1651 and April 1652.60CJ vi. 312b, 317b, 318a, 319b, 324b, 327a, 330b, 352a, 448b, 502a; vii. 49b, 55b, 62a, 86b, 100a, 104a, 139a, 215a, 222b, 230b. The most important of these appointments were his addition to the Committee for Compounding* in November 1649 and to the Army Committee* – of which he was an active member – in December 1652.61CJ vi. 318a, 230b; SP28/90, ff. 156, 168, 170, 205 and passim. Although not formally added to the excise commission, he signed several of its orders in November 1649.62Bodl. Rawl. C.386, unfol.

Three of the ad hoc committees to which Birche was named in the Rump related to the suppression of swearing and superstition and to the advancement of godly religion in Ireland and Wales.63CJ vi. 317b, 327b, 352a. But perhaps more revealing was his appointment to the committee established on 10 February 1652 to consider a petition from John Owen* (a close clerical associate of Oliver Cromwell*) and other ‘orthodox’ Independent divines, condemning the Socinian text the Racovian catechism and ‘to consider with them [Owen et al.] upon such proposals as shall be offered for the better propagation of the Gospel’. A month later, this same group of ministers would publish the Humble Proposals – their blueprint for a religious settlement that would ‘supply all parishes in England with able, godly and orthodox ministers’ and prevent the airing of ‘dangerous errors and blasphemies’.64CJ vii. 86b; S. Mortimer, Reason and Religion in the Eng. Revolution (Cambridge, 2010), 196-8. Here, perhaps, was Birche’s own ideal model for the church of England – one that allowed for the existence of non-separating Congregationalist churches, such as Birch chapel, and yet restrained the excesses of the sects.65Blackwood, ‘Lancs. Gentry’, 125.

Several of Birche’s committee appointments in the Rump suggest that he was concerned to secure adequate maintenance for the army from the proceeds of the sale of crown lands and royalists’ estates.66CJ vi. 330b; vii. 104a, 222b. Early in 1650, the Rump approved proposals that he had submitted ‘for repair of the garrison of Liverpool’ using money raised from the sequestered estate of the earl of Derby.67CJ vi. 356b. In January 1652, the House authorised Birche to purchase property worth £1,805 – the sum he was owed in army pay for his service during the civil war – from the treasurers of estates forfeited to the commonwealth for treason.68CJ vi. 503b-504a; vii. 78a. However, his only tellership in the Rump – on 7 December 1649, in partnership with Thomas Chaloner – was to approve measures that would have allowed King’s Lynn to pay the same proportion of Norfolk’s assessment quota that it had in 1645. Such leniency was successfully resisted by the majority tellers, Thomas Harrison I and William Purefoy I.69CJ vi. 330a.

Birche helped to mobilise the Lancashire militia units that assisted Colonel Robert Lilburne* in defeating the earl of Derby’s royalist army at Wigan in the summer of 1651.70CJ vii. 7b, 9b, 12a, 18a; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 302, 308, 319, 332; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 296-7; Gratton, Lancs. 129-30; ‘Thomas Birch’, Oxford DNB; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 122-4. That August, he was appointed to the court martial set up to try the earl on charges of treason. But he played no part in the trial proceedings and did not sign the order for the earl’s execution.71Stanley Pprs. ed. Raines, pp. cccxxxiv-cccxxxv. On Cromwell’s orders, Birche assisted Colonel Robert Duckenfeild* as commander of the force that captured the Isle of Man from the countess of Derby that autumn.72Infra, ‘Robert Duckenfeild’; SP19/147, ff. 25v-27; Bodl. Tanner 55, f. 87; CJ vii. 35b; Stanley Pprs. ed. Raines, p. cclx. It is not known how Birche responded to the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653 or to the establishment of the protectorate that December, although it is worth noting that he remained active on the Lancashire bench throughout the 1650s.73Blackwood, ‘Lancs. Gentry’, 198. There is no basis for the assertion that he was selected by the council of officers to sit in the Nominated Parliament of 1653.74Halley, Lancs. 295; ‘Thomas Birch’, Oxford DNB.

In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Birche was returned for Liverpool a second time – presumably, again, on his interest as the town’s governor.75Supra, ‘Liverpool’. Assessing the extent of Birche’s involvement in the House’s proceedings is problematic, however, given that the clerk of the Commons may not have been entirely scrupulous in distinguishing between him and his cousin Colonel John Birch, the Member for Leominster. The clerk sometimes identified the two men by their respective Christian names, but more often than not he simply referred to ‘Colonel Birch’. In the majority of instances when he used this formulation he seems to have meant John Birch, but it is not clear that he reserved it solely for the Leominster MP. In terms of Birche’s tally of appointments in this Parliament, therefore, all that can be said with any certainty is that he was named to somewhere between nine and 19 committees and served as teller in between one and 15 divisions. What is clear is that took the took the protectoral oath of loyalty imposed on Members shortly after the House assembled and did not withdraw in protest like Sir Arthur Hesilrige and other leading republicans.

Of the nine committees to which Birche was definitely named in the first protectoral Parliament, three were of particular significance.76CJ vii. 373a, 373b, 374a, 381b, 383b, 387b, 399b, 401a, 407b. The first, to which both Thomas and John were added on 5 October 1654, was for retrenching the cost of the armed forces and was authorised to confer with the protector in person on this issue (although the ‘Colonel Birch’ who apparently chaired this committee was John Birch).77CJ vii. 373a, 385b, 388a; Burton’s Diary, iv. 383. The second committee, set up on 22 November, was to consider the public accounts and how they could be ‘discovered, perfected and put to the advantage of the commonwealth’. Colonel John Birch was named first to this committee, but the task of managing its proceedings was specifically entrusted to Birche and Augustine Garland. Its remit also included how the state could be compensated as a result of counterfeited debentures – which was ironic, for Birche himself would later be accused of trafficking in forged debentures.78CJ vii. 387b; SP29/390/14, ff. 40v, 42, 47; Blackwood, Lancs. 94; Gentles, ‘Debentures Market’, 98-9. The third committee was established on 12 December and was charged with listing the ‘damnable heresies’ that would be excluded from toleration in the House’s bill for settling the protectoral constitution.79CJ vii. 399b. Birche, who had been appointed one of the Cromwellian ejectors for Lancashire, was clearly committed to the maintenance of an ‘orthodox’, parish-based ministry.

Birche’s one confirmed tellership in the 1654-5 Parliament was in a minor division over whether the House should hear a petition from several London merchants (15 Dec. 1654).80CJ vii. 402b. The ‘Colonel Birch’ who served as teller on 14 further divisions in this Parliament was in most instances John Birch. Whichever man it was, he regularly opposed the government line – although this fact offers no clue as to the true identity of the teller, for both men had reservations about the Cromwellian regime. Birche’s career in the Rump in 1649-53 and 1659 suggests that he favoured a republican form of government, while John Birch was a leading Presbyterian opponent of the protectorate.81Supra, ‘John Birch’; CJ vii. 384a, 390a, 391b, 394b, 395b, 396b, 414a, 417a, 417b, 418a, 418b, 420a, 421. Only once does the context of one of these 14 divisions strongly suggest that the man involved was Birche – and that was on 15 January 1655, when ‘Colonel Birch’ was a teller with Charles Worsley (who would shortly be appointed one of the Cromwellian major-generals) in favour of securing a reliable, and largely government controlled, source of revenue for the protectoral military establishment.82CJ vii. 417a. Besides being members of the same congregation, Birche and Worsley both had a vested interest in ensuring the army was kept up to strength and in pay.83Infra, ‘Charles Worsley’.

Birche’s opposition to the government in the first protectoral Parliament may well have proved costly. In March 1655, he was omitted from the new militia commission for Lancashire, and the following month it appears that he was replaced as governor of Liverpool by Colonel Gilbert Irelande.84Infra, ‘Gilbert Irelande’. If Irelande had not been returned for Lancashire in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, then it is possible that he would have secured a place at Liverpool. As it was, the town re-elected Birche.85Supra, ‘Liverpool’. Soon after his election, he wrote to the officeholders, asking how he might best serve them in the new Parliament.86Liverpool Town Bks. ed. Power, 85. But in the event, he failed to take his seat at Westminster and may have been among those excluded from the House by the protectoral council as an opponent of the government.87Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 280. However, his name appears on only one of the contemporary lists of those excluded in 1656, and it is perhaps significant that the corporation seems to have expected him to attend Parliament regardless of the protectoral council’s exclusion of MPs.88Liverpool Town Bks. ed. Power, 93, 104; Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 303. It is therefore possible that Birche was not excluded at all but simply refused to attend the House in protest at those who were. If that was indeed the case, he seems to have overcome his objections, for the ‘Colonel Birch’ who attended the short session in January and February 1658 was apparently – to judge from his interest in Lancashire issues – Birche rather than John Birch (who had also been elected in 1656, and excluded).89CJ vii. 580b, 589a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 332.

Gauging Birche’s role, if he had one, in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659 is even more problematic. It is possible that he was elected for the Lancashire constituency of Clitheroe, which appears to have returned Members in 1659 – having regained its seats under the restoration of the traditional franchise – but left no record as to their identity.90Supra, ‘Clitheroe’; infra, ‘William White’. It is perhaps significant that Birche’s former patron John Bradshawe had been restored to his office as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster late in 1658 – in time to have exerted electoral influence at Clitheroe on Birche’s behalf.91Infra, ‘John Bradshawe’. Unfortunately, there is no firm evidence that any of the numerous references in the Journal and in Thomas Burton’s parliamentary diary to ‘Colonel Birch’ relate to Birche as opposed to his cousin John Birch, who was again elected. The fact that neither parliamentary source made any effort to distinguish between Thomas and John and that they were never named to the same committee, strongly suggests that only one of them figured regularly in this Parliament’s proceedings – and if that was the case, then the man in question, as is clear from the content of several speeches made by ‘Colonel Birch’, was evidently John. Not only did he speak in support of the protectoral settlement and against the army, but he also identified himself as among those secluded at Pride’s Purge.92Supra, ‘John Birch’; Burton’s Diary, iii. 29, 58, 138, 392, 419, 495, 547; iv. 60-2, 199-200, 375, 383-4, 456. Similarly, the majority – perhaps all – of the dozen or so committee appointments of ‘Colonel Birch’ in this Parliament may well have belonged to John. In fact, there is only one piece of evidence, and that very ambiguous, to indicate that Birche sat in this Parliament at all. On 29 March, according to Burton, ‘Colonel Birch’ rose to give a speech and was greeted by cries of ‘Sir Thomas Birch’.93Burton’s Diary, iv. 295. Was the speaker in fact Birche, and were MPs mockingly implying that he had abandoned the republican interest and was angling for a knighthood by urging, as this speaker did, that Sir Henry Vane II be called to the bar for inflammatory remarks against the protectoral settlement? Or did Burton simply write ‘Thomas’ when he meant ‘John’? In the absence of further evidence, the questions raised by this reference are impossible to resolve.

Birche resumed his seat at Westminster following the restoration of the Rump in May 1659. He was named to 23 committees in the restored Rump, including the revived Committee for Plundered Ministers, four relating to the management and improvement of state finances, and that set up on 1 July to punish Quaker evangelists and any others who disturbed public church services.94CJ vii. 676b, 684b, 690a, 693b, 700b, 726a. He seems to have chaired, or at least reported from, committees for considering the accounts of the Lancashire supernumerary forces in 1648 and 1650 and on a bill for encouraging the tenants of malignant landlords to remain loyal to the commonwealth.95CJ vii. 680a, 710b, 754a. On 7 July, the House ordered him to bring in a bill for holding a court of assize at Lancaster.96CJ vii. 707b. Having taken unofficial leave of absence in late July, he endeavoured to warn and rally the parliamentarian forces in and around Manchester against the Presbyterian-royalist rebellion that broke out in the north-west early in August under Sir George Boothe*.97CJ vii. 749a; Clarke Pprs. iv. 287-9. After hurrying back to Westminster in order to obtain official leave of absence, which he did on 11 August, he returned to Lancashire to join the fight against the insurrection – or, at any rate, to take the surrender of several leading rebels and to help Major-general John Lambert* secure the region for the Rump.98CJ vii. 755a, 765b, 773b; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 170.

Birche resumed his seat again when the Rump was restored a second time, late in December 1659. He was named to 11 committees and continued to sit after the return of the secluded Members on 21 February 1660 – a move that more or less guaranteed the restoration of monarchy in some form.99CJ vii. 818a, 818b, 821a, 822a, 843b, 847b, 848a, 851b, 854a, 856a. He reported from, and may have chaired, a committee set up on 27 February for reviving the jurisdictions of the county palatines of Chester and Lancaster.100CJ vii. 854a, 860b. The ‘Colonel Birch’ who was commissioned by General George Monck* that month as colonel of Lambert’s former foot regiment may have been Birche, as several authorities have claimed.101Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 529; M. Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army (Solihull, 2015-16), ii. 137, 157; ‘Thomas Birch’, Oxford DNB. But it seems safer to assume that it was the Presbyterian grandee and councillor of state Colonel John Birch.

Birche was removed from the Lancashire bench after the Restoration and was doubtless forced to disgorge several of the sequestered and crown lands he had purchased since 1648.102Blackwood, Lancs. 96; Blackwood, ‘Lancs. Gentry’, 239, 360, 362. Regarded by the Lancashire royalists as ‘the most dangerous person of the county’, he was imprisoned in York Castle in 1663 – either on suspicion of complicity in the Farnley Wood Plot, in Yorkshire, or as a precautionary measure – but seems to have been quickly released.103CSP Dom, 1663-4, p. 346. During the 1650s, he had apparently assumed complete control of the affairs of Birch Chapel, settling its endowment upon his heir and namesake in 1658 for the ‘use and behoof of one orthodox preaching minister of the gospel’.104Manchester Central Lib. M35/6/2/3, 5, 7; Booker, Birch, 138-9. At some point in the early 1660s, however, he switched the main focus of his patronage of puritan ministers from Birch Chapel to the barn at Birch Hall that he had converted into a ‘private oratory’ (apparently for John Wigan) in the late 1640s.105Life of Martindale ed. Parkinson, 75; Booker, Birch, 148-9; Halley, Lancs. 295-6, 358-9. The ‘Thomas Birch Esq.’ residing by 1667 in a house ‘at the end of the spinning place’, on More Street, in Liverpool, was not, as is generally assumed, Birche himself but his son Thomas.106Manchester Central Lib. M35/6/2/7; Moore Rental ed. T. Heywood (Chetham Soc. o.s. xii), 56, 58, 89; ‘Thomas Birch’, Oxford DNB. Under the terms of the 1672 declaration of indulgence, Birche had his ‘private oratory’ at Birch Hall licensed as a meeting house for both Presbyterians and Independents.107CSP Dom. 1671-2, pp. 305, 354, 410, 414.

Birche died on 6 August 1678, but his place of burial is not known.108Norris Pprs. ed. Heywood, 20. No will is recorded. The inventory of his personal estate at Birch Hall amounted to £184.109Lancs. RO, WCW, Inventory of T. Birch of Birch Hall, 13 Sept. 1678. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.