Neapolitan service with the governorship of the two Apulian provinces, Terra di Bari and Terra di Otranto, with a special mission to suppress brigandage. The task was a hard one, and Church’s life was in constant danger, but even Colletta acknowledges that he acted justly, though with severity, and destroyed the brigands (Storia del Reame di Napoli, ii. 334). His conduct gave such satisfaction to the king that he revived various Neapolitan orders, and was in 1820 made commander-in-chief in Sicily. There he had a more difficult task than even in Apulia, for open revolution soon broke out against the king's authority. He arrived at lgalermo to Hung the soldiers combined with the populace against the fallen government of the Bourbons; fearlessly but fruitlessly tried to preserve order; was sent by the revolutionary government to Naples; was imprisoned there in the Castello del Ovo; was acquitted after a sort of trial, and left the country in disgust. His services were recognised in his own country, and in 1822 George IV made him a K.C.
Wrlian the Greek revolution broke out, the Suliotes turned their eyes towards their old colonel, who had kept up his connection with Greece. His arrival on 7 March 1827 answered their appeal to him. Colocotronis, Metaxas, and his old Ionian friends met him at midnight with the cry, ‘Here is our father! let us obey him, and our liberty is assured!’ The third national assembly of Greece was then held, and through the influence of Colocotronis Church was elected generalissimo of the armies of Greece, Lord Cochrane admiral-in-chief, and Capo d’Istria president. Church accepted the command, but his first action, an attempt to relieve the Akropolis of Athens, was a failure. A night march from the shore across the plain of Athens had been forced upon Church by Cochrane as the price of his co-operation. Owing to want of preparation and disobedience of orders by the greek chief Tzavellas, the Greeks were cut to pieces in the plain. After the battle Church held his position on the Munyehuim hill for three weeks, and brought off his men without loss in the face of his conquerors. In December 1827 Church landed on the Akamanian coast of western Greece with a thousand men; gathered round him the chiefs; occupied the gulf of Arta and the passes of Macrinoros; nally cut the Turkish communications with Missolonghi and Lepanto; and forced both garrisons to surrender. When the evacuation of Akarnania and Æto1ia was complete, Church resigned his command in indignation at Capo d'Istria’s neglect of the army during the campaign. When Capo d’Istria wished to limit the Greek kingdom to the Morea, Church published a pamphlet in London, in which he represented the impolicy of handing over to Turkey the liberated provinces of westem Greece. The frontier roposed in 1830 was ‘rectified’ in 1832, ang western Greece included within the kingdom. One of the first acts of the new nationality and of the new king Otho was to continue Church’s appointment. But the tyranny of Otho was hateful to him, and he co-operated in the revolution of 1843, by which a constitution was given to the country, and a constitutional king elected. In 1843 Church was appointed a senator, and in 1854 general in the Greek army, an honour conferred on no one else, and he continued to live at Athens in retirement, although distingished bv all the honours the nation could betow. When he died, on 30 March 1873, the ‘Great Citizen’ was honoured with a public funeral and a ublic monument. The grand cross of the ordier of 11 anover was conferred upon him in 1837. He married, 17 Aug, 1826, In Elizabeth Augusta, elder daughter of Sir Robert Wilmot, second baronet, of Osmaston, Derbyshire. She died in 1878.
[Royal Military Calendar; Celletta’s history of Naples; Gordon’s and Finlay’s histories of the Greek Revolution; Funeral Oration pronounced at the Greek Cemetery of Athens on 15-27 March 1873 over the tomb of the late General Sir Richard Church, by the Hon. P. Chalkiopulos, minister of justice, and Mr. John Gennadius, secretary of legation, 1873; information from Sir Richard’s nephew, Canon Church of Wells, and Philip Meynell, esq.]
CHURCH, THOMAS (1707–1756), divine and controversial writer, born at Marlborough 20 Oct. 1707, graduated at Brasenose, Oxford, B.A. 1726, M.A. 1731. He was vicar of Battersea from 1740 till his death, 23 Dec. 1756. He also held a prebendal stall at St. Paul’s Cathedral (3 Jan. 1743–4), and was lecturer at St. Anne’s, Soho. He was a diligent writer in defence of christianity. For his vindication, against Conyers Middleton, of the miraculous powers of the early church, the university of Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.D. (1749). He criticised with equal zeal the philosophy of deism and the doctrines and practices of the methodists. His analysis of the works of Bolingbroke (who is stated to have been his patron) is marked by considerable terseness and ingenuity of argument. In a letter to Whitefield he reproaches him for his frequent absences from his cure of souls in Georgia, ‘though he often preached and expounded four times a day when he was on the spot.’ While treating Wesley with more respect, he pronounces unreservedly against his system as having ‘introduced
