He was the second son of Matthew Church, a Quaker merchant in the North Mall area of Cork, Ireland, and Anne Dearman, originally from Braithwaith, Yorkshire, England.

For this violation of its principles he was disowned by the Society of Friends, but his father bought him a commission, dated 3 July 1800, in the 13th (Somersetshire) Light Infantry.

He served in the demonstration against Ferrol, and in the expedition to Egypt under Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1801, where he took part in the Battle of Abukir and the taking of Alexandria.

His Corsicans formed part of the garrison of Capri from October 1806 till the island was taken by an expedition directed against it by Joachim Murat, in September 1808, at the very beginning of his reign as king of Naples.

Church commanded this regiment at the taking of the island of Santa Maura (Lefkada), on which occasion his left arm was shattered by a bullet.

In the years of the fall of Napoleon (1813 and 1814) he was present as British military representative with the Austrian troops until the campaign which terminated in the expulsion of Murat from Naples.

The peace and the disbanding of his Greek regiment left him without employment, though his reputation was high at the war office, and his services were recognized by the grant of a Companion of the Order of the Bath.

At Naples he was imprisoned and put on his trial by the government, but was acquitted and released in January 1821; and King George IV conferred on him a Knight Commander of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1822.

The rout of his army in an attempt to relieve the acropolis of Athens, then besieged by the Ottomans, proved that it was incapable of conducting regular operations.

[4] After the Battle of Navarino, and during the Kapodistrias period, he was placed commander-in-chief of the Greek regular forces in Central Greece, together with Demetrios Ypsilantis.

The funeral service took place in the Anglican Church in Filellinon Street in the presence of King George I and a large numbers of official guests.