1764 in Great Britain
Appearance
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Events from the year 1764 in Great Britain.
Incumbents
Events
- 19 January – John Wilkes is expelled from the House of Commons for seditious libel for his article criticising King George III in The North Briton.[1]
- 5 April – Parliament passes the Sugar Act.[2]
- 19 April – the Currency Act passed which prohibits the American colonies from issuing paper currency of any form.[1]
- 23 April – Mozart family grand tour: 8-year-old W. A. Mozart settles in London for a year[3] where he composes his Symphony No. 1.
- August – protests begin in Boston, Massachusetts against Britain's colonial policies.[1]
- 22 October – deposed Nawab of Bengal Mir Qasim defeated at the Battle of Buxar by the British East India Company.[1]
Undated
- Specific and latent heats are described by Joseph Black.[4]
- Industrial Revolution: James Hargreaves invents the spinning jenny.[5]
- Holkham Hall, Norfolk, completed in the Palladian style by William Kent.[6]
- Landscape gardener Lancelot "Capability" Brown is appointed Chief Gardener at the royal palace of Hampton Court; redesigns the gardens of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire; and works at Broadlands in Hampshire.[5][7]
- The rock pillar called "Lot's Wife" amongst The Needles off the Isle of Wight collapses into the sea during a storm.[8]
Publications
- James Ridley's pastiche Oriental stories The Tales of the Genii (supposedly translated by Sir Charles Morell from Persian).
- Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel (supposedly translated by William Marshal from Italian).
Births
- Early – James Smithson, mineralogist, chemist and benefactor (died 1829)
- February – George Duff, Scottish naval officer (died 1805)
- 13 March – Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (died 1845)
- 1 April – Eclipse, racehorse (died 1789)
- 3 April – John Abernethy, surgeon (died 1831)
- 29 April – Ann Hatton, née Kemble, novelist (died 1838)
- 2 May – Robert Hall, Baptist minister (died 1831)
- 4 May – Joseph Carpue, surgeon (died 1846)
- 5 May – Robert Craufurd, Scottish general (killed at Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo (1812))
- 25 May – John Mason Good, writer (died 1827)
- 19 June – Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet, author and statesman (died 1848)
- 21 June – Sidney Smith, admiral (died 1840)
- 5 July – Daniel Mendoza, boxer (died 1836)
- 9 July – Ann Radcliffe, née Ward, novelist (died 1823)
- 17 September – John Goodricke, astronomer (died 1786)
- 25 September – Fletcher Christian, sailor and mutineer (died 1793 in Pitcairn Islands)
- October – William Symington, Scottish mechanical engineer and steamboat pioneer (died 1831)
- 3 December – Mary Lamb, writer and matricide (died 1847)
- Approximate date – Alexander Mackenzie, Scottish explorer of northern Canada (died 1820)
Deaths
- 6 March – Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor (born 1690)
- 17 March
- William Oliver, physician (born 1695)
- George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, astronomer (born c. 1696)
- 15 April – John Immyns, attorney and lutenist (born c. 1700)
- 29 June – Ralph Allen, businessman and politician (born 1693)
- 7 July – William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath, politician (born 1683)
- 2 September – Nathaniel Bliss, Astronomer Royal (born 1700)
- 23 September – Robert Dodsley, writer (born 1703)
- 2 October – William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, Prime Minister (born 1720)
- 26 October – William Hogarth, painter and satirist (born 1697)
- 4 November – Charles Churchill, poet and satirist (born 1731)
References
- ^ a b c d Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 322–323. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
- ^ The American Revenue Act of 1764. Archived December 2, 2005, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Mozart in London". thewordtravels.com. Retrieved 2011-11-30.
- ^ The Hutchinson Factfinder. Helicon. 1999. ISBN 1-85986-000-1.
- ^ a b "Icons, a portrait of England 1750–1800". Archived from the original on 17 August 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-25.
- ^ Summerson, John (1954). Architecture in Britain, 1530 to 1830. Penguin.
- ^ Hinde, Thomas (1986). Capability Brown: the Story of a Master Gardener. London: Hutchinson. pp. 100, 119, 123. ISBN 0-09-163740-6.
- ^ "The history and geology of The Needles". The Needles Park. Archived from the original on 2011-07-28. Retrieved 2011-08-22.