1797 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1797 in the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Incumbents

*Monarch - George III of the United Kingdom
*Prime Minister - William Pitt the Younger, Tory

Events

* 3 January - three of the stones making up Stonehenge fall due to heavy frosts. [cite book|title=The Every Day Book of History and Chronology|publisher=D. Appleton & co|author=Joel Munsell|year=1858|pages=14]
* 15 January - London haberdasher John Hetherington wears the first top hat in public and attracts a large crowd of onlookers. He is later fined £50 for causing public nuisance.cite book|title=Penguin Pocket On This Day|publisher=Penguin Reference Library|isbn=0-141-02715-0|year=2006]
* 18 February - Spanish Governor Chacon peacefully surrenders the colony of Trinidad and Tobago to a British naval force commanded by Sir Ralph Abercromby.
* 22 February - The Last invasion of Britain begins. French forces under the command of American Colonel William Tate land near Fishguard in Wales.
* 25 February - Tate surrenders at Fishguard.
* 26 February - The Bank of England issues the first one-pound and two-pound notes (discontinued March 11 1988).cite book|last=Williams|first=Hywel|title=Cassell's Chronology of World History|publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson|year=2005|isbn=0-304-35730-8|pages=346–347]
* 16 April to 30 June - Spithead and Nore mutinies: Two mutinies in the Royal Navy spark fears of a revolution. [cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/launch_tl_british.shtml|title=BBC History British History Timeline|accessdate=2007-09-04]
* 17 April - Sir Ralph Abercromby unsuccessfully invades San Juan, Puerto Rico in what would be one of the largest British attacks on Spanish territories in the western hemisphere and one of the worst defeats of the navy for years to come.
* 24 July - Horatio Nelson is wounded at the Battle of Santa Cruz, causing a loss of his right arm.
* August - the Home Office sends an agent to Nether Stowey in Somerset to investigate the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth who were suspected of being French spies. [cite web|url=http://www.timetravel-britain.com/06/Oct/wordsworth.shtml|title=Wordsworth's Lakes|author=Keith Kellett|accessdate=2008-02-25]
* 11 October - Battle of Camperdown: Royal Navy defeats Franco-Dutch fleet.cite book |last=Palmer |first=Alan & Veronica |year=1992 |title= The Chronology of British History|publisher= Century Ltd|location=London|pages= 236-237|isbn= 0-7126-5616-2]

Births

* 6 January - Edward Turner Bennett, zoologist and writer (died 1836)
* 14 January - George Agar-Ellis, 1st Baron Dover, man of letters (died 1833)
* 9 August - Charles Robert Malden, explorer (died 1855)
* 30 August - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, writer (died 1851)
* 16 October - James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, military commande (died 1868)
* 14 November - Charles Lyell, geologist (died 1875)
* "unknown date" - William Banting, undertaker and dietician (died 1878)

Deaths

* 2 March - Horace Walpole, politician and writer (born 1717)
* 26 March - James Hutton, geologist (born 1726)
* 31 March - Olaudah Equiano Nigerian ex-slave and slavery abolitionist in Britain (born 1745, Nigeria)
* 25 May - John Griffin Whitwell, 4th Baron Howard de Walden, field marshal (born 1719)
* 3 August - Jeffrey Amherst, military commander (born 1717)
* 29 August - Joseph Wright of Derby, painter (born 1734)
* 10 September - Mary Wollstonecraft, writer, philosopher and feminist (born 1759)
* 11 December - Richard Brocklesby, physician (born 1722)
* 26 December - John Wilkes, politician and journalist (born 1725)

References

ee also