1771 in Great Britain

1771 in Great Britain:

Other years

1769 | 1770 | 1771 | 1772 | 1773

Sport

1771 English cricket season

Events from the year 1771 in the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Incumbents

• Monarch - George III
• Prime Minister - Lord North (Tory)

Events

• 22 January - Spain cedes the Falkland Islands to Britain.
• 15 March - Society of Civil Engineers first meets (in London), the world's oldest engineering society.
• 12 July - First voyage of James Cook (begun 1768): HMS Endeavour anchors in The Downs, and Captain Cook goes ashore at Deal, Kent, following his global circumnavigation.
• 8 August - First recorded town cricket match played at Horsham; Horsham Cricket Club formed here soon after 1806.
• 17 August - Edinburgh botanist James Robertson makes the first recorded ascent of Ben Nevis.
• 2 October - Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, brother to the King, marries a commoner, the widow Anne Horton, in Mayfair, precipitating the Royal Marriages Act 1772.
• 16 November - During the night the River Tyne floods, destroying many bridges and killing several people; the replacement main bridge at Newcastle upon Tyne will not be completed until 1781.

Undated

• Industrial Revolution: Richard Arkwright begins to develop cotton mills at Cromford in the Derwent Valley of Derbyshire, one of the earliest factory complexes.
• Bath Assembly Rooms completed.
• Harewood House, West Yorkshire, completed to the designs of John Carr and Robert Adam.
• Warren Hastings of the British East India Company becomes governor of Bengal in India.

Publications

• Encyclopædia Britannica completes publication.
• Henry Mackenzie's novel The Man of Feeling.
• Tobias Smollett's novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker.
• Peter Williams (1722-1796)'s Hymns on Various Subjects (includes "Prayer for Strength", the first English translation of the Welsh hymn "Cwm Rhondda").
• Arthur Young's The Farmer's Kalendar.
• Allegri's Miserere.

Births

• 5 February - John Lingard, Roman Catholic priest (died 1851)
• 13 April - Richard Trevithick, inventor (died 1833)
• 3 June - Sydney Smith, writer and clergyman (died 1845)
• 7 July - John Britton, antiquary and topographer (died 1857)
• 15 August - Sir Walter Scott, novelist and poet (died 1832)
• 11 September - Mungo Park, explorer (died 1806)
• 25 December - Dorothy Wordsworth, poet and diarist (died 1855)

Deaths

• 5 January - John Russell, Duke of Bedford, statesman (born 1710)
• 21 May - Christopher Smart, poet (born 1722)
• 8 June - Lord Halifax, statesman (born 1716)
• 30 July - Thomas Gray, writer (born 1716)
• 17 September - Tobias Smollett, Scottish-born novelist (born 1721)
• 6 November - John Bevis, physician and astronomer (born 1695)
• 15 December - Benjamin Stillingfleet, botanist (born 1702)