1783 in Great Britain

1783 in Great Britain:

Other years

1781 | 1782 | 1783 | 1784 | 1785

Sport

1783 English cricket season

Events from the year 1783 in the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III
• Prime Minister –
  • until 2 April: Lord Shelburne (Whig)
  • 2 April-19 December: Duke of Portland (Coalition)
  • starting 19 December: William Pitt the Younger (Tory)

Events

• 1 January – Glasgow Chamber of Commerce is founded by Patrick Colquhoun – the first in Britain.
• 4 February – American Revolutionary War: Great Britain formally declares that it will cease hostilities with the United States of America.
• 6 February – American Revolutionary War: Spain lifts the Great Siege of Gibraltar.
• 24 February – William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne resigns as Prime Minister over the proposed peace terms with the United States.
• 19 March – Zong massacre: the case of a British slave trader who, in 1781, threw approximately 142 slaves overboard to conserve supplies for the remainder, the owners subsequently attempting to reclaim part of their value from insurers, is revealed by Olaudah Equiano to anti-slavery activist Granville Sharp, creating new support for abolitionism.
• 2 April – Fox-North Coalition: William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland becomes First Lord of the Treasury.
• May – George Crabbe's narrative poem The Village is published.
• 10 May – John Moore enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury.
• 8 June – A sulphurous haze from the eruption of the Laki volcano in Iceland gives rise to the "sand-summer", thought to have caused the deaths of more than 10,000 people in Britain.
• 1 to 31 July – The hottest month in the CET series until July 1983 with a mean temperature of 18.8 °C (65.8 °F) features what is still the highest minimum daily CET for any month at 16.3 °C (61.3 °F).
• 18 August – Great Meteor passes over the east coast of Britain, sparking reports in the press of the time and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
• 2 September – A preliminary treaty is signed in Paris with the Dutch Republic to end the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War.
• 3 September – Peace of Paris: A treaty between Britain and the United States is signed in Paris, formally ending the American Revolutionary War; and treaties are signed between Britain, France and Spain at Versailles ending hostilities with the Franco-Spanish Alliance.
• 7 November – The last public execution is held at Tyburn.
• 25 November – American Revolutionary War: The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
• 9 December – Executions begin to be held in Newgate Prison.
• 17 December – George III dismisses the Fox-North Coalition. It is succeeded by a government formed by William Pitt the Younger.
• 19 December – William Pitt the Younger becomes the youngest-ever Prime Minister of Great Britain or the United Kingdom at the age of 24.

Undated

• Industrial Revolution: Henry Cort of Funtley, Hampshire, invents the grooved rolling mill for producing bar iron.
• Erasmus Darwin begins publication of A System of Vegetables, a translation of Linnaeus in which he coins many common English language names of plants.
• The Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion is founded by Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, as part of the Evangelical Revival.

Births

• 22 May – William Sturgeon, scientist (died 1850)
• 17 September – Samuel Prout, painter (died 1852)
• 22 October – James Henry Keith Stewart, Member of Parliament (died 1836)

Deaths

• 7 January – William Tans'ur, English hymnist (born 1700)
• 6 February – Capability Brown, landscape gardener (born 1716)
• 10 February – James Nares, composer (born 1715)
• 30 March – William Hunter, anatomist (born 1718)
• 18 September – Benjamin Kennicott, churchman and Hebrew scholar (born 1718)
• 16 December – William James, naval commander (born 1720)