1700 in England

Events from the year 1700 in England.

Incumbents

Monarch – William III

Events

27 February – The island of New Britain is discovered by William Dampier in the western Pacific.
early March – William Congreve's comedy The Way of the World is first performed at the New Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields.
24 March – Treaty of London signed between France, England and the Dutch Republic.
24 June – Responsibility for vagrants passes from churchwardens to parish constables under terms of the Vagrant Removal Costs Act.
30 July – Princess Anne's only surviving child, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, dies aged eleven of "a malignant fever" at Windsor Castle, leaving the Protestant succession to the British throne in doubt.
September – While in the Netherlands, William III meets his cousin Sophia at Het Loo Palace. This is a precursor to the Act of Settlement of the following year that opens the way to the future succession of the House of Hanover.
6 September – Edmond Halley returns to England after a voyage of almost one year on HMS Paramour, from which he has observed the Antarctic Convergence, and publishes his findings on terrestrial magnetism in General Chart of the Variation of the Compass.
20 November – First boats reach Leeds from the tideway by way of the Aire and Calder Navigation.
19 December – The 4th Parliament of King William III is dissolved and new elections are ordered by the King.
25 December – First Christmas hymn authorised to be sung in the Anglican church, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks", the words by Nahum Tate having been first published this year, in a supplement to "Tate and Brady".
28 December – Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester is appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Approximate date – Jeremiah Clarke writes the Prince of Denmark's March.

Births

29 March – Charles Cornwallis, 1st Earl Cornwallis
April – John Wyatt, inventor
4 May – Joseph Adams, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company
14 May – Mary Delany, Bluestocking, artist and writer
13 July – John Dandridge, colonel and planter in Virginia
20 September – Benedict Leonard Calvert, Governor of Maryland
26 September? – Mary Hervey, née Lepell, courtier
13 October – Phanuel Bacon, playwright, poet and author
31 October – Joseph Blake, alias Blueskin, highwayman
28 November – Nathaniel Bliss, Astronomer Royal

Full date unknown

John Cecil, 7th Earl of Exeter, peer
William Craven, 3rd Baron Craven, nobleman
Emanuel Howe, 2nd Viscount Howe, politician and colonial administrator
John Immyns, attorney and lutenist
Charles Jennens, landowner and patron of the arts

Deaths

16–27 January – John Dormer, born Huddleston, Jesuit priest
21 January – Henry Somerset, 1st Duke of Beaufort
14 March – Henry Killigrew, dramatist
12 May – John Dryden, poet
10 July – John Lowther, 1st Viscount Lonsdale, politician
19 July – Thomas Creech, translator
29 July – Prince William, Duke of Gloucester
8 August – Joseph Moxon, mathematician and lexicographer
7 September – William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford, peer and soldier