1771 in Great Britain

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III
• Prime Minister – Frederick North, Lord North

Events

• 22 January – Spain cedes the Falkland Islands to Britain.
• 15 March – Society of Civil Engineers first meets, the world's oldest engineering society.
• 12 July – first voyage of James Cook : 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.
• 30 September – Bath Assembly Rooms completed.
• 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 – Several rivers flood in northern England, destroying many bridges and killing several people.

Undated

• Industrial Revolution: Richard Arkwright begins to develop cotton mills at Cromford in the Derwent Valley of Derbyshire, one of the earliest factory complexes.
• 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.
• St George's Circus intersection built in London.
• Norfolk and Norwich Hospital founded.
• Edinburgh Society of Bowlers codifies the modern rules for bowls.

Publications

• Sir John Dalrymple's history Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland from the dissolution of the last parliament of Charles II until the sea battle of La Hogue, first revealing the 1670 Secret Treaty of Dover.Encyclopædia Britannica completes publication.
• Henry Mackenzie's novel The Man of Feeling.
• Tobias Smollett's novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker.
• Peter Williams 's Hymns on Various Subjects.
• Arthur Young's The Farmer's Kalendar.
• Allegri's Miserere.

Births

• 5 February – John Lingard, Roman Catholic priest
• 13 April – Richard Trevithick, Cornish inventor
• 3 June – Sydney Smith, writer and clergyman
• 7 July – John Britton, antiquary and topographer
• 15 August – Walter Scott, Scottish novelist and poet
• 22 August – Henry Maudslay, mechanical engineer
• 11 September – Mungo Park, Scottish explorer of West Africa
• 25 December – Dorothy Wordsworth, poet and diarist

Deaths

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