1794 in Great Britain

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III
• Prime Minister – William Pitt the Younger
• Foreign Secretary – Lord Grenville

Events

• 12 March – rebuilt Theatre Royal, Drury Lane opens in London.
• 23 March – British troops capture Martinique from the French.
• 19 April – Britain signs a treaty of alliance with Prussia and the Netherlands against France.
• 21 April – British troops seize Guadeloupe but the French regain control on 7 June.
• 8 May – Robert Burns' song Scots Wha Hae published in the Morning Chronicle.
• 9 May – Enlistment Act 1794 is passed, allowing Frenchmen to join the British Army.
• 14 May – Hambletonian wins his first race. He will win every subsequent race he finishes in his career.
• 1 June – Glorious First of June: A British victory over the French in the first major naval battle of the French Revolutionary Wars. The first official naval medals are awarded to senior officers involved.
• 4 June – British troops capture Port-au-Prince in Haiti from the French.
• 17 June
• * The Anglo-Corsican Kingdom is established.
• * Battle of Mykonos: HMS Romney captures French frigate Sibylle.
• 12 July – Horatio Nelson loses his right eye during the Siege of Calvi in Corsica.
• 23 July – Ratcliffe Fire destroys over 400 homes in London.
• 21 August – British troops capture Corsica following the bombardment by Nelson.
• 29 August – the Jesuit school Stonyhurst College, founded in France by Robert Persons relocates to England.
• September – Popgun plot: alleged conspiracy to assassinate King George III with a poisoned dart.
• 28 September – Britain allies with Russia and Austria against France.
• 15 October – Catholic seminarians forced to leave the English College, Douai, settle at Crook Hall, County Durham.
• November – 1794 Treason Trials.
• 19 November – Britain and the United States sign the Jay Treaty, which attempts to clear up some issues left over from the American Revolutionary War and secures a decade of peaceful trade between the two nations.

Ongoing

• French Revolutionary Wars, First Coalition

Undated

• Erasmus Darwin's Zoönomia published, anticipating later theories of evolution.
• Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason published.
• Mrs Radcliffe's Gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho published.
• Uvedale Price's Essay on the Picturesque, As Compared With The Sublime and The Beautiful published.
• First issue of The Gallery of Fashion which becomes influential in disseminating developments in women's fashion.
• St Mary's College is established at Old Oscott, near Birmingham, the first Roman Catholic seminary in England since the Reformation.
• The music of the Welsh march Men of Harlech is first published as Gorhoffedd Gwŷr Harlech—March of the Men of Harlech in the second edition of The Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards.

Births

• 17 May – Anna Brownell Jameson, writer
• 24 May – William Whewell, scientist, philosopher, and historian of science
• 14 July – John Gibson Lockhart, writer and editor
• 28 July – Charles Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury
• 30 August – John Rennie the Younger, civil engineer
• Unknown date – William Forster Lloyd, economist
• Approximate date – William Heath, caricaturist

Deaths

• 16 January – Edward Gibbon, historian
• 31 January – Mariot Arbuthnot, admiral
• 18 April – Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain
• 27 April – Sir William Jones, philologist
• 18 May – Yemmerrawanne, Aboriginal Australian
• 18 June – James Murray, military officer and administrator
• 13 July – James Lind, pioneer of naval hygiene in the Royal Navy
• 17 July – John Roebuck, inventor
• 6 August – Henry Bathurst, 2nd Earl Bathurst, politician
• 21 October – Francis Light, founder of the British colony of Penang