1797 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1797 in Great Britain.

Incumbents

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

Events

3 January – three of the stones making up Stonehenge fall due to heavy frosts.
15 January – London haberdasher John Hetherington wears the first top hat in public and attracts a large crowd of onlookers. He is later fined £50 for causing public nuisance.
14 February – Battle of Cape St Vincent: The Royal Navy under Admiral Sir John Jervis defeats a larger Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent, Portugal. On 23 May, Jervis is made Earl of St Vincent, and Horatio Nelson made a Knight of the Bath, for their part in the victory.
18 February – Spanish Governor José María Chacón peacefully surrenders the colony of Trinidad and Tobago to a British naval force commanded by Sir Ralph Abercromby.
22 February – the last invasion of Britain begins: French forces under the command of American Colonel William Tate land near Fishguard in Wales.
24 February – Tate surrenders at Fishguard.
26 February – start of "restriction period" during which, by Government order, Bank of England notes are inconvertible to gold. The Bank issues the first one-pound and two-pound notes.
16 April–30 June – Spithead and Nore mutinies: two mutinies in the Royal Navy spark fears of a revolution.
17 April – Sir Ralph Abercromby unsuccessfully invades San Juan, Puerto Rico, in what would be one of the largest British attacks on Spanish territories in the western hemisphere and one of the worst defeats of the navy for years to come.
April – prisoners taken in the French Revolutionary Wars are first moved to the world's first purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp, located at Norman Cross in Huntingdonshire.
30 May – Abolitionist William Wilberforce marries Barbara Ann Spooner in Bath about six weeks after their first meeting.
July – Duties on Clocks and Watches Act 1797 imposed; it is repealed the following year.
24 July – Horatio Nelson is wounded at the Battle of Santa Cruz, causing the loss of his right arm.
August – The Home Office sends an agent to Nether Stowey in Somerset to investigate the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth who are suspected of being French spies.
29 August – Massacre of Tranent: British troops attack protestors against enforced recruitment into the militia at Tranent in Scotland, killing 12.
October – Coleridge composes the poem Kubla Khan in an opium-induced dream, writing down only a fragment of it on waking.
11 October – Battle of Camperdown: Royal Navy defeats the fleet of the Batavian Republic off the coast of Holland.
18 October – Treaty of Campo Formio ends the First Coalition, leaving Britain fighting alone against France.
November – 1797 Rugby School rebellion: The pupils at Rugby School rebel against the headmaster, Henry Ingles, after he decrees that the damage to a tradesman's windows should be paid for by the students.
16 November – Royal Navy frigate is wrecked on the approaches to Halifax, Nova Scotia; of the 240 on board, all but 12 are lost.
Undated – "Cartwheel" twopence coins pressed, for the only time, at Boulton and Watt's Soho Mint in copper.

Ongoing

Anglo-Spanish War, 1796–1808.
French Revolutionary Wars, First Coalition.

Publications

Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds vol. 1.

Births

3 January – Frederick William Hope, entomologist
6 January – Edward Turner Bennett, zoologist and writer
7 January – Henry Piddington, merchant captain in the East
14 January – George Agar-Ellis, 1st Baron Dover, politician and man of letters
24 January – John Shaw-Lefevre, barrister, Whig politician and civil servant
28 January – Charles Gray Round, barrister, Conservative Member of Parliament for North Essex 1837–47
1 February – Frederick Sullivan, cricketer
2 February – Lambert Blackwell Larking, clergyman
4 February
* Armine Simcoe Henry Mountain, British Army officer, Adjutant-General in India
* Frederick Henry Yates, actor and theatre manager
5 February – Robert Benson, barrister and author, recorder of Salisbury
10 February – George Chichester, 3rd Marquess of Donegall, Anglo-Irish landowner, courtier and politician
11 February – Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Conservative politician
13 February – Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar, Scottish art collector
25 February – Maria Abdy, poet
27 February – Henry George Ward, diplomat, politician and colonial administrator
3 March – Emily Eden, poet and novelist
4 March – Thomas Thorp, Anglican priest
10 March
* Henry Acton, Unitarian minister
* Henry Liddell, 1st Earl of Ravensworth, peer, Member of Parliament
* George Julius Poulett Scrope, geologist, political economist and magistrate
12 March – Benjamin Caesar, cricketer
16 March
* Lavinia Ryves, claimant to membership of the royal family
* Alaric Alexander Watts, poet and journalist
19 March – John Braithwaite, engineer, inventor of the first steam fire engine
20 March – John Roberton, Scottish physician and social reformer
23 March – Ernest Edgcumbe, 3rd Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, politician
24 March – Sackville Lane-Fox, Conservative politician
26 March – Hedworth Lambton, Liberal Member of Parliament
27 March – George Glyn, 1st Baron Wolverton, banker
31 March – Walter Calverley Trevelyan, naturalist and geologist
2 April
* John Peter Gassiot, businessman and amateur scientist
* David Robertson, 1st Baron Marjoribanks, Scottish stockbroker and politician
17 April
* William Beresford, Conservative politician
* John Ogilvie, Scottish lexicographer, editor of Imperial Dictionary of the Language
18 April – Richard Ryan, biographer
29 April – George Don, botanist
3 May – George Webster, architect
7 May
* Charles Frederick, Royal Navy officer, Third Naval Lord
* Elizabeth Grant, diarist
13 May
* William Chapman, surgeon, Director of the Kew Botanical Gardens
* Sir William Miles, 1st Baronet, politician
15 May – Lydia Irving, philanthropist, prison visitor
19 May – Richard Pakenham, diplomat, Ambassador to the United States
24 May – Henry Thynne, 3rd Marquess of Bath, naval officer and politician
27 May – Sir Thomas Bazley, 1st Baronet, industrialist and politician
8 June – Henry William-Powlett, 3rd Baron Bayning, peer and clergyman
11 June
* Francis Conyngham, 2nd Marquess Conyngham, soldier, courtier and politician
* Henry Lascelles, 3rd Earl of Harewood, peer and Member of Parliament
24 June
* Mary Ann Aldersey, nonconformist, first Christian woman missionary in China
* Ann Freeman, Bible Christian preacher
27 June – Henry Noble Shipton, military officer
6 July – Henry Paget, 2nd Marquess of Anglesey, peer, Whig politician, courtier and cricketer
7 July – George Meads, cricketer
11 July – Francis Close, rector of Cheltenham and Dean of Carlisle
14 July – James Scott Bowerbank, naturalist, palaeontologist
17 July – John Hodgetts-Foley, Member of Parliament
18 July – Robert Christison, Scottish toxicologist and physician
24 July – Maria Foote, actress
26 July
* William Bulkeley Hughes, Welsh politician
* William Gore Ouseley, diplomat serving in the United States
* William Ranwell, marine painter
30 July – Harriet Windsor-Clive, 13th Baroness Windsor, landowner and philanthropist in Wales
1 August – William Knollys, general
2 August
* John Brown, geographer
* William Gibson-Craig, Scottish advocate and politician
9 August – Charles Robert Malden, explorer
11 August – George Shillibeer, coachbuilder
14 August – Robert Radcliffe, cricketer
20 August – John Sinclair, Archdeacon of Middlesex
21 August – John Iltyd Nicholl, Welsh Member of Parliament
22 August – Thomas Dale, Dean of Rochester
24 August – John Cobbold, brewer, railway developer and Conservative politician
27 August – Henry Wilson, Suffolk politician
30 August – Mary Shelley, writer
31 August – James Ferguson, Scottish-born astronomer and engineer
2 September – William Stephenson, Geordie printer, publisher, auctioneer, poet and songwriter
3 September – Benjamin Nottingham Webster, actor-manager and dramatist
13 September – Joseph Stannard, marine and landscape painter
21 September – George Hamilton Seymour, diplomat
5 October – John Gardner Wilkinson, traveller, writer and pioneer Egyptologist
7 October – John Wedderburn Dunbar Moodie, Scottish-born army officer
9 October – Henry Collen, royal miniature portrait painter
10 October – Thomas Drummond, army officer, civil engineer and public official
13 October
* George Anson, military officer and Whig politician
* Thomas Haynes Bayly, poet
* William Motherwell, Scottish poet, antiquary and journalist
15 October – William Siborne, Army officer and military historian
16 October – James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, military commander
21 October – William Hale, inventor
1 November
* Michael Loam, Cornish engineer, pioneer of the man engine
* Sir Hedworth Williamson, 7th Baronet
13 November – Jacob Astley, 16th Baron Hastings
14 November – Charles Lyell, Scottish geologist
20 November – Mary Buckland, palaeontologist and marine biologist
22 November – David Salomons, banker and campaigner for emancipation of the Jews in England
12 December – Lucy Anderson, pianist
17 December – Richard Cheslyn, cricketer
22 December
* Charles Fox, Cornish Quaker scientist
* Thomas Manders, actor-manager and low comedian
24 December – Lewis Jones, Royal Navy officer
28 December – John Marshall, Member of Parliament for Leeds
Tommaso Benedetti, painter
Approximate date – Thomas Cautley Newby, publisher

Deaths

21 February – John Parkhurst, lexicographer
2 March – Horace Walpole, politician and writer
6 March – William Hodges, landscape painter
7 March – John Gabriel Stedman, colonial soldier and author
19 March – Philip Hayes, composer, organist, singer and conductor
26 March – James Hutton, Scottish geologist
31 March – Olaudah Equiano, ex-slave and slavery abolitionist
7 April – William Mason, cleric, poet, editor and gardener
29 April – Elizabeth Ryves, Irish-born writer
7 May – Jedediah Strutt, cotton spinner
25 May – John Griffin, 4th Baron Howard de Walden, field marshal
28 June – George Keate, poet
30 June – Richard Parker, sailor and mutineer, executed
9 July – Edmund Burke, Irish-born philosopher
25 July – killed at Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife
* Richard Bowen, Royal Navy officer
* George Thorp, Royal Navy officer
29 July – John Weatherhead, Royal Navy officer, died of wounds received at Battle of Santa Cruz
3 August – Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, field-marshal and Commander-in-Chief
6 August – James Pettit Andrews, historian and antiquary
18 August – Josiah Spode, potter
29 August – Joseph Wright of Derby, painter
4 September – Sir William Ashburnham, 4th Baronet, cleric
10 September – Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist writer and philosopher
21 September – Hugh Pigot, Royal Navy officer, murdered
25 September – John Baughan, carpenter, thief and transportee to Australia
29 September – George Raper, nature artist
4 October – Anthony Keck, architect
20 October – William Cooke, cleric and academic
11 December – Richard Brocklesby, physician
14 December – John Robert Cozens, romantic watercolour landscape painter and draughtsman, insane
26 December – John Wilkes, radical politician and journalist
30 December – David Martin, Scottish portrait painter and engraver
Thomas Kirk, painter, illustrator and engraver, consumption