1800 in Great Britain

Incumbents

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

Events

• January – Maria Edgeworth's first extended work of fiction, the pioneering historical novel Castle Rackrent, is published anonymously in London.
• 8 January – first soup kitchens open in London.
• 13 January – Royal Institution granted a royal charter.
• March – Robert Bloomfield's popular poem The Farmer's Boy is published.
• 17 March – catches fire off the coast of Cabrera, Balearic Islands, with the loss of 700 lives.
• 22 March – Company of Surgeons granted a royal charter to become the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
• 15 May – George III survives two assassination attempts in London: In Hyde Park, a bullet intended for him hits a man standing alongside; and later at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, two bullets fired by an insane man hit the wooden panel behind him.
• 30 June – [Glasgow Police Act of Parliament|Act 1800|Glasgow Police Act] authorises creation of the City of Glasgow Police, which first musters on 15 November.
• 2 July & 1 August – Acts of Union 1800: The complementary Union with Ireland Act 1800, an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, and Act of Union 1800, an Act of the Parliament of Ireland, are passed by the respective legislatures, to unite the Kingdom of Ireland and Kingdom of Great Britain into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with effect from 1 January 1801. The latter Act achieves its majority of 43 in the Irish House of Commons partly through the bribing of former opponents by the award of peerages and honours. The British act is given royal assent by King George III in August. Catholic emancipation has been promised as part of the legislation by William Pitt, Lord Cornwallis and Lord Castlereagh but they are forced to drop it by the King leading to their resignations.
• 28 July – two acts of Parliament are passed in response to James Hadfield's assassination attempt on the King: the Criminal Lunatics Act requires and provides a procedure for the indefinite detention of mentally ill offenders; and the Treason Act aligns procedures for the trial of anyone attempting to take the monarch's life with those for murder in general.
• 4 September – Siege of Malta (1798–1800): The French garrison in Valletta surrenders to British troops who have been called at the invitation of the Maltese. The islands of Malta and Gozo become the Malta Protectorate.
• 22 September – Downing College, Cambridge, granted a Royal Charter, the first new college there for two centuries.
• December – Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz introduces a Christmas tree at a party for children at Windsor.

Ongoing

• Anglo-Spanish War, 1796–1808
• French Revolutionary Wars, War of the Second Coalition

Undated

• Inflation reaches an all-time recorded high of 36.5%.
• Infrared radiation is discovered by William Herschel.

Births

• 1 January – Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere
• 4 January - Charles Baillie-Hamilton, politician
• 6 January – George Thomas Doo, engraver
• 12 January – George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon, diplomat and statesman
• 24 January – Edwin Chadwick, social reformer
• 27 January – Evelyn Denison, 1st Viscount Ossington, statesman
• 1 February – Brian Houghton Hodgson, naturalist and civil servant
• 11 February – Henry Fox Talbot, photographic pioneer
• 12 February – John Edward Gray, zoologist
• 23 February – William Jardine, naturalist
• 4 March – William Price, physician and eccentric
• 10 March
• * Horatio Thomas Austin, Royal Navy officer and explorer
• * George Hudson, railway financier
• 15 April – James Clark Ross, Royal Navy officer and explorer
• 16 April
• * George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan, soldier
• * William Chambers of Glenormiston, publisher and politician
• 4 May – John McLeod Campbell, churchman
• 8 May – William Lovett, Chartist leader
• 9 May – Samuel Carter Hall, journalist
• 28 May – Edward Baines, newspaper editor and Member of Parliament
• 1 June – Charles Fremantle, Royal Navy officer
• 9 June – James Wilson Carmichael, marine painter
• 30 June – Richard Bethell, 1st Baron Westbury, Lord Chancellor
• 22 July – Robert McCormick, Royal Navy surgeon and explorer
• 29 July – George Bradshaw, cartographer and timetable publisher
• 22 August – Edward Bouverie Pusey, churchman
• 10 September – Edwin Guest, antiquary
• 12 September – John Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland
• 22 September
• * George Bentham, botanist
• * Thomas Holloway, pharmacist and philanthropist
• 30 September – Decimus Burton, architect and garden designer
• 11 October – William Calcraft, hangman
• 18 October – Henry Taylor, dramatist
• 25 October – Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, poet
• 4 November – George Long, classical scholar
• 18 November – John Nelson Darby, evangelist
• 4 December – William Fenwick Williams, military leader
• 20 December – Charles Wood, 1st Viscount Halifax, statesman
• 25 December – John Phillips, geologist
• 27 December – John Goss, organist and composer

Unknown dates

• Frederick Yeates Hurlstone, painter
• Thomas Henry Lister, novelist and Registrar General

Deaths

• 6 January – William Jones, divine
• 22 January – George Steevens, Shakespearean commentator
• 23 February – Joseph Warton, academic and literary critic
• 14 March – Daines Barrington, naturalist
• 25 April – William Cowper, poet
• 23 May – Henry Cort, ironmaster
• 30 June – Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, politician
• 16 August – Samuel Barrington, admiral
• 25 August – Elizabeth Montagu, literary critic
• 5 November – Jesse Ramsden, astronomical instrument maker
• 30 November – Matthew Robinson, 2nd Baron Rokeby, eccentric nobleman
• 26 December – Mary Robinson, poet, actress and royal mistress
• 27 December – Hugh Blair, Presbyterian preacher and man of letters