1820 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1820 in the United Kingdom. This year sees a change of monarch after a nine-year Regency.

Incumbents

Events

8 January – General Maritime Treaty signed between the sheikhs of Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain and Ras Al Khaimah in the Arabian Peninsula and the United Kingdom.
29 January – George IV of the United Kingdom ascends the throne on the death at Windsor Castle of his father George III, ending the period known as the Regency era which began in 1811. George IV has served as prince regent during this time due to his father's mental deterioration. The title Prince of Wales falls into abeyance for 21 years.
30 January – Royal Navy captain Edward Bransfield in the Williams is the first person to positively identify Antarctica as a land mass.
23 February – A plot to murder the Cabinet, the Cato Street Conspiracy, is exposed. Bow Street Runners arrest conspirators in Paddington. Richard Smithers, a constable, is killed in the struggle.
10 March – Astronomical Society of London is founded.
1–2 April – A Proclamation, signed "By order of the Committee of Organisation for forming a Provisional Government", is distributed in the Glasgow area, beginning the "Radical War" in Scotland. The following day, around 60,000 – particularly weavers – stop work across a wide area of central Scotland. Disaffection spreads to the West Riding of Yorkshire.
5 April – Radical War: Troops capture radicals at Bonnybridge.
8 April – Radical War: Radical prisoners from Paisley are freed from jail in Greenock after militia have killed eight of the crowd.
14 April – The 1820 United Kingdom general election, which began on 6 March, concludes with an increased Tory party majority.
1 May
* The Cato Street conspirators are the last to suffer judicial decapitation in the UK following their public hanging for treason outside Newgate Prison in London.
* Robert Owen's Report to the County of Lanark, of a plan for relieving public distress and removing discontent is delivered in Scotland as the beginning of a plan to devise the labour voucher.
11 May – Launch of, the ship that will take the young Charles Darwin on his scientific voyage, at Woolwich Dockyard.
5 June – Caroline of Brunswick, the new King's estranged wife, returns to England after six years abroad in Italy, where she has been carrying on an affair, and attracts the support of radical mobs. Since ascending the throne, the King has sought to receive his government's approval for a divorce.
10 June – Sir Thomas Munro is appointed as the British colonial Governor of the Madras Presidency, which encompasses most of southern India.
5 July – Pains and Penalties Bill put before Parliament to deprive Caroline of Brunswick, George IV's estranged wife, of the title of Queen Consort, leading to her de facto public trial before the House of Lords opening on 17 August. Although narrowly passed on 10 November in the House of Lords, the bill is withdrawn in the knowledge that it would almost certainly not pass the House of Commons.
26 July – Opening of Union Chain Bridge across the River Tweed between England and Scotland, designed by Captain Samuel Brown. Its span of 449 ft is the longest in the Western world at this time, and it is the first wrought iron vehicular suspension bridge of its type in Britain.
1 August – Completion and opening of the Regent's Canal through to the London Docks.
30 August – Radical War: Radical leader James Wilson, a Strathaven weaver, is executed for treason on Glasgow Green for his part in the rising.
8 September – Radical War: Radical leaders John Baird and Andrew Hardie are executed at Stirling for their part in the rising at Bonnybridge.

Publications

Friedrich Accum's exposé A Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons.
Hone and Cruickshank's satirical work The Queen's Matrimonial Ladder.
John Keats' collection Lamia and Other Poems.
Sir Walter Scott's anonymous novels The Abbot and The Monastery.
Percy Bysshe Shelley's lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound.
The 6th Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica.
Publication of the last of William Blake's prophetic books, Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion, is completed.

Births

17 January – Anne Brontë, novelist and poet
13 February – James Geiss, businessman
28 February – John Tenniel, illustrator
17 March – Jean Ingelow, poet and novelist
22 March – John Brown, cricketer
30 March – Anna Sewell, novelist
4 April – David Kirkaldy, engineer, pioneer of materials testing
27 April – Herbert Spencer, philosopher, political theorist and civil engineer
4 May – Joseph Whitaker, publisher
12 May – Florence Nightingale, nurse
22 May – Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 6th Baronet, politician
21 June – James Halliwell-Phillipps, bibliophile
22 June – Charles Lowder, Anglo-Catholic priest
5 July – William John Macquorn Rankine, Scottish physicist
9 July – John Wright Oakes, landscape painter
25 July – Henry Doulton, potter
6 August – Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, Scottish-born entrepreneur, statesman and philanthropist
13 August – George Grove, musicologist, Biblical scholar and civil engineer
23 November – Isaac Todhunter, mathematician
3 December – John Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice
10 December – Princess Elizabeth of Clarence

Deaths

23 January – Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn
29 January – King George III of the United Kingdom
5 February – William Drennan, Irish political radical, poet and physician
11 March – Benjamin West, painter
2 April – Thomas Brown, philosopher and poet
1 May – Arthur Thistlewood, conspirator
30 May – William Bradley, Britain's tallest ever man
19 June – Sir Joseph Banks, naturalist and botanist
3 September – Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect in the United States
4 September – Timothy Brown, banker, merchant and radical
11 October – James Keir, Scottish geologist, chemist and industrialist