1798 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1798 in Great Britain. (See also 1798 in Ireland, then a separate kingdom although under the same monarch.)

1798 in Great Britain:
Other years
1796 | 1797 | 1798 | 1799 | 1800
Countries of the United Kingdom
Scotland
Sport
1798 English cricket season

Incumbents
  • Monarch – George III
  • Prime Minister – William Pitt the Younger (Tory)[1]
  • Foreign Secretary – Lord Grenville

Events
  • 2 July – the Marine Police Force is formed on the River Thames by magistrate Patrick Colquhoun to prevent pilfering in the Port of London and West India Docks;[2] it is the first organised police force in Britain.
  • 1 August – French Revolutionary Wars: Admiral Nelson's fleet destroys the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile.[3]
  • 10 September – Battle of St. George's Caye: British settlers win a victory over Spanish settlers in what is to become the colony of British Honduras.[4]
  • 18 September – Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge is first published[4] anonymously in Bristol, marking the beginning of English literary Romanticism. Most of the poems are by Wordsworth, including Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour, 13 July 1798, but also including the first publication of Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere. First London publication is on 4 October.
  • 11 October – Elizabeth Inchbald's play Lovers' Vows, adapted from Kotzebue's Das Kind der Liebe, is first performed at London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
  • 4 December – British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger announces the introduction of income tax in 1799.[5]

Undated
  • Newspaper Publication Act 1798 restricts newspaper circulation.
  • Nathan Mayer Rothschild moves from Frankfurt in the Holy Roman Empire to England, settling up in business as a textile trader and financier in Manchester.
  • The first recorded excavations at Stonehenge – among the first serious work in archaeology anywhere – are made by William Cunnington and Sir Richard Colt Hoare.

Ongoing

Publications
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads.
  • Edward Jenner's work on vaccination An Inquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ.[6]
  • Thomas Malthus' anonymous work An Essay on the Principle of Population.[4]
  • Richmal Mangnall's initially anonymous school textbook Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for the Use of Young People; this will have appeared in 84 editions by 1857.
  • Regina Maria Roche's Gothic novel Clermont: a tale.[7]
  • Mary Wollstonecraft's posthumous radical feminist novel Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman.

Births
  • March – David Ramsay Hay, interior decorator (died 1866)
  • 28 April – Duncan Forbes, linguist (died 1868)
  • 12 June – William Abbot, actor (died 1843)
  • 28 December – Thomas Henderson, astronomer (died 1844)[8]

Deaths
  • 12 May – George Vancouver, explorer (born 1757)
  • 19 May – William Byron, 5th Baron Byron, dueller (born 1722)
  • 19 June – William Jennens, financier, richest commoner in England (born 1701)
  • 25 June – Thomas Sandby, cartographer and architect (born 1721)

See also
  • 1798 in Wales

References
  1. "History of William Pitt 'The Younger' - GOV.UK". www.gov.uk. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  2. Paterson, Dick. "History – Origins". Thames Police. Retrieved 2017-04-14.
  3. Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 347–348. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
  4. Everett, Jason M., ed. (2006). "1798". The People's Chronology. Thomson Gale.
  5. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
  6. The Hutchinson Factfinder. Helicon. 1999. ISBN 1-85986-000-1.
  7. Leavis, Q. D. (1965). Fiction and the Reading Public (rev. ed.). London: Chatto & Windus.
  8. Trimble, Virginia; Williams, Thomas; Bracher, Katherine; Jarrell, Richard; Marché, Jordan D.; Ragep, F. Jamil (18 September 2007). Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 482. ISBN 978-0-387-30400-7.
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