1723 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1723 in Great Britain.

Incumbents

8 March â the Chelsea Waterworks Company receives a Royal Charter.^[2]
17 May â Christopher Layer is hanged, drawn and quartered for his part in the Jacobite Atterbury Plot
May â Parliament passes the Black Act making poaching a capital offence.^[3]
June â Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, receives a pardon for his part in the Jacobite Rebellion and is allowed to return to Britain, but not to sit in the House of Lords.^[4] Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, is banished from the country during the year for his part in Jacobite plotting.^[5]
10 October â Treaty of Charlottenburg signed with Prussia.^[6]

23 February â Richard Price, philosopher (died 1791)
24 February â John Burgoyne, general (died 1792)
3 March â John Brown, merchant and ship-owner (died 1808)
5 March â Princess Mary of Great Britain (died 1772)
23 April â Hannah Snell, soldier (died 1792)
16 June (5 June O.S.) â Adam Smith, Scottish economist and philosopher (died 1790)
20 June
- Adam Ferguson, Scottish philosopher and historian (died 1816)
- Theophilus Lindsey, theologian (died 1808)
10 July â William Blackstone, jurist (died 1780)
16 July â Sir Joshua Reynolds, painter (died 1792)
8 November â John Byron, admiral (died 1786)

25 February â Sir Christopher Wren, architect, astronomer and mathematician (born 1632)
26 February â Thomas d'Urfey, writer (born 1653)
31 March â Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon, Governor of New York and New Jersey (born 1661)
11 April â John Robinson, diplomat (born 1650)
27 May â Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, illegitimate son of Charles II (born 1672)
26 July â Robert Bertie, 1st Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven, statesman (born 1660)
17 August â Joseph Bingham, scholar (born 1668)
10 October â William Cowper, 1st Earl Cowper, Lord Chancellor (born c.1665)
19 October â Godfrey Kneller, painter (born 1646, LÃ¼beck)
1 December â Susanna Centlivre, dramatist and actress (born 1669)