1764 in Great Britain
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Events from the year 1764 in Great Britain.
Incumbents
- Monarch â George III
- Prime Minister â George Grenville (Whig)[1]
Events
- 19 January â John Wilkes is expelled from the House of Commons for seditious libel for his article criticising King George III in The North Briton;[2] he is in exile in France.
- 5 April â Parliament passes the Sugar Act.[3]
- 19 April â the Currency Act passed which prohibits the American colonies from issuing paper currency of any form.[2]
- 23 April â Mozart family grand tour: 8-year-old W. A. Mozart settles in London for a year[4] where he composes his Symphony No. 1.
- August â protests begin in Boston, Massachusetts against Britain's colonial policies.[2]
- 22 October â deposed Nawab of Bengal Mir Qasim defeated at the Battle of Buxar by the British East India Company.[2]
Undated
- Specific and latent heats are described by Joseph Black.[5]
- Industrial Revolution: James Hargreaves invents the Spinning Jenny.[6]
- Holkham Hall, Norfolk, completed in the Palladian style by William Kent.[7]
- Landscape gardener Lancelot "Capability" Brown is appointed Chief Gardener at the royal palace of Hampton Court; redesigns the gardens of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire; and works at Broadlands in Hampshire.[6][8]
- The rock pillar called "Lot's Wife" amongst The Needles off the Isle of Wight collapses into the sea during a storm.[9]
Publications
- James Ridley's pastiche Oriental stories The Tales of the Genii (supposedly translated by Sir Charles Morell from Persian).
- Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel (supposedly translated by William Marshal from Italian).
Births
- Early â James Smithson, mineralogist, chemist and benefactor (died 1829)
- February â George Duff, Scottish naval officer (died 1805)
- 13 March â Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (died 1845)
- 1 April â Eclipse, racehorse (died 1789)
- 3 April â John Abernethy, surgeon (died 1831)
- 29 April â Ann Hatton, née Kemble, novelist (died 1838)
- 2 May â Robert Hall, Baptist minister (died 1831)
- 4 May â Joseph Carpue, surgeon (died 1846)
- 5 May â Robert Craufurd, Scottish general (killed at Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo (1812))
- 25 May â John Mason Good, writer (died 1827)
- 19 June â Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet, author and statesman (died 1848)
- 21 June â Sidney Smith, admiral (died 1840)
- 5 July â Daniel Mendoza, boxer (died 1836)
- 9 July â Ann Radcliffe, née Ward, novelist (died 1823)
- 27 July â John Thelwall, radical (died 1834)
- 17 September â John Goodricke, astronomer (died 1786)
- 25 September â Fletcher Christian, sailor and mutineer (died 1793 in Pitcairn Islands)
- October â William Symington, Scottish mechanical engineer and steamboat pioneer (died 1831)
- 3 December â Mary Lamb, writer and matricide (died 1847)
- Approximate date â Alexander Mackenzie, Scottish explorer of northern Canada (died 1820)
Deaths
- 6 March â Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor (born 1690)
- 17 March
- William Oliver, physician (born 1695)
- George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, astronomer (born c. 1696)
- 15 April â John Immyns, attorney and lutenist (born c. 1700)
- 29 June â Ralph Allen, businessman and politician (born 1693)
- 7 July â William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath, politician (born 1683)
- 2 September â Nathaniel Bliss, Astronomer Royal (born 1700)
- 23 September â Robert Dodsley, writer (born 1703)
- 2 October â William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, Prime Minister (born 1720)
- 26 October â William Hogarth, painter and satirist (born 1697)
- 4 November â Charles Churchill, poet and satirist (born 1732)