1792 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1792 in Great Britain.

Incumbents

January â the investment management business which will become the Charles Stanley Group in London is established as a banking partnership in Sheffield.^[2]
25 January â the radical London Corresponding Society is established.^[3]
7 March â a settlement is formed in Sierra Leone in West Africa as a home for freed slaves.^[3]
23 March â Joseph Haydn premieres his Symphony No. 94 (the "Surprise"), the second of his twelve London symphonies, at the Hanover Square Rooms.
4 June â Captain George Vancouver claims Puget Sound for Britain.
21 June â Iolo Morganwg holds the first Gorsedd ceremony, at Primrose Hill in London.
September â Macartney Embassy: George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney, sails from Portsmouth in HMS Lion as the first official envoy from the Kingdom of Great Britain to China.
14 September â radical Thomas Paine flees to France after being indicted for treason.^[4]
29 September â first St Patrick's Church, Soho Square, London (Roman Catholic) consecrated as a chapel.
2 October â Baptist Missionary Society is founded in Kettering.
18 December â the trial of Thomas Paine in absentia for treason begins.^[5] He is outlawed.^[4]

Over 300 petitions are presented to Parliament against the slave trade. The House of Commons pledges to abolish the trade "gradually".^[6]
"Year of the Sheep" in the Scottish Highlands: mass emigration of crofters following Clearances for grazing.
Fox's Libel Act restores to juries the right to determine what constitutes libel;^[7] it remains in force until abolition of criminal libel in 2010.
Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna establish the newsagent's business in Little Grosvenor Street, London, which will become W H Smith.^[8]

Thomas Holcroft's Anna St. Ives, the first British Jacobin novel.
Thomas Paine's second edition of Rights of Man, urging the overthrow of the British monarchy.^[7]
Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, one of the earliest works of feminist literature.^[7]

10 February â Frederick Marryat, author (died 1848)
19 February â Roderick Murchison, geologist (died 1871)
7 March â John Herschel, mathematician and astronomer (died 1871)
12 April â John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham (died 1840)
25 April â John Keble, churchman and poet (died 1866)
17 May â Anne Isabella Milbanke, wife of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (died 1860)
16 June â John Linnell, painter (died 1882)
7 July â William Henry Smith, businessman (died 1865)
4 August â Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet (died 1822)
13 August â Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, queen of William IV (died 1849)
18 August â John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, Prime Minister (died 1878)
11 October - Joseph Higginson, British Royal Marine in Napoleonic Wars, (died 1881)
11 November â Mary Anne Disraeli, wife of Benjamin Disraeli (died 1872)

27 January â George Horne, bishop (born 1730)
8 February â Hannah Snell, soldier (born 1723)
23 February â Sir Joshua Reynolds, painter (born 1723)
3 March â Robert Adam, architect (born 1728)
10 March â John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, Prime Minister (born 1713)^[9]
3 April â George Pocock, admiral (born 1706)
30 April â John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, statesman, First Lord of the Admiralty and rake (born 1718)
24 May â George Brydges Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney, naval officer (born 1719)
4 June â John Burgoyne, general (born 1723)
18 July â John Paul Jones, sailor and the United States's first well-known naval fighter in the American Revolution (born 1747)
3 August â Richard Arkwright, inventor (born 1732)
4 August â John Burgoyne, army officer, playwright and politician (born 1722)
5 August â Frederick North, Lord North, Prime Minister (born 1732)^[10]
28 October â John Smeaton, civil engineer (born 1724)