1797 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1797 in the Kingdom of Great Britain.

[edit] Incumbents

3 January - three of the stones making up Stonehenge fall due to heavy frosts.^[1]
15 January - London haberdasher John Hetherington wears the first top hat in public and attracts a large crowd of onlookers. He is later fined £50 for causing public nuisance.^[2]
18 February - Spanish Governor Chacon peacefully surrenders the colony of Trinidad and Tobago to a British naval force commanded by Sir Ralph Abercromby.
22 February - The Last invasion of Britain begins. French forces under the command of American Colonel William Tate land near Fishguard in Wales.
25 February - Tate surrenders at Fishguard.
26 February - The Bank of England issues the first one-pound and two-pound notes (discontinued March 11, 1988).^[3]
16 April to 30 June - Spithead and Nore mutinies: Two mutinies in the Royal Navy spark fears of a revolution.^[4]
17 April - Sir Ralph Abercromby unsuccessfully invades San Juan, Puerto Rico in what would be one of the largest British attacks on Spanish territories in the western hemisphere and one of the worst defeats of the navy for years to come.
24 July - Horatio Nelson is wounded at the Battle of Santa Cruz, causing a loss of his right arm.^[2]
August - the Home Office sends an agent to Nether Stowey in Somerset to investigate the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth who were suspected of being French spies.^[5]
11 October - Battle of Camperdown: Royal Navy defeats Franco-Dutch fleet.^[6]

2 March - Horace Walpole, politician and writer (born 1717)
26 March - James Hutton, geologist (born 1726)
31 March - Olaudah Equiano Nigerian ex-slave and slavery abolitionist in Britain (born 1745, Nigeria)
25 May - John Griffin Whitwell, 4th Baron Howard de Walden, field marshal (born 1719)
3 August - Jeffrey Amherst, military commander (born 1717)
29 August - Joseph Wright of Derby, painter (born 1734)
10 September - Mary Wollstonecraft, writer, philosopher and feminist (born 1759)
11 December - Richard Brocklesby, physician (born 1722)
26 December - John Wilkes, politician and journalist (born 1725)

^ Joel Munsell (1858). The Every Day Book of History and Chronology. D. Appleton & co, 14.
^ ^a ^b (2006) Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. ISBN 0-141-02715-0.
^ Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 346–347. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
^ BBC History British History Timeline. Retrieved on 2007-09-04.
^ Keith Kellett. Wordsworth's Lakes. Retrieved on 2008-02-25.
^ Palmer, Alan & Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd, 236-237. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.