1773 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1773 in Great Britain.

Incumbents

17 January - Second voyage of James Cook: Captain Cook in HMS Resolution (1771) becomes the first European explorer to cross the Antarctic Circle.^[1]
March - General Turnpike Act regulates the system of road tolls.^[2]
15 March - First performance of Oliver Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer at the Covent Garden Theatre in London.^[3]
27 April - Parliament passes the Tea Act, designed to save the British East India Company by granting it a monopoly on the North American tea trade.
10 May - Tea Act comes into force.^[4]
May - Parliament passes the Regulating Act creating the office of governor general, with an advising council, to exercise political authority over the territory under British East India Company rule in India.^[4]
16 December - A group of American colonists, dressed as Mohawk Indians, steal aboard ships of the East India Company and dump their cargo of tea into Boston Harbor in protest against British tax policies.^[4]

John Harrison receives the Longitude prize for his invention of the first marine chronometer.^[5]
An informal Stock Exchange opens at Threadneedle Street in London.^[2]
Penny Post introduced in Edinburgh.^[6]

Scottish judge James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, begins publication of Of the Origin and Progress of Language, a contribution to evolutionary ideas of the Enlightenment.
The Jockey Club's first Race calendar, edited by James Weatherby.^[2]

14 January - William Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst, ambassador to China and Governor-General of India (died 1857)
27 January - Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (died 1843)
6 April - James Mill, historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher (died 1836)
19 May - Arthur Aikin, chemist and mineralogist (died 1854)
13 June - Thomas Young, scientist (died 1829)
23 July - Thomas Brisbane, astronomer and Governor of New South Wales (died 1860)
23 October - Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey, judge and literary critic (died 1850)
6 November - Henry Hunt, politician (died 1835)
21 December - Robert Brown, botanist (died 1858)
27 December - George Cayley, aviation pioneer (died 1857)

9 February - John Gregory, physician, medical writer and moralist (born 1724)
24 March - Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, statesman and man of letters (born 1694)
15 May - Alban Butler, Catholic priest and writer (born 1710)
23 July - George Edwards, naturalist (born 1693)
24 August - George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton, politician (born 1709)
16 November - John Hawkesworth, writer (born c. 1715)
20 December - Charles Jennens, landowner (born c. 1700)

↑ Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 226–227. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
↑ "She Stoops to Conquer or The Mistakes of a Night". theatrehistory.com. Archived from the original on 14 August 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-25.
↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 327–328. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
↑ "Icons, a portrait of England 1750-1800". Archived from the original on 17 August 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-25.
↑ "Provincial Penny Posts". British Postal Museum & Archive. Archived from the original on 14 February 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-18.