1785 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1785 in the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Incumbents

1 January The first issue of the Daily Universal Register, later known as The Times, is published in London.^[1]
7 January - Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover to Calais, France in a hydrogen gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air.^[1]
7 March - James Hutton proposes the theory of uniformitarianism to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.^[2]
21 December - Prince of Wales marries Catholic Maria Fitzherbert, secretly, and in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act 1772.^[3]

British government establishes a permanent land force in the Eastern Caribbean, based in Barbados
William Pitt the Younger introduces a Reform Bill to Parliament to abolish the rotten boroughs, but it is defeated.^[4]
Governor-General of India Warren Hastings charged with maladministration and returns to Britain.^[5]

James Boswell's The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.^[5]
William Withering's An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses, demonstrating the effects of digitalis.^[6]

30 January - Charles Metcalfe, 1st Baron Metcalfe, colonial administrator (died 1846)
18 May - John Wilson, writer (died 1854)
6 July - William Jackson Hooker, botanist (died 1865)
15 August - Thomas de Quincey, writer (died 1859)
18 October - Thomas Love Peacock, satirist (died 1866)
25 September - George Pinto, composer and keyboard virtuoso (died 1806)
18 November - David Wilkie, artist (died 1841)

19 January - Jonathan Toup, classical scholar and critic (born 1713)
23 January - Matthew Stewart, mathematician (born 1717)
February - Peter the Wild Boy (born before 1725)
14 April - William Whitehead, writer (born 1715)
30 June - James Oglethorpe, English general and founder of the state of Georgia (born 1696)
26 August - George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville, soldier and politician (born 1716)
25 November - Richard Glover, poet (born 1712)
6 December - Kitty Clive, actress (born 1711)

↑ 1.0 1.1 Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
↑ The Hutchinson Factfinder. Helicon. 1999. ISBN 1-85986-000-1.
↑ Palmer, Alan & Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 229–230. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
↑ "Downing Street biography of Pitt". Archived from the original on 12 September 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
↑ 5.0 5.1 Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 337. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
↑ Haughton, Claire (1980). Green Immigrants. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. pp. 133–134. ISBN 0-15-636492-1.