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]
- With an EWP total of 151.8 millimetres or 5.98 inches, this is the wettest May on record and the solitary still-standing record wet month from the eighteenth century.^[5]
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 a protest against British tax policies that became known as the Boston Tea Party.^[4]

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 November - Charles Jennens, landowner (born c. 1700)

↑ Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
1 2 3 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.
1 2 3 Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 327–328. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
↑ Hadley Center Ranked EWP
↑ "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.