1732 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1732 in Great Britain.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George II
• Regent – Caroline, Queen Consort (starting 7 June, until 26 September)
• Prime Minister – Robert Walpole (Whig)

Events

• 14 February – first performance of Henry Fielding's comedy The Modern Husband, at the Royal Theatre on Drury Lane in London.
• 3 March – Captain Charles Gough rediscovers Gough Island in the South Atlantic.
• 30 March – MPs John Birch and Denis Bond are expelled from the House of Commons after using their positions on the Commission for Forfeited Lands to make fraudulent sales.
• April–May – first performances of George Frideric Handel's oratorio Esther, the first oratorio in English, in London.
• 9 June – James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for the colony of Georgia.
• 7 December – the original Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, London (predecessor of the Royal Opera House) is opened by John Rich.

Undated

• Act provides that any man after 24 June 1733 charged on oath with being the father of an illegitimate child should be imprisoned until he provides a financial bond to indemnify the parish from liability for it under the Poor Law.
• Secession Church formed in Scotland.
• Trinity House moors the world's first lightship at the Nore in the Thames Estuary.

Births

• February – Charles Churchill, satirist and poet (died 1764)
• 19 February – Richard Cumberland, dramatist (died 1811)
• April – George Colman the Elder, dramatist and essayist (died 1794)
• 13 April – Frederick North, Lord North, Prime Minister (died 1792)
• 15 August – Maria Coventry, Countess of Coventry, society beauty (died 1760)
• 6 October – Nevil Maskelyne, Astronomer Royal (died 1811)
• 6 December – Warren Hastings, colonial administrator (died 1818)
• 23 December – Richard Arkwright, inventor (died 1792)

Deaths

• 12 January – John Horsley, archaeologist (born c. 1685)
• 22 January – Louis de Sabran, theologian (born 1652)
• 6 February – Anne Scott, 1st Duchess of Buccleuch, wealthy Scottish peeress (born 1651)
• 7 February – William Hiseland, soldier, reputed supercentenarian (born 1620)
• 22 February – Francis Atterbury, bishop and man of letters (born 1663)
• 20 May – Thomas Boston, Scottish church leader (born 1676)
• 30 May – John King, churchman (born 1652)
• 1 June – Benedict Leonard Calvert, Governor of Maryland (born 1700)
• 16 July – Woodes Rogers, privateer and first Royal Governor of the Bahamas (born c. 1679)
• 6 October – George Duckett, politician (born 1684)
• 26 November – Charles Sergison, politician (born 1655)
• 4 December – John Gay, poet and dramatist (born 1685)

See also

• 1732 in Wales

References