# 1764 in Great Britain

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Events from the year 1764 in Great Britain.

## Incumbents

* Monarch – George III
* Prime Minister – George Grenville (Whig)

## Events

* 19 January – John Wilkes is expelled from the House of Commons for seditious libel for his article criticising King George III in The North Briton.
* 5 April – Parliament passes the Sugar Act.
* 19 April – the Currency Act passed which prohibits the American colonies from issuing paper currency of any form.
* 23 April – Mozart family grand tour: 8-year-old W. A. Mozart settles in London for a year where he composes his Symphony No. 1.
* August – protests begin in Boston, Massachusetts against Britain's colonial policies.
* 22 October – deposed Nawab of Bengal Mir Qasim defeated at the Battle of Buxar by the British East India Company.

### Undated

* Specific and latent heats are described by Joseph Black.
* Industrial Revolution: James Hargreaves invents the Spinning Jenny.
* Holkham Hall, Norfolk, completed in the Palladian style by William Kent.
* Landscape gardener Lancelot "Capability" Brown is appointed Chief Gardener at the royal palace of Hampton Court; redesigns the gardens of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire; and works at Broadlands in Hampshire.
* The rock pillar called "Lot's Wife" amongst The Needles off the Isle of Wight collapses into the sea during a storm.

## Publications

* James Ridley's pastiche Oriental stories The Tales of the Genii (supposedly translated by Sir Charles Morell from Persian).
* Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel (supposedly translated by William Marshal from Italian).

## Births

* Early – James Smithson, mineralogist, chemist and benefactor (died 1829)
* February – George Duff, Scottish naval officer (died 1805)
* 13 March – Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (died 1845)
* 1 April – Eclipse, racehorse (died 1789)
* 3 April – John Abernethy, surgeon (died 1831)
* 29 April – Ann Hatton, née Kemble, novelist (died 1838)
* 2 May – Robert Hall, Baptist minister (died 1831)
* 4 May – Joseph Carpue, surgeon (died 1846)
* 5 May – Robert Craufurd, Scottish general (killed at Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo (1812))
* 25 May – John Mason Good, writer (died 1827)
* 19 June – Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet, author and statesman (died 1848)
* 21 June – Sidney Smith, admiral (died 1840)
* 5 July – Daniel Mendoza, boxer (died 1836)
* 9 July – Ann Radcliffe, née Ward, novelist (died 1823)
* 27 July – John Thelwall, radical (died 1834)
* 17 September – John Goodricke, astronomer (died 1786)
* 25 September – Fletcher Christian, sailor and mutineer (died 1793 in Pitcairn Islands)
* October – William Symington, Scottish mechanical engineer and steamboat pioneer (died 1831)
* 3 December – Mary Lamb, writer and matricide (died 1847)
* Approximate date – Alexander Mackenzie, Scottish explorer of northern Canada (died 1820)

## Deaths

* 6 March – Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor (born 1690)
* 17 March
** William Oliver, physician (born 1695)
** George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, astronomer (born c. 1696)
* 15 April – John Immyns, attorney and lutenist (born c. 1700)
* 29 June – Ralph Allen, businessman and politician (born 1693)
* 7 July – William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath, politician (born 1683)
* 2 September – Nathaniel Bliss, Astronomer Royal (born 1700)
* 23 September – Robert Dodsley, writer (born 1703)
* 2 October – William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, Prime Minister (born 1720)
* 26 October – William Hogarth, painter and satirist (born 1697)
* 4 November – Charles Churchill, poet and satirist (born 1732)