Events
- 3 January – Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland is gutted by fire. [1]
- 15 January – HM Treasury directs that the Preventive Water Guard, Revenue cruisers and Riding officers should all be placed under the authority of the Board of Customs as HM Coast Guard. [2]
- 6 May – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1822 opens at Somerset House. The exhibition is noted for portraits by Thomas Lawrence and David Wilkie's Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch
- 23 May – HMS Comet launched at Deptford Dockyard, the first steamboat commissioned by the Royal Navy.
- 18 June – The Wellington Monument is inaugurated close to the Duke's London residence Apsley House on the seventh anniversary of his victory at Waterloo.
- 3 July – Charles Babbage publishes a proposal for a "difference engine", a mechanical forerunner of the modern computer for calculating logarithms and trigonometric functions. Construction of an operational version will proceed under Government sponsorship 1823–32 but it will never be completed. [3]
- 8 July – The Chippewa turn over a huge tract of land in Ontario to the British. [4]
- 19 July – Percy Jocelyn, Anglican Bishop of Clogher, is caught in a compromising position with a young Grenadier Guardsman at a public house in London. He breaks bail and flees England. In October, an ecclesiastical court deprives him of office. [5]
- 22 July – An Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle ("Martin's Act"), one of the first pieces of animal rights legislation, [6] is passed to regulate treatment of cows, horses and sheep.
- 31 July – Last public whipping in Edinburgh.
- 12 August
- The Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh cuts his own throat at his house in Kent.
- St David's College (the modern-day University of Wales, Lampeter) is founded by Thomas Burgess, Bishop of St David's.
- 15–29 August – Visit of King George IV to Scotland, [7] first appearance of the monarch there since 1651.
- 22 August – English ship Orion lands at Yerba Buena, later named San Francisco, under the command of William A. Richardson
- 16 September – George Canning is appointed Foreign Secretary to replace Castlereagh.
- 21 September – HMS Confiance, a Royal Navy Cruizer-class brig-sloop of 1813, is wrecked off Mizen Head in Ireland with the loss of all 100 aboard. [8]
- 24 September – The Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, marries, as his second wife, Mary Chester, at Hampton Court. [9]
- 20 October
- The New Observer newspaper becomes The Sunday Times . [10]
- The Duke of Wellington represents Britain at the Congress of Verona.
- 23–24 October – The Caledonian Canal, engineered by Thomas Telford, is opened throughout, linking the east and west coasts of Scotland through the Great Glen. [11]
- 27 November – Outside Newgate Prison in London, William Reading becomes the last person to be hanged for shoplifting. [12]
Undated
- Egyptian hieroglyphs are deciphered by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion using the Rosetta Stone.
- A fossil Iguanodon tooth is discovered by Gideon Mantell and his wife Mary in West Sussex; in 1825 it will be the first fossil to be recognised as that of a dinosaur. [13]
- The Royal Academy of Music is established in London.
- Construction of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton is completed.
- Stonemason John Mowlem establishes the contracting firm Mowlem.