1740 in Great Britain

Incumbents

• Monarch – George II
• Prime Minister – Robert Walpole
• Parliament – 8th

  Events

• January and February – the "Great Frost" continues; this will be the coldest known year by average annual temperature across central England for which reliable records are known.
• 8 April – War of the Austrian Succession: Three Royal Navy ships capture the Spanish ship of the line Princesa off Cape Finisterre and takes her into British service as HMS Princess.
• 26 June – War of Jenkins' Ear – Siege of Fort Mose: A Spanish column of 300 regular troops, free black militia and Indian auxiliaries storms Britain's strategically crucial position of Fort Mose, Florida.
• 1 August – The patriotic song "Rule, Britannia!" is first performed in an open-air performance at Cliveden, the country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales as part of the masque Alfred with music by Thomas Arne to a lyric by Scottish-born poet James Thomson; the original tenor soloist is probably Thomas Salway.
• 8 September – Hertford College, Oxford, is founded for the first time.
• 21 August – First issue of grog in the Royal Navy.
• 18 September – George Anson sets out on his voyage around the world from Spithead.
• 6 November – Samuel Richardson’s popular and influential epistolary novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded is published in London.

  Unknown dates

• By an act of the Parliament, alien immigrants receive British nationality.
• Henry Hindley invents a device to cut the teeth of clock wheels.
• William Hogarth paints a portrait of Captain Thomas Coram .
• A subsequently-discredited account by William Stukeley asserts that Stonehenge was built by druids.
• Thomas Witherby establishes his stationery business in London, specializing in printing and publishing for the marine insurance industry. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, as Witherby Seamanship, it will claim to be the oldest independent publisher in the English speaking world.
• James Whatman establishes his paper mill in Maidstone, specializing in quality paper. It will remain in production until 2014.

  Births

• 10 January - Princess Elizabeth of Great Britain, member of the Royal Family
• 27 June - James Woodforde, clergyman and diarist
• 17 September – John Hamilton Mortimer, painter
• 29 October – James Boswell, author
• 24 November – John Bacon, sculptor
• c. December – Francis Light, founder of the British colony of Penang
• date unknown
• * Margaret Bingham, Countess of Lucan, portrait painter and writer
• * Thomas White, cricketer
• * Christopher Wyvill, cleric, landowner and political reformer
• * William Yalden, cricketer

  Deaths

• 23 April – Thomas Tickell, writer
• 6 June – Alexander Spotswood, governor of Virginia Colony
• 17 June – Sir William Wyndham, politician
• 20 December – Richard Boyle, 2nd Viscount Shannon, military officer and statesman
• 23 December - Daniel Waterland, English theologian