1790 in Great Britain

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III
• Prime Minister – William Pitt the Younger
• Parliament – 16th, 17th

  Events

• 1 January – the 91-mile Oxford Canal is opened throughout, providing an important link between the River Thames at Oxford and Coventry in the English Midlands.
• 30 January – Henry Greathead's Original rescue life-boat is tested on the River Tyne.
• 14 March – William Bligh arrives back in Britain with the first report of the Mutiny on the Bounty.
• April–May – Josiah Wedgwood shows off his first reproductions of the Portland Vase.
• 16 June – 28 July: a general election is held, giving Pitt an increased majority.
• 23 June – alleged London Monster arrested in London: he later receives two years for three assaults.
• 28 June – Forth and Clyde Canal opened.
• 4 July – Third Anglo-Mysore War: in India, Britain allies with the Nizam of Hyderabad against the Mysore.
• 27 July – the Treaty of Reichenbach is signed between Britain, Prussia, Russia and the Dutch Republic allowing Austria to retake the Austrian Netherlands.
• 4 August – Lord North becomes Earl of Guildford upon the death of his father and moves from the House of Commons to the House of Lords.
• undated
• * First organised otter hunt established, at Culmstock, Devon.
• * James Wyatt erects a cast-iron footbridge at Syon Park, Isleworth, the first known British example.

  Publications

• 1 November – Edmund Burke's work Reflections on the Revolution in France.
• William Blake's work The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

  Births

• 2 February – William Elford Leach, zoologist and marine biologist
• 6 September – John Green Crosse, surgeon
• 21 November – Edmund Lyons, 1st Baron Lyons, admiral
• 19 December – William Edward Parry, Arctic explorer

  Deaths

• 15 January – John Landen, mathematician
• 20 January – John Howard, prison reformer
• 5 February – William Cullen, physician and chemist
• 4 March – Flora MacDonald, Jacobite
• 16 May – Philip Yorke, 2nd Earl of Hardwicke, politician
• 21 May – Thomas Warton, poet
• 17 July – Adam Smith, economist and philosopher
• 4 August – Francis North, 1st Earl of Guilford, peer and politician
• 24 November – Robert Henry, historian