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Abigail MORSE

Female 1697 - 1739  (42 years)


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   Date  Event(s)
1697 
  • 2 Dec 1697: Official opening of St Paul's Cathedral
1698 
  • 1698: Invention of steam engine by Capt Thomas Savery
  • 1698: Darien Expedition: a disastrous attempt to establish a Scots settlement in Panama
  • 1698: Duties (taxes) on entries in parish registers – repealed after five years
  • 4 Jan 1698: Most of the Palace of Whitehall in London destroyed by fire
  • 14 Nov 1698: Eddystone Lighthouse (Henry Winstanley's) first lit; completed 10 days earlier
1700 
  • 1700: Population in England and Scotland approx 7.5 million
1701 
  • 1701: Act of Settlement bars Catholics from the British throne
  • 23 May 1701: After being convicted of piracy and murdering William Moore, Captain William Kidd hanged in London
1702 
  • 8 Mar 1702: Anne Stuart becomes Queen
  • 11 Mar 1702: First English daily newspaper The Daily Courant (till 1735)
1703 
  • 4 Aug 1703: British take Gibraltar
  • 24 Nov 1703: Climate: Most violent storms of the millennium cause vast damage across southern England – about a third of Britain's merchant fleet lost, and Eddystone lighthouse destroyed on 27 November (Nov 24 - Dec 2)
1704 
  • 1704: Penal Code enacted – Catholics barred from voting, education and the military
  • 13 Aug 1704: Battle of Blenheim
1705 
  • 1705: First workable steam pumping engine devised by Thomas Newcomen (some say c1710 or 1711)
  • 1705: Isaac Newton knighted (for his work at the Royal Mint)
1706 
  • 1706: First evening newspaper "The Evening Post" issued in London
10 1707 
  • 16 Jan 1707: Union with Scotland – Scots agree to send 16 peers and 45 MPs to English Parliament in return for full trading privileges – Scottish Parliament meets for the last time in March
  • 1 May 1707: English and Scottish Parliaments united by an Act of the English Parliament – The Kingdom of Great Britain established – largest free-trade area in Europe at the time
11 1708 
  • 1708: First Jacobite rising in Scotland
  • 1708: Earliest Artillery Muster Rolls
12 1709 
  • 1709: Second Eddystone lighthouse completed
  • 1709: First Copyright Act pass
  • 1709: Bad harvests throughout Europe – bread riots in Britain
  • 2 Feb 1709: Alexander Selkirk rescued from shipwreck on a desert island, inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe (published in 1719) by Daniel Defoe
13 1710 
  • 1710: Tax on Apprentice Indentures introduced
14 1711 
  • 1711: Incorporation of South Sea Company, in London
  • 11 Aug 1711: First race meeting at Ascot
15 1712 
  • 1712: Imposition of Soap Tax (abolished 1853)
  • 1712: Last trial for witchcraft in England (Jane Wenham)
  • 1712: Toleration Act passed – first relief to non-Anglicans
16 1713 
  • 1713: By this year there are some 3,000 coffee houses in London
17 1714 
  • 1714: Longitude Act: prize of £20,000 offered to the inventor of a workable method of determining a ship's longitude (won by John Harrison in 1773 for his chronometer).
  • 1714: Schism Act, prevents Dissenters from being schoolmasters in England
  • 1714: Landholders forced to take the Oath of Allegiance and renounce Roman Catholicism
  • 1 Aug 1714: Queen Anne Stuart dies – George I Hanover becomes king (1714-1727).
18 1715 
  • 1715: Second Jacobite rebellion in Scotland, under the Old Pretender ('The Fifteen')
  • 1 Aug 1715: Riot Act passed
19 1716 
  • 1716: The Septennial Act of Britain leads to greater electoral corruption – general elections now to be held once every 7 years instead of every 3 (until 1911)
  • 1716: Climate: Thames frozen so solid that a spring tide lifted the ice bodily 13ft without interrupting the frost fair
20 1717 
  • 1717: First Masonic Lodge opens in London
  • 1717: Value of the golden guinea fixed at 21 shillings
21 1719 
  • 1719: Third abortive Jacobite rising
22 1720 
  • 1720: South Sea Bubble, a stock-market crash on Exchange Alley – government assumes control of National Debt
  • 1720: Manufacturing towns start to increase in population – rise of new wealth
  • 1720: Wallpaper becomes fashionable in England
23 1721 
  • 2 Apr 1721: Robert Walpole (Whig) becomes first Prime Minister (to 1742)
24 1722 
  • 1722: Last trial for witchcraft in Scotland
  • 1722: Knatchbull's Act, poor laws
25 1723 
  • 1723: Excise tax levied for coffee, tea, and chocolate
  • 1723: The Waltham Black Acts add 50 capital offences to the penal code – people could be sentenced to death for theft and poaching – repealed in 1827
  • 1723: The Workhouse Act or Test – to get relief, a poor person has to enter Workhouse
26 1724 
  • 1724: Rapid growth of gin drinking in England
  • 1724: Longman's founded (Britain's oldest publishing house)
27 1726 
  • 1726: First circulating library opened in Edinburgh
  • 1726: Invention of the chronometer by John Harrison
28 1727 
  • 1727: Board of Manufacturers established in Scotland
  • 11 Jun 1727: George I dies – George II Hanover becomes king
29 1729 
  • 9 Nov 1729: Treaty of Seville signed between Britain, France and Spain – Britain maintained control of Port Mahon and Gibraltar
30 1730 
  • 1730: Irish famine
31 1731 
  • 1731: Invention of seed drill by Jethro Tull [others say 1701]
  • 1731: Invention of sextant by John Hadley
32 1732 
  • 7 Dec 1732: Covent Garden Opera House opens
33 1733 
  • 1733: Excise crisis: Sir Robert Walpole wanted to add excise tax to tobacco and wine – Pulteney and Bolingbroke oppose the excise tax
  • 1733: Law forbidding the use of Latin in parish registers generally obeyed – some continued in Latin for a few years
  • 1733: John Kay invents the flying shuttle, revolutionised the weaving industry
34 1734 
  • 1734: Kent's Directory published
35 1737 
  • 1737: Licensing Act restricts the number of London theatres and subects plays to censorship of the Lord Chamberlain (till 1950s)
36 1738 
  • 24 May 1738: John Wesley has his conversion experience
37 1739 
  • 1739: Wesley and Whitefield commence great Methodist revival
  • 7 Apr 1739: Dick Turpin, highwayman, hanged at York
  • 23 Oct 1739: War of Jenkins' Ear starts: Robert Walpole reluctantly declares war on Spain