Events from the year 1700 in England.

Incumbents

• Monarch – William III
• Parliament – 4th of King William III (until 19 December)

Events

• 27 February – the island of New Britain is discovered by William Dampier in the western Pacific.^[1]
• early March – William Congreve's comedy The Way of the World is first performed at the New Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields.^[2][3]
• 24 March – Treaty of London signed between France, England and the Dutch Republic.^[4]
• 24 June – responsibility for vagrants passes from churchwardens to parish constables under terms of the Vagrant Removal Costs Act (1698).^[5]
• 30 July – Princess Anne's only surviving child, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, dies aged eleven of "a malignant fever" at Windsor Castle, leaving the Protestant succession to the British throne in doubt.^[2]
• September – while in the Netherlands, William III meets his cousin Sophia at Het Loo Palace. This is a precursor to the Act of Settlement of the following year that opens the way to the future succession of the House of Hanover.
• 6 September – Edmond Halley returns to England after a voyage of almost one year on HMS Paramour, from which he has observed the Antarctic Convergence,^[6] and publishes his findings on terrestrial magnetism in General Chart of the Variation of the Compass.
• 20 November – first boats reach Leeds from the tideway by way of the Aire and Calder Navigation.^[7]
• 19 December – the 4th Parliament of King William III is dissolved and new elections are ordered by the King.
• 25 December – first Christmas hymn authorised to be sung in the Anglican church, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks", the words by Nahum Tate having been first published this year, in a supplement to "Tate and Brady".
• 28 December – Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester is appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
• Approximate date – Jeremiah Clarke writes the Prince of Denmark's March.

Births

• 29 March – Charles Cornwallis, 1st Earl Cornwallis (died 1762)
• April – John Wyatt, inventor (died 1766)
• 4 May (bapt.) – Joseph Adams, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company (died 1737)
• 14 May – Mary Delany, Bluestocking, artist and writer (died 1788)
• 13 July – John Dandridge, colonel and planter in Virginia (died 1756)
• 20 September – Benedict Leonard Calvert, Governor of Maryland (died 1732)
• 26 September? – Mary Hervey, née Lepell, courtier (died 1768)
• 13 October – Phanuel Bacon, playwright, poet and author (died 1783)
• 31 October – Joseph Blake, alias Blueskin, highwayman (executed 1724)
• 28 November – Nathaniel Bliss, Astronomer Royal (died 1764)

Full date unknown

• John Cecil, 7th Earl of Exeter, peer (died 1722)
• William Craven, 3rd Baron Craven, nobleman (died 1739)
• Emanuel Howe, 2nd Viscount Howe, politician and colonial administrator (died 1735)
• John Immyns, attorney and lutenist (died 1764)
• Charles Jennens, landowner and patron of the arts (died 1773)

Deaths

• 16–27 January – John Dormer, born Huddleston, Jesuit priest (born 1636)
• 21 January – Henry Somerset, 1st Duke of Beaufort (born 1629)
• 14 March – Henry Killigrew, dramatist (born 1613)
• 12 May – John Dryden, poet (born 1631)
• 10 July – John Lowther, 1st Viscount Lonsdale, politician (born 1655)
• 19 July (date found dead) – Thomas Creech, translator (born 1659; suicide)
• 29 July – Prince William, Duke of Gloucester (born 1689)
• 8 August – Joseph Moxon, mathematician and lexicographer (born 1627)
• 7 September – William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford, peer and soldier (born 1616)