Events
- 16 January – the governing Tories under Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool win the general election which had begun in 1820.
- 2 February – Cinderloo Uprising: Shropshire Yeomanry fire on a crowd of miners striking over a pay cut in the Coalbrookdale Coalfield, killing three.[1]
- 16 February – John Scott, editor of The London Magazine, is fatally wounded in a duel fought over a literary dispute near the Chalk Farm Tavern just outside London.
- 18 February – launch of the New Observer newspaper, later to become The Sunday Times.[2]
- April/May – John Constable completes his painting The Hay Wain.[3]
- 5 May
- The deposed French Emperor Napoleon dies a prisoner in British military custody on the island of Saint Helena.
- The Guardian newspaper is founded as The Manchester Guardian.[2]
- 7 May – Bank of England returns to the gold standard.[4]
- 28 May – the national census is the first to measure age distribution and reveals that almost half of the population is under twenty years old.[5] Over the preceding decade in England and Wales the population has increased by 18%.
- 4 July – the redesigned Haymarket Theatre opens in London's West End.[4]
- 19 July – George IV is crowned king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.[6] His estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick, is turned away from the ceremony (she falls ill this evening and dies 3 weeks later). This is the last coronation at which the full ceremony of the King's Champion is carried out, and at which dillegrout is served.
- 31 July – opening of the Eau Brink Cut, improving the outfall of the River Great Ouse at King's Lynn in Norfolk. Engineers working on the project included John Rennie the Elder, Thomas Telford and Thomas Hyde Page.[7]
- 12 August–3 September – George IV becomes the first monarch to pay a state visit to Ireland since the 14th century.[8]
- undated – Elizabeth Fry and others establish the British Ladies' Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners, an early example of a national women's organisation.