Events from the year 1822 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch – George IV
• Prime Minister – Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (Tory)
• Foreign Secretary – Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (until 18 August) George Canning (from 13 September)
• Home Secretary – Lord Sidmouth (until 17 January) Robert Peel (from 17 January)
• Parliament – 7th

Events

• 15 January – HM Treasury directs that the Preventive Water Guard, Revenue cruisers and Riding officers should all be placed under the authority of the Board of Customs as HM Coast Guard.^[1]
• 23 May – HMS Comet launched at Deptford Dockyard, the first steamboat commissioned by the Royal Navy.
• 18 June – The Wellington Monument is inaugurated close to the Duke's London residence Apsley House on the seventh anniversary of his victory at Waterloo.
• 3 July – Charles Babbage publishes a proposal for a "difference engine", a forerunner of the modern computer for calculating logarithms and trigonometric functions. Construction of an operational version will proceed under Government sponsorship 1823–32 but it will never be completed.^[2]
• 8 July – the Chippewa turn over a huge tract of land in Ontario to the British.^[3]
• 22 July – an Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle ("Martin's Act"), one of the first pieces of animal rights legislation,^[4] is passed to regulate treatment of cows, horses and sheep.
• 31 July – last public whipping in Edinburgh.
• 12 August
  • The Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh commits suicide at his house in Kent.
  • St David's College (the modern-day University of Wales, Lampeter) is founded by Thomas Burgess, Bishop of St David's.
• 15–29 August – visit of King George IV to Scotland,^[5] first appearance of the monarch there since 1651.
• 22 August – English ship Orion lands at Yerba Buena, later named San Francisco, under the command of William A. Richardson
• 16 September – George Canning is appointed Foreign Secretary to replace Castlereagh.
• 21 September – HMS Confiance, a Royal Navy Cruizer-class brig-sloop of 1813, is wrecked off Mizen Head in Ireland with the loss of all 100 aboard.^[6]
• 24 September – the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, marries, as his second wife, Mary Chester, at Hampton Court.^[7]
• 20 October – The New Observer newspaper becomes The Sunday Times.^[8]
• 20 October – The Duke of Wellington represents Britain at the Congress of Verona.
• 23–24 October – the Caledonian Canal, engineered by Thomas Telford, is opened throughout, linking the east and west coasts of Scotland through the Great Glen.^[9]
• 27 November – outside Newgate Prison in London, William Reading becomes the last person to be hanged for shoplifting.^[10]

Unknown dates

• Egyptian hieroglyphs are deciphered by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion using the Rosetta Stone.
• A fossil Iguanodon tooth is discovered by Gideon Mantell and his wife Mary in West Sussex; in 1825 it will be the first fossil to be recognised as that of a dinosaur.^[11]
• The Royal Academy of Music is established in London.
• Construction of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton is completed.
• Stonemason John Mowlem establishes the contracting firm Mowlem.

Publications

• John C. Loudon's The Encyclopædia of Gardening.
• Sir Walter Scott's novels The Pirate and The Fortunes of Nigel.
• Alexander Jamieson's A Celestial Atlas.

Births

• 10 February – Eliza Lynn Linton, English novelist and journalist (died 1898)
• 13 February – James B. Beck, Scottish-born United States Senator from Kentucky from 1877 to 1890 (died 1890 in the United States)
• 16 February – Sir Francis Galton, English explorer and biologist (died 1911)
• 8 April – stillborn twin sons to the Duke of Clarence and Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen^[12]
• 19 April – Edward Oxford, English attempted assassin of Queen Victoria (died 1900)
• 18 July – Augusta of Cambridge, Hanoverian princess (died 1916)
• 1 November – Sir Sydney Waterlow, English businessman, politician and philanthropist (died 1906)
• 6 December – Mary Colton, Australian philanthropist and suffragist (died 1898)^[13]
• 24 December – Matthew Arnold, English poet (died 1888)

Deaths

• 15 January – John Aikin, physician and writer (born 1747)
• 24 February – Thomas Coutts, banker (born 1735)
• 8 March – Christopher Wyvill, cleric, landowner and political reformer (born 1740)
• 8 July – Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet (born 1792)
• 23 July – Peter Durand, merchant (born 1766)
• 12 August – Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Foreign Secretary (suicide) (born 1769)
• 25 August – William Herschel, astronomer (born 1738 in Hanover)