1722 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1722 in Great Britain.

Incumbents

27 January – Daniel Defoe's novel Moll Flanders is published anonymously in London.^[2]
19 March – 1722 British general election begins, the second during the reign of George I.
7 May – Construction begins for Tranent to Cockenzie Waggonway, Scotland's first railway.^[3]
9 May – General election ends, resulting in a landslide victory for the Whig government of Robert Walpole which increases its majority in the House of Commons to 220.
9 August – State funeral of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, takes place in London.
24 August – Francis Atterbury, Anglican Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster, is arrested in his deanery and confined in the Tower of London for treason, accused of leading the Jacobite "Atterbury Plot" in support of the pretender James Francis Edward Stuart.^[4]
17 October – Habeas Corpus Act suspended following the discovery of the Atterbury Plot.^[2]

Construction begins of Senate House at the University of Cambridge, designed by James Gibbs.^[2]
The "Brown Bess" muzzle-loading smoothbore musket becomes the British Army's standard infantry firearm for land combat for more than a century.
First known Caslon serif typeface designed by William Caslon in London, the first original typeface of English origin.

^ "History of Sir Robert Walpole - GOV.UK". www.gov.uk. Retrieved 12 June 2023.
^ ^a ^b ^c Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 298. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
^ Journals of William Dickson 1720-1745 (not transcribed) - National Records of Scotland.
^ Hayton, D. W. (2004). "Atterbury, Francis (1663–1732)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/871. Retrieved 2012-11-22. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)