1725 in Great Britain

Events

2 March – in London, a night watchman finds a severed head by the Thames; it is later recognized to be that of the husband of Catherine Hayes. She and an accomplice are executed the following year.^[2]
12 May – the Black Watch is raised as a military company as part of the pacification of the Scottish Highlands under General George Wade.^[3]
18 May – the Order of the Bath is founded by King George I.^[4]
24 May – Jonathan Wild, fraudulent "Thief Taker General", is hanged in Tyburn, for actually aiding criminals.^[5]
3 September – Treaty of Hanover signed between Great Britain, France and Prussia.^[6]
20 November – the horse-post from Edinburgh to London vanishes after passing through Berwick-upon-Tweed; horse and rider are thought to have perished on tidal sands near Lindisfarne.^[3]

A fire in Wapping, England destroys 70 houses.^[7]
Alexander Pope produces an English language translation of Homer's Odyssey.^[4]

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Births

4 February – Dru Drury, entomologist (died 1804)
6 March – Henry Benedict Stuart, cardinal and Jacobite claimant to the British throne (born, and died 1807, in Italy)
28 March – Andrew Kippis, non-conformist clergyman and biographer (died 1795)
25 April – Augustus Keppel, 1st Viscount Keppel, admiral (died 1786)
23 May – Robert Bakewell, agriculturalist (died 1795)
1 July – Rhoda Delaval, portrait painter (died 1757)
24 July – John Newton, cleric and hymnist (died 1807)
29 August – Charles Townshend, politician (died 1767)
29 September – Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, general and statesman (died 1774)
17 October – John Wilkes, politician and journalist (died 1797)
Paul Sandby, cartographer and painter (died 1809)

Incumbents