1738 in Great Britain

Incumbents

• Monarch – George II
• Prime Minister – Robert Walpole
• Parliament – 8th

  Events

• 28 March – Robert Jenkins presents a pickled ear, which he claims was cut off by a Spanish captain in the Caribbean in 1731, to Parliament, stirring up war fever against Spain leading to the War of Jenkins' Ear the following year.
• 15 April – première in London of Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel.
• May
• * Tiverton riot: wool trade workers riot over prices in Tiverton, Devon.
• * The Fetter Lane Society is founded by followers of the Moravian Church in London.
• 24 May – John Wesley experiences a spiritual rebirth at a Moravian Church meeting in Aldersgate in the City of London, essentially launching the Methodist movement; the day is celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day. His younger brother Charles had a similar experience three days earlier.
• 24 June – Lewis Paul and John Wyatt obtain a patent for roller cotton-spinning machinery.
• Late – David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature is published anonymously.

  Undated

• William Champion of Bristol patents a process to distill zinc from calamine using charcoal in a smelter.
• William Kent is appointed to remodel Rousham House and gardens in Oxfordshire, "a landmark in the history of the Romantic movement."

  Births

• 9 February – Mary Whateley, poet and playwright
• 14 April – William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 16 April – Henry Clinton, British army general and politician
• 9 May – John Wolcot, satirist and poet
• 4 June
• * King George III of the United Kingdom
• * James Martin, radical politician
• 11 October – Arthur Phillip, admiral and Governor of New South Wales
• 15 November – William Herschel, German-born British astronomer
• 31 December – Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, general

  Deaths

• 1 May – Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, English statesman
• 21 June – Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, English politician
• 22 December – Constantia Jones, prostitute