Historical timeline: 1751 - 1800

Date	Coutts event	World event
1751		China invades Tibet
1752		The Gregorian calendar is adopted in Britain
1755	James Coutts marries Mary Peagrum – the granddaughter of John Campbell – bringing the Coutts name into the business	Dr Samuel Johnson publishes his ‘Dictionary of the English Language’
1758		Halley’s comet appears in the sky, proving Edmund Halley’s calculation of its orbit
1759		The British Museum opens to the public
1760	Death of Mary Coutts and George Campbell	The accession of George III
1761	Thomas Coutts joins his brother James as a junior partner at the Bank, which is now named ‘James & Thomas Coutts’
1762	James Coutts becomes an MP for Edinburgh
1763	Thomas Coutts marries Susannah Starkie. Together they have three daughters – Susan, Frances and Sophia	Under the Treaty of Paris, France cedes Canada to Britain
1765		The battleship HMS Victory is launched
1768		The Royal Academy is founded by George III
1773		During the Boston Tea Party, militants destroy shipments of tea in protest against British taxes
1775	James Coutts retires from the Bank, making Thomas senior partner
1776		America declares independence from the British Empire
1777	Thomas Coutts makes Edmund Antrobus, a 27 year old stockbroker, a partner of the Bank
1778	James Coutts dies in Gibraltar	Louis XVI of France declares war on Britain
1779		The Spinning Mule is invented by Samuel Crompton
1783	John Antrobus becomes a partner	A highwayman, John Austin, is the last person to be executed at Tyburn
1784		The India Act brings the East India Company’s rule in India under the control of the British government
1788	Thomas Coutts and his family travel to Switzerland and France, where they throw a ball in Paris	The ‘First Fleet’ arrives in Botany Bay, Australia, to found a British colony
1789		The Fall of the Bastille marks the beginning of the French Revolution
1792		George Earl Macartney leads Britain’s first embassy to China
1793	Sophia Coutts marries Francis Burdett at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Coutts Trotter becomes a partner	Louis XVI of France is executed
1794	Upon his return from his embassy to China, George Earl Macartney gives Thomas Coutts a gift of Chinese wallpaper which now hangs in the Bank’s board room	Horatio Nelson is blinded in his right eye during a battle at Calvi
1795	Major refurbishment work begins on the Bank’s premises at 59 Strand
1796	Susan Coutts marries George Augustus North, the 3rd Earl of Guilford	The British surgeon Edward Jenner discovers the smallpox vaccine
1797		The Bank of England issues its first £1 note
1798	Edward Marjoribanks becomes a partner
1799		The prime minister William Pitt introduces income tax in Britain
1800	Frances Coutts marries John Stuart, the 1st Marquess of Bute