1698: Act against owling creates a landguard of Riding Officer. Rigid controls on buying and selling wool within fifteen miles of the coast.
1717: Smuggling Act: smugglers who refused to plead liable to transportation.
1718: Hovering Act: vessels under fifty tons liable to seizure if found loitering within six miles of the coast, and liable to seizure if laden with tea, brandy, silk etc.
1721: Smuggling Act: convicted smugglers to be transported for seven years. Boats with more than four oars liable to confiscation and destruction.
1724: Robert Walpole added tea to items liable to Excise Duty and created bonded warehouses.
1729: Duties on cheap spirits increased.
1733: Robert Walpole tried unsuccessfully to extend Excise Duty to tobacco.
1736: Inquiry under Sir John Cope takes evidence on smuggling. Smuggling Act increases penalties: severe fines for bribing officers, death for wounding or taking up arms against officers, transportation (if armed) for resisting arrest. Also an Act of Indemnity: a smuggler, even if in gaol, could have a free pardon if he confessed all and gave names of his associates.
1739: war of Jenkin’s Ear (with Spain and related to smuggling in the West Indies).
1740-1748 War of Austrian Succession – an expensive war.
1744: Threat of invasion from France.
1745: Rebellion under Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Yung Pretender. Parliamentary Inquiry into the tea trade. Tea Duty cut by Henry Pelham. Further penalties for those found loitering within six miles of the coast.
1746 Battle of Culloden and final defeat of the Jacobite cause. Smuggling Act established the severest penalties, initially for a seven year period. Death for running contraband, assembling to run goods or harbouring smugglers. Smugglers convicted of killing officers were to be gibbeted. Collective fines on whole county for unresolved offences (one hundred pounds for an officer killed by smugglers, forty pounds for one wounded). Names of known smugglers published in the London Gazette; these men to surrender within forty days or be judged guilty. Five hundred pounds reward for anyone turning in a gazetted smuggler.
1749: Special Assize at Chichester to try the murderers of Galley and Chater. The breakup of the major gangs of Kent and Sussex.
1751: Further controls on the trade of gin and tobacco
1759: Tea Duty raised again.
1765: Isle of Man brought within the control of the Customs.
1767: First attempt to establish a Customs House in Jersey.
1779: Smuggling Act, amending measures of the 1746 Act and adding penalties for goods carried in vessels over two hundred tons. Boats with more than four oars forbidden. Penalties for gaolers allowing smugglers to escape.
1782: Act of Oblivion: smugglers could redeem their crimes by finding men to serve in the army or navy. One landsman and one seaman could compound a five hundred pound penalty, and two of each could redeem all penalties, however great.
1783: Report of the Commission of Excise on smuggling.
1784: The younger Pitt, as Prime Minister, cuts Tea Duty from 127% to 12% but increases Window Tax. Further modifications to Smuggling and Hovering Acts. Prohibition on building certain types of boat.
1793-1815: War with France, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, interrupted by a short interval of peace March 1802 – May 1803 after the Treaty of Amiens.
1795: Chain of signal stations link the south east coast to London.
1797: Naval mutinies at Spithead and the Nore.
1805: Customs control extended to the Channel Isles.
1809: New Preventive Waterguard created.
1816: Control of Revenue Cutters transferred to the Admiralty.
1817: Coastal blockade initially established between North and South Foreland.
1818: Coastal blockade extended to cover coast from Sheerness to Seaford.
1822: National Coast Guard establshed.
1826: Further modifications to Smuggling Acts.
1828: Customs control extended to Scilly Isles.
1831: Coastguard service replaces Coastal blockade in Kent and Sussex.
1835: First steamer employed in the Preventive Service.
1839: Commission of Inquiry into the Coastguard Service.
1844: Select Committee Report on the Tobacco trade.
1845: Robert Peel removes Duties on a wide range of items.
1846: Repeal of the Corn Laws.
1850: Last Export Duty (on coal in foreign ships) abolished.
1853: Gladstone reforms the Coastguard Service.