Law officers edit

• Lord Advocate – Ilay Campbell
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Robert Dundas of Arniston

Judiciary edit

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Arniston, the younger until 13 December; then from 22 December, Lord Glenlee
• Lord Justice General – The Viscount Stormont
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Barskimming, then Lord Braxfield

• 11 January – new Assembly Rooms opened in George Street, Edinburgh.
• 27 January – Bridge of Dun completed.^[1]
• 1 February – New Club, Edinburgh, founded as a private gentlemen's club.
• June
  • Patrick Miller of Dalswinton demonstrates his design of manually-propelled paddleboat on the Firth of Forth.
  • Kennetpans Distillery begins to operate a condensing rotative stationary steam engine designed by James Watt, the first in Scotland.^[2]
• Summer – Calton Weavers Strike. On 3 September, six of the Calton weavers are killed by troops.
• 1 December – Kinnaird Head Lighthouse first illuminated.
• Catrine is developed on the River Ayr around one of the first cotton mills in Scotland by Claud Alexander of Ballochmyle in partnership with David Dale.^[3]
• The Scotch Distilling Act imposes a tax on gin exported from Scotland to England.
• Kerelaw House and Tarbat House built.

• 7 January – Patrick Nasmyth, landscape painter (died 1831 in London)
• 11 February – Alexander Maconochie, naval officer, geographer and penal reformer (died 1860 in England)
• 14 May – Alexander Laing, "the Brechin poet" (died 1857)
• 22 November – Robert Balmer, minister of the Secession Church (died 1844)
• 17 December – John Forbes, physician (died 1861 in England)
• Susanna Hawkins, poet (died 1868)
• Hugh Maxwell, lawyer and politician in New York (died 1873 in the United States)

• 6 June – Robert Duff, naval officer (born c. 1721)
• 19 June – John Brown, theologian (born 1722)
• 5 September – John Brown, portrait-draftsman and painter in Edinburgh (born 1749)
• 27 December – Thomas Hay, 9th Earl of Kinnoull, politician (born 1710)
• Lady Anne Farquharson-MacKintosh, Jacobite (born 1723)

• 17 April – the Edinburgh edition of Robert Burns' Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect is published by William Creech including a portrait of Burns by Alexander Nasmyth. The poet has great social success in the city's literary circles; 16-year-old Walter Scott meets him at the house of Adam Ferguson. Burns also writes the first version of "The Battle of Sherramuir" this year.
• 4 December – Burns meets Agnes Maclehose at a party given by Miss Erskine Nimmo.^[4]
• The Scots Musical Museum begins publication.

• May – Glasgow Golf Club founded.

• Timeline of Scottish history
• 1787 in Great Britain